The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a collection of 425 or more matchbook labels, mainly Japanese although there are a handful of Scandinavian and German examples. The color is wonderfully bright and fresh. Here’s a small sample.
A great list of international links, if you want to see more: http://www.phillumeny.dk/, then click on links.
The three-day PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture conference has begun, with 300 curators, collectors, educators, and enthusiasts disregarding the Thursday snow and gathering in Rochester, NY.
R.I.T. designed the conference to focus on the presentation of original scholarship on the broad subject of photography’s history and future. As the conference program reveals, “presentations include applications, education, connoisseurship, conservation and preservation, and accessibility. Conference presentations in panel format offer scholarly research, exploration, analysis, interpretation and assessment about dimensions of photography’s past and future as viewed through multiple disciplinary lenses. We anticipate attendance by a wide range of academic disciplines and by practitioners from an equally broad range of professions: educators, practitioners, administrators and managers from both the for-profit and the not-for-profit sectors.”
The program notes, “Photography is simultaneously understood as “making” and “taking”: from the four-year-old’s worldview images of knees and the vacationer’s tedious snapshots of very, very distant vistas, to the event-defining, stop-action of news shots and the wordless narrative of the propagandist or polemicist. Photography documents, it inspires, acts as a memory and prompts memories. Photography stops motion and captures the action, instructs and demonstrates, entertains, reveals and conceals what is otherwise (un)noticed or (un)seen, directs attention and evokes a broad range of emotions. And there has never been more of it than there is today.”
PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture is sponsored and organized by RIT Press, the Institute’s scholarly book publishing enterprise, and The Wallace Center at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Following the presentation of scholarship, the conference concludes with a photography-focused Antiquarian Show and Sale on Sunday. https://www.rit.edu/twc/photohistoryconference/
Torii Kiyomitsu I, 1735-1785. The actor Ichikawa Yaozō as Tengawaya Shihei resting on a large chest. Color woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00703
Prof. Watsky’s class ART 425/EAS 425 The Japanese Print split their time on Wednesday between the Marquand Library collection and the Graphic Arts Collection. This seminar has been examining Japanese woodblock prints from the 17th through the 19th century, including the formal and technical aspects of prints, the varied subject matter–including the “floating world” of the brothel districts and theatre, the Japanese landscape, and urban centers–and the links between literature and prints. At the end of the class, the students will select a print or two to purchase for the University.
Our session included not only final prints but the tools and techniques used to make them. Scrolls, bound books, and individual prints were examined.
Nicole Fabricand-Person, Japanese Art Specialist showed the famous “whale” book, by Nanki Josuiken from 1794. This was the first time the whale is identified as a mammal. She also talked about Nanshoku ōkagami: Honchō waka fūzoku [The Great Mirror of Male Love: the Custom of Boy Love in Our Land] written by Ihara Saikaku in 1687. Read her wonderful post on the series here: http://library.princeton.edu/news/marquand/2018-02-09/marquand-art-library-acquisition-great-mirror-male-love
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1798-1861. Half-length portrait of an actor as a sumo wrestler. Color woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00746
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1839-1892. Geisha seated for her photograph, 1881. Color woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00737
Yiyo Tirado Rivera (born 1990), Betancinados, 2016. Xilography. Collection of Alma Concepcion and Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones.
Inspired by the emblematic figure of Ramón Emeterio Betances (1827-1898), Puerto Rican radical abolitionist and revolutionary. Betances lived in exile in France most of his life and was one of the major leaders of the Grito de Lares (1868), an armed insurrection against the Spanish colonial regime.
This print is one of the highlights of the exhibition Puerto Rican Graphic Arts on view in Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton University, in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Program in Latin American Studies. For more images and additional events, see: https://plas.princeton.edu/news-events/news/puerto-rican-graphic-arts
Antonio Martorell (born 1939), Mask, 1979. Screen print and collage. Collection of Alma Concepcion and Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones.
From the portfolio Loas, 1979, based on a text on Afro-Caribbean deities and rituals by Antonio T. Díaz-Royo. This text inspired Atibón Ogú, Erzulí, a choreodrama by Alma Concepción, for Taller de Histriones, a Puerto Rican mime company directed by Gilda Navarra. Set designs, costumes, and body art by Martorell. Music by Emmanuel “Sunshine” Logroño.
Born in 1939, Jose Rosa studied at the Taller del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueño (Graphic Arts Workshop of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture) run by Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004) and later succeeded Homar as the workshop’s director. As this poster demonstrates, he was a master of screen printing.
The print was later exhibited and reproduced in the catalogue José Rosa: Exposición Homenaje: Obra Gráfica, 1963-1996: Antiguo Arsenal de la Marina Española, Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico, 29 de abril al 31 de agosto de 1998 ([San Juan, P.R.]: Programa de Artes Plástica, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1998).
Myrna Báez (born 1931), Baile, 1963. Linocut and woodcut. Inspired by traditional Puerto Rican dance and music. Collection of Alma Concepcion and Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones.
Daily Princetonian advertisement
Thomas Nast (1840-1902), Apollo Amusing the Gods [on the far right-center, Senator Carl Schurz as Mars, god of war] published in Harper’s Weekly November 16, 1872. Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection.
This weekend, I was asked “what did the German American politician Carl Schurz (seen here caricatured by Thomas Nast) and George Ehret, the owner of Hell-Gate Brewery, have in common?” The answer is love of the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), author of Die Lore-Ley.
These two men joined forces in the 1890s to form the Heine Monument Association to bring the Lorelei Fountain, designed by Ernst Herter (1846-1917) in honor of Heinrich Heine, to New York City. Commissioned for but rejected by the city of Dusseldorf, Heine’s birthplace, Schurz and Ehret were confident they could raise the funds to move the 19-foot monument, sculpted in Tyrolean marble, to Grand Army Plaza in front of the Plaza Hotel, which was still under construction.
Funds were raised but the fountain was again rejected for this prominent site, next rejected by the city of Baltimore, and also rejected for a site on the north shore of Long Island. After several years in a warehouse, Heine’s monument was finally installed at 161st Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, a largely German Jewish community, and dedicated on July 8, 1899.
Unfortunately over the next few years vandals cut off the heads and arms of all three mermaids that sit in the fountain bowl symbolizing poetry, satire, and melancholy. In 1940 the marble was painted black and the fountain moved to the farthest end of the Joyce Kilmer Park, where it was further destroyed with graffiti, trash, and erosion. The city offered to renovate the park if the monument was removed but local activists refused to give it up.
After years of being almost unrecognizable, funds were raised to repair and restore the fountain. The base was hollowed out and that marble used to re-sculpt heads and other body parts for the mermaids. On its centenary in 1999, Heine’s monument was rededicated in its original location, where it is enjoyed today.
Loreley
translated by Tr. Frank 1998
I cannot determine the meaning
Of sorrow that fills my breast:
A fable of old, through it streaming,
Allows my mind no rest.
The air is cool in the gloaming
And gently flows the Rhine.
The crest of the mountain is gleaming
In fading rays of sunshine.
The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, so wondrously fair;
Her golden jewelry is glist’ning;
She combs her golden hair.
She combs with a golden comb, preening,
And sings a song, passing time.
It has a most wondrous, appealing
And pow’rful melodic rhyme.
The boatman aboard his small skiff, –
Enraptured with a wild ache,
Has no eye for the jagged cliff, –
His thoughts on the heights fear forsake.
I think that the waves will devour
Both boat and man, by and by,
And that, with her dulcet-voiced power
See also: http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/paul-terrys-the-lorelei-1931/
Exhibition Stare Case is one of the most famous of all the prints by Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), undated but thought to have been published around 1811. The scene features the notoriously steep and narrow stair in Somerset House leading to the Great Hall and imagines what might happen if someone tripped on a dog, causing a cascade of bodies (at a time when women didn’t wear underpants). The exhibition upstairs becomes less interesting than the scene on the stair.
Off to the right, one lady makes a marginal attempt to grab the spotlight back from the other women by lifting her long skirt to expose her ankle. None of the men around her, including the artist himself, seem to even notice.
Rowlandson lived close by in the Adelphi and was a regular visitor to Somerset House. According to The Cyclopædia: Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature of 1819, between 900-1,200 works were included in the annual spring exhibition, held from late April to early June and attended by over 67,000 visitors.
We assume the crowd is there to see the Spring exhibit, the highlight of the social season, although they might also be attending one of the popular lectures held in 1811, including talks by Henry Fuseli on painting; John Soane on architecture; Anthony Carlisle on anatomy; J. M. W. Turner on perspective; and John Flaxman on sculpture. Or they might also be attending the exhibit of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, held annually beginning in 1804, where Rowlandson exhibited.
Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), Exhibition Stare Case, ca. 1811. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2014.00789.
The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired several projects by the Vancouver artist Rodney Graham. The term ‘projects’ is chosen deliberately because Graham is a writer and a photographer, a musician and a filmmaker, a conceptual humorist who continues to experiment with the written, spoken, and sung word. Most of these projects are out-of-print and so, even nicer to receive as donations.
In the late 1970s, when many art school students were torn between punk rock and the visual arts, Graham formed a band with Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace called UJ3RK5 (pronounced “you jerk,” – the five is silent). They had one, surprising hit song, “Eisenhower and the Hippies,” before breaking up. Since then, Graham has continued to mix art on vinyl with art on paper, subverting distinctions of format and genre.
“Graham was captivated by the idea of this interpolation,” wrote Shepherd Steiner. “Stealthy and ingenious, Graham’s interventions into the art of the past revealed an almost cunning impulse to hack into the works of his forebears and wreak mischief therein.”
In The System of Landor’s Cottage, Graham created a fake addendum to a story by Edgar Allan Poe, so popular it has been reprinted several times. Freud Supplement (170 a-170 d) does much the same for Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.
The artist spent 2000-2001 in a year-long residency at DAAD in Berlin. The year ended with a physical exhibition, accompanied by a conceptual artists’ book rather than traditional catalogue, called Some Works with Sound Waves, Some Works with Light Waves and Some Other Experimental Works. The book and vinyl disc contain lyrics, performance stills, and meditations on Kurt Cobain and Michelangelo Antonioni, along with essays by Martin Pesch, Susanne Gaensheimer and Dirk Snauwert. The cover is designed as a facsimile of the classical LP’s put out by the Deutsche Grammaphone label.
UJ3RK5 (Musical group), UJ3RK5 (Vancouver: Quintessence Records, 1980). Members: Rodney Graham; Jeff Wall; Ian Wallace; Colin Griffiths; Danice MacLeod; Frank Ramirez. Recorded at Little Mountain Sound, December 1979. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Rodney Graham, The System of Landor’s Cottage: a Pendant to Poe’s Last Story ([Toronto]: Y. Gevaert & the Art Gallery of Ontario, 1987). One of 250 numbered copies. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Rodney Graham, Freud Supplement (170 a-170 d) ([S.L.]: Rodney Graham, 1989). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Rodney Graham, Getting It Together in the Country [Multimedia]: some works with sound waves, some works with light waves and some other experimental works (Köln, et al.: Oktagon, 2001). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
In 1910 publisher J. B. (Jsrael Ber) Neumann (1887-1961) opened the Graphisches Kabinett J.B. Neumann on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, where he sold books, prints, and paintings. The shop expanded to Bremen, Düsseldorf and Münich, until Neumann finally emigrated to New York City in 1924. While still in Berlin, Neumann published one of the rarest of the graphic novels by Frans Masereel (1889-1972) entitled Grotesk Film (1921).
Masereel and Neumann would have both seen the popular 1920 black and white silent film, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) directed by Robert Wiene. The first of many German Expressionist films, it had an enormous influence on the arts of that time including Masereel’s silent novels, Grotesk Film in particular.
The small volume opens with a self-portrait of Masereel waving to an audience of expressionist faces, oblivious to a crocodile biting his foot. This might be a reference to Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, which opened in New York City a year earlier and was performed, in part, behind a cyclorama so the actors can only be seen in black and white silhouettes. The plot features a crocodile god who almost devours Jones. 
By 1921, Masereel’s fame had spread to the United States where Frank Crowninshield published a full-page section of his 1920 book Idée (The Idea) in Vanity Fair. However, he was never able to obtain a passport to join his friends in New York and spent most of his adult life in Switzerland. Masereel’s final project was the organization of Xylon, the International Society of Wood Engravers. See: Xylon VI: Exposition internationale de gravure = Internationale Holzschnittausstellung Xylon (Zürich: Sektion Schweiz der Xylon, 1961- ). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage Oversize NE1000 .xX8e
Frans Masereel (1889-1972), Groteskfilm (Berlin: J. B. Neumann, 1921). First and only edition. One of 200 copies on Verge paper. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Henrietta Maria Moriarty (1781-1842), Viridarium: Coloured Plates of Greenhouse Plants, with Linnean Names, and with Concise Rules for Their Culture (London: Printed by Dewick & Clarke, Aldergate-Street, for the Author; and sold by William Earl, No. 47, Albemarle-Street, Piccadilly. 1806). First edition. 50 handcolored aquatint plates, each accompanied with a corresponding leaf of descriptive text. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.
In his post Avoiding sex with Mrs Moriarty, garden historian Dr. David Marsh writes that facts concerning Moriarty’s life have been elusive. She traveled in high class circles: the book’s subscription list is headed by Prince Augustus, the Duke of Sussex and the younger brother of George IV and William IV. The work is dedicated to Lady de Clifford, who also bought five copies.
The plates are mainly copied from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine so it leaves open the question of why this work came to press. Thanks to research by our friends at Marlborough Books, we now have answers about who Moriarty really was. They found a novel by Moriarty, published in 1811 under the title Brighton in an Uproar, and writes:
“This is very clearly an autobiographical work in which she uses the nom de plume of ‘Mrs Mortimer.’ Unfortunately this ‘novel’ also seems to have caused her downfall and imprisonment for slander. This connection has apparently eluded research so in case anyone wants to delve further into the mystery of Mrs Moriarty we thought to give at least an outline of her life.”
In Brighton in an Uproar, Moriarty relates why Viridarium came to be written.
Mrs. Mortimer advertised for two or three ladies to board with her: she succeeded in procuring one; and the aunt of one of the officers belonging to the corps in which her husband had served also came to reside with her. Mrs. Forth was a lady of great accomplishments, aid most pleasing manners: her behaviour to Hubertine and her children was such as rendered her an invaluable friend, and meeting with such an inmate was a great blessing to Mrs. Mortimer in her present distressed situation.
. . . Drawing had always been a favourite occupation with her; and she was advised to publish a botanical work by subscription. She was averse to this as she knew her abilities were not equal to such a task; but as it was expected of her, she immediately set about it . . . Another strong inducement to publish by subscription was the ardent desire which she had to liquidate her late husband’s debts; and in this she succeeded as from her exertion’s she paid them all within two year’s amounting to the sum of four hundred and eighty pounds.
Marlborough’s research continues,
“Henrietta Maria was christened on the 22 February 1781 at Romsey in Hampshire. She was the daughter of Major Benjamin Godfrey of the Inniskilling Dragoons and his wife Henrietta. On the 9th July 1796 she married Matthew Moriarty, Esq., of Chatham in Kent and then a Major in the Marines, she would have been barely 15 at the time of her marriage and presumably this was through the consent of her now widowed mother. Unfortunately he was not a good husband, he left a trail of debt and died somewhat dissolute, and worse leaving his widow and children unprovided for.
In order to clear the debts she wrote Viridarium and later also two novels. . . As a widow Henrietta was not reconciled to her Irish relatives and despite trying to make ends meet by writing she was clearly in financial trouble, worse she seems to have slandered someone and was committed to the King’s Bench prison in December 1813. Her occupation as a boarding house keeper, seems slightly desperate and maybe it is not surprising that she is not acknowledged in print from this time forth except the sad record contained in the 1841 census that she was a ward of the Kensington Union Workhouse followed by her death a year later.”
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Louis Orr (1876-1966) moved to Paris in his twenties to study at the Academie Julian. He served in the French Army, married a French artist, became an officer of the French Legion of Honor, and was buried in Nimes, France. Orr’s etchings were the first by an American artist purchased for the permanent collection in the Louvre’s chalcography department.
In the 1930s, during one of his periodic stays in the United States, Orr accepted a commission from the Princeton University Press to etch seven campus views. First advertised in the Princeton Alumni Weekly 35, no. 17 (February 15, 1935), the Princeton portfolio contained “seven new Princeton etchings by Louis Orr, one of the world’s foremost etchers.” Featured buildings included Blair Tower; Class of 1904 Howard Henry Memorial Dormitory; Cleveland Memorial Hall; Cuyler Hall; Nassau Hall; University Chapel; Hodder Hall; and one small cover design showing a detail of Holder archway.
332 sets were printed on Rives paper and sold “at the exceedingly low price of $100,” which could be paid in monthly installments. “In view of the reputation of the artist, the limitation of the edition to 332 sets, and the fact that each etching is signed by Mr. Orr, these beautiful etchings are collectors’ items and should later sell at a premium. It is expected that the edition will be quickly exhausted.”
Louis Orr was born into a family of engravers, the grandson of John William Orr (1815-1887) and great-nephew of Nathaniel Orr (1822-1908). Princeton’s was one of many institutional commissions he completed including portfolios for Dartmouth, Duke, Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, Wellesley, and Yale. 