Book Art

Visual and cultural analysis of Meiji shōnen kaiko 明治少年懐古 (Reminiscences of a Meiji youth, 1944), an illustrated book that nostalgically recalls Japan's late nineteenth and early twentieth century period of modernization. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/440/title/1.

O artigo trata do catálogo como espaço expositivo, como obra autônoma e não mera documentação. Em 2008, os artistas Ana Luiza Dias Batista, Laura Huzak e João Loureiro elaboraram uma publicação que atua como catálogo, mas não é um registro das obras expostas, e sim um desdobramento da exposição no espaço impresso.

The essay reconstructs the editorial activity dedicated to the arts by the Olivetti, from the brief experience of the Nuove Edizioni di Ivrea (1943-1945) to the huge project of the Edizioni di Comunità. Born in 1946, the Edizioni di Comunità aimed to create a channel through which spreading free debate and cultural rebirth in a country long isolated from the main currents of modern thoughts. The survey starts from the analysis of two case studies that interpret the book as possible tool to encourage the educational function of arts: Giulio Carlo Argan's edited Italian translation of Herbert Read's "Education through Art" (1954); and Gina Pischel's three volumes "Lezioni di educazione artistica" (1954, 1959, 1961). Then the essay examines the Olivetti series of art books: «Collezione d’Arte Aldina» (1952-1954); «Quaderni d’arte» of the Centro Culturale Olivetti (1954-1961); «Studi e documenti di Storia dell’arte» (1960-1965); «Quaderni d’arte e d’architettura moderna» (1961-1965).

Unhinged:Book Art on the Cutting Edge surveys recent directions in book art through the work of 60 prominent artists from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and across the United States. It explores the limitless potential of the book as an independent medium, including both intimately scaled pieces and large installations. Book artists present lyrical odes to beauty as well as messages about identity, social justice issues, and environmental concerns. After perusing this publication, viewers will never "read" a book in the same way again.

In the age of the novel, we read fiction sequentially and unselfconsciously. This practice requires us to ignore the materiality and appearance of books, for these factors disrupt narrative absorption. "The Look of the Book" explores specific books from England and America whose visual and material characteristics resist and redefine habitual experiences of reading prose. These specimens connect word and image in the book format, and they therefore resist the theories of critics since Gotthold Lessing that have separated visual and verbal modes.

Lessing's contemporary, Laurence Sterne, uses visual elements in Tristram Shandy (1760–67) to digress from the reading sequence while furthering the overall narrative. Sterne's techniques also establish a taxonomy of the book's constituent variables. In the twentieth century, as bookmaking technologies became more widely accessible, a printing renaissance brought artists into book design. Vanessa Bell creates images and designs page layouts to amplify her sister Virginia Woolf's ekphrastic fiction in the third "decorated" edition of Woolf's Kew Gardens (Hogarth Press, 1927). The illustrations change the pace of reading by integrating word, image and book structure. In Tom Phillips' A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel and Sheherezade: A Flip Book, by artist Janet Zweig and author Holly Anderson, words are inseparable from the visual layout of the page, and the resulting written texts create temporally fractured narratives. These postmodern artists' books show that narrative fiction and the physical novel are both malleable structures.

In all of these works, the "book composer," who masterminds the visual arrangement of the text, influences the reading experience in ways that have not been explored in the context of literary criticism. As predictions about the 'death of the book' circulate in the academy and popular media, this dissertation suggests that books can make available complex modes of reading that we generally do not expect from novels. This interdisciplinary approach is essential at a time when images pervade the cultural context and are being integrated more thoroughly into print media.

In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers.

These early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature.

Children's books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices. Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images.

A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form. Spotlighting three thematic threads - communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda - The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.

CONTENTS

Introduction Primers in Soviet Modernity: Depicting Communism for Children in Early Soviet Russia 3
Serguei Alex. Oushakine and Marina Balina

PART I: MEDIATION

Chapter one Three Degrees of Exemplary Boyhood in Boris Kustodiev’s Soviet Paradise
Helena Goscilo

Chapter two How the Revolution Triumphed: Alisa Poret’s Textbook of Cultural Iconography
Yuri Leving

Chapter three “Foto-glaz”: Children as Photo-Correspondents in Early Soviet Pioneer Magazines
Erika Wolf

Chapter four Autonomous Animals Animated: Samozveri as a Constructivist Pedagogical Cine-dispositive
Aleksandar Bošković

Chapter five The Fragile Power of Paper and Projections
Birgitte Beck Pristed

PART II: TECHNOLOGY

Chapter six From Nature to “Second Nature” and Back
Larissa Rudova

Chapter seven Autonomy and the Automaton: The Child as Instrument of Futurity
Sara Pankenier Weld

Chapter eight Spells of Materialist Magic, or Soviet Children and Electric Power
Kirill Chunikhin

Chapter nine “Do It All Yourself!” Teaching Technological Creativity during Soviet Industrialization
Maria Litovskaya

Chapter ten The Camel and the Caboose: Viktor Shklovsky’s Turksib and the Pedagogy of Uneven Development
Michael Kunichika

Chapter eleven Aeroplane, Aeroboat, Aerosleigh: Propelling Everywhere in Soviet Transportation
Kat Hill Reischl

PART III: POWER

Chapter twelve Spatializing Revolutionary Temporality: From Montage and Dynamism to Map and Plan
Kevin M. F. Platt

Chapter thirteen “Poor, Poor Il’ich”: Visualizing Lenin’s Death for Children
Daniil Leiderman and Marina Sokolovskaia

Chapter fourteen Young Soldiers at Play: The Red Army Soldier as Icon
Steve Norris

Chapter fifteen The Working Body and Its Prostheses: Imagining Class for Soviet Children
Alexey Golubev

Chapter sixteen Americanism: The Brave New New World of Soviet Civilization
Thomas Keenan-Dormany

Illustration Credits 525

List of Contributors 529

Index 535

Visual and cultural analysis of Nihon no hana 日本の花(1946), a book pairing pictures and poetry by diverse artists and poets on the theme of flowers. The book is part of the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/462/title/1.

Exsul Immeritus Blas Valera Populo Suo is one of the two Jesuit documents that make up the so-called "Miccinelli documents" which, like many other documents of the Spanish conquest, were "discovered" in archives or private collections after hundreds of years. About three decades ago, a renowned Italian researcher from the University of Bologna, presented to the world the Miccinelli documents - which reveal an unknown mode of Inca writing and contain information so sensitive that it questions the legitimacy of the conquest of Peru and of the two most revered Peruvian authors of the conquest. Despite the scholarly research studies that accompanied the disclosure of these documents, their authenticity was questioned by Peruvian academic authorities and their extraordinary content remained ignored. The divulgation of the documents was limited, since the publication of their content - which was originally written in Latin and Quechua - was only done in two editions whose print run may have been small, since they are difficult to find. The first is a 2005 Italian edition translated into Italian and Spanish, and the second is a 2009 Peruvian edition translated only into Spanish. The owner of the documents passed away in 2017 and the researcher who dedicated more than two decades to them passed away in 2018. My purpose is to contribute to the spreading abroad of the content of Exsul Immeritus, as well as to highlight two other of its particularities: the psychological processes involved in its creation, and its condition as a book-object. 

Exsul Immeritus Blas Valera Populo Suo es uno de los dos documentos jesuitas que conforman los llamados “documentos Miccinelli” los cuales, como muchos otros documentos de la conquista española, fueron “descubiertos” en archivos o colecciones privadas después de cientos de años. Hace unas tres décadas, una reconocida investigadora italiana de la Universidad de Bologna, presentó al mundo los documentos Miccinelli -que revelan un modo desconocido de escritura inca y contienen información tan sensible, que cuestiona la legitimidad de la conquista del Perú y de los dos autores peruanos de la conquista más venerados. A pesar de los estudios de investigación académica que acompañaron la divulgación de estos documentos, su autenticidad fue cuestionada por las autoridades académicas peruanas y su extraordinario contenido permaneció ignorado. La difusión de los documentos fue limitada, pues la publicación de su contenido -el cual fue escrito originalmente en latín y en quechua, sólo se realizó en dos ediciones cuyo tiraje posiblemente fue pequeño pues son difíciles de hallar. La primera es una edición italiana del año 2005 traducida al italiano y al castellano, y la segunda es una edición peruana del año 2009 traducida sólo al castellano. La dueña de los documentos falleció el año 2017 y la investigadora que dedicó a ellos más de dos décadas falleció el año 2018. Mi propósito es contribuir a la difusión del contenido de Exsul Immeritus, así como destacar otras dos de sus particularidades: los procesos psicológicos involucrados en su creación, y su condición de libro-objeto.

Visual and cultural analysis of Nihon no shiro 日本の城 (Japanese Castles, 1944), a book containing text by architectural historian Kishida Hideto and woodblock print illustrations by artist Hashimoto Okiie. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/429/title/1.

In the age of the novel, we read fiction sequentially and unselfconsciously. This practice requires us to ignore the materiality and appearance of books, for these factors disrupt narrative absorption. "The Look of the Book" explores specific books from England and America whose visual and material characteristics resist and redefine habitual experiences of reading prose. These specimens connect word and image in the book format, and they therefore resist the theories of critics since Gotthold Lessing that have separated visual and verbal modes. Lessing's contemporary, Laurence Sterne, uses visual elements in Tristram Shandy (1760–67) to digress from the reading sequence while furthering the overall narrative. Sterne's techniques also establish a taxonomy of the book's constituent variables. In the twentieth century, as bookmaking technologies became more widely accessible, a printing renaissance brought artists into book design. Vanessa Bell creates images and...

A survey on the history of Iranian painting should include the information about remaining illustrated manuscripts, which provides sufficient evidence to clarify how the history of painting evolved. This paper is based on the codicological information about the manuscripts preserved in Iran; it aims to determine the thematic frequency of the works decorated with paintings; it also tries to answer which kind of texts (prose or poetic) were the most appealing to painters and illustrators. Therefore, relying on a quantitative methodology, it was found that literature illustrated manuscripts are in the first place and are far from other subjects, and the following subjects are: artistic albums, history, travelogue, and geography. These works are decorated with various decorations such as paintings, drawings, maps, designs, and other patterns. This research could be a basis for organizing the subjects of the images in illustrated manuscripts.

Visual and cultural analysis of Maekawa Senpan's Shitōchō  偲糖帖 (Remembered Sweets, 1945), a woodblock-printed compendium of sweets that was conceived of and executed during a period of severe wartime food shortage. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book,  may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/455/title/1.

L'articolo ricostruisce su base documentaria i rapporti fra l'editore e scrittore d'arte italiano residente a Parigi Gualtieri di San Lazzaro (1904-1974) con il gallerista veneziano Carlo Cardazzo. Questo scambio dà come risultato una serie di mostre presso le galleria del Naviglio (Milano), del Cavallino (Venezia) e Selcta (Roma), riguardanti l'opera grafica di Kandinsky, la pittura di Serge Poliakoff, Atlan, Hartung, Michaux, Jean Arp e Sonia Delaunay (esito fallimentare, invece, avrà il tentativo di fare una mostra di Fautrier), oltre a rnedere possibili le mostre di Fontana e Capogrossi a Parigi presso la sede della rivista "XXeme Siècle", diretta da San Lazzaro. Ma questo rapporto consente anche altre operazioni, coem la vendita del sipario dipinto da Picasso nel 1917 per Parade. L'articolo è anche un primo sondaggio sulla biografia di questo personaggio, di cui il Centro APICE dell'Università degli Studi di Milano conserva un fondo archivistico e librario.

Ardabil became one of the most important cultural centers not only in Azerbaijan, but the entire Near and Middle East during the reign of the Safavids. Calligraphy and book art developed here thanks to the rich library, located in the shrine of Sheikh Safi. During this era in Ardabil compositions on creative literature, theology, medicine, linguistics, philosophy, history, astronomy, ethics, biography, mathematics, etc were rewritten. Currently, these books are held in different libraries
and manuscript collections of Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Russia, England, USA and so on. As a result of our research, we have identified the names of more than 70 calligraphers and scribes from Safavid period, who were born or lived and worked in Ardabil.

In celebration of the 500th anniversary of Armenian Printing, 1512-2012, the Bibliothèque Mazarine of the French Academy hosted a major exhibition of a selection of early printed Armenian books dating before 1800 from its own rich collection, which together with that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France have the richest holdings of early Armenian prints in France.  The exhibit was supplemented from holdings in the special collection of the Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations (BULAC), and a private Paris collection.  This, the first of two groups of descriptive notices, included six publications from sections I. Venise & II. d’Amsterdam à Marseille.

The year 2022 is the 125th anniversary of the publication of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard (1897):
the poem that made the world modern and then postmodern. It launched countless poems of free verse experimenting with typography and the
page. The poem also launched a host of homage in the form of livres
d'artiste in numerous languages as well as homage in film, painting,
photography, sculpture, installation, theatre, costume, music, dance,
programming, and book art. Even exhibitions. This essay is a sneak preview of the online essay/exhibition taking stock of works of homage to poem from 1897 to 2022.

A Review on Design and Books — From the Inside of One of Them

This text is a commentary on the representational politics in the medium book, in reference to the 6-volume book project "The Monograph-Project" about the oevre of the artist Jun Yang, by Barbara Steiner, Oliver Klimpel, and Jun Yang.

in: "The Monograph-Project", volume 1, Barbara Steiner (ed.), Jovis, 2016

This article is the result of a presentation reflecting on the results of a series of interviews with contemporary “avant-garde” American and French poets from two generations who also run their own small presses. Issues such as receptivity, invisibility, distribution, collectives, the capacity for their authors to be seriously considered for literary prizes of a national and international stature, and the sense of the avant-garde as further marginalized by limited access to mainstream, recognized works, (those found in Borders/Amazon/Barnes & Noble, for example), were explored.

Publisher-authors included Lyn Hejinian (Atelos and Tuumba Press), Julie Carr (Counterpath Press—with Tim Roberts), Jérôme Mauche (Les Petits Matins), Cole Swensen (La Presse—publishing only translations from the French), Pascal Poyet (contrat maint), Charles Alexander (Chax Press), Brenda Iijima (Yo-yo labs), Tracey Grinnell (Litmus Press), Joshua Clover (**), Dan Machlin (Futurepoem Books), Michaël Batalla (éditions du Clou dans le Fer, collection expériences poétiques), Vanesse Place (Les Figues Presse) and Susana Gardner (Dusie Press, based in Switzerland).

Supplemental questions were be posed to a handful of poets who have published with these presses and/or other small presses and who have also later had the opportunity (or wish to) to see their work taken by mainstream or wider-distribution presses, such as Barrett Watten, Carla Harryman, Alice Notley, Susan Howe, Claude Royet-Journoud, Jacques Sivan, Vannina Maestri, Bhanu Kapil, Virginie Poitrasson, Frédéric Forte, Christophe Marchand-Kiss, Marie-Céline Siffert, Martin Richet, Michelle Noteboom, Laura Mullen and to such publishers who have radicalized the accessibility of avant-garde poetries, such as Al Dante, POL, or Green Integer/Sun & Moon. This article asks and reflects on the question: Have such publishing practices created not only domestic webs of contacts in the USA, thus co-publishing opportunities and readership, but even international ones?

"O intento deste trabalho foi transpor determinados fragmentos biográficos em formato estético. A idéia da execução deste partiu através de imagens e informações compiladas numa pesquisa que desenvolvo há três anos que não seriam utilizadas no procedimento formal da outra pesquisa.

Este memorial serve como uma descrição da manufatura do trabalho final. Sabia que a concepção do trabalho como imaginei seria algo muito complexo e a melhor solução teve como fruto um atípico caderno de processo feito em formato digital e impresso. Ou seja, o resultado pode se definir também como um livro sem padrão linear que conta minha relação com as imagens e enigmas em que me envolvi. Uma maneira de conformar minhas confissões criativas e relações do olhar. Assim, os elementos estéticos e textuais foram organizados a partir das imagens e fotos, mesclando assuntos periféricos e outras impressões de percurso.

Incluí também outra faceta de minha cultura, no interesse de decompor o caráter intimista da pesquisa biográfica à minha verve livre, colaborativa. A partir daí, convidei alguns comparsas que conheci nas ruas e no mundo virtual a elaborar produções de acordo com minhas histórias como parte do procedimento.

"

Visual and cultural analysis of Shinshō Fuji  新頌富士 (1946), a book of poems on Mt. Fuji by Maeda Yugure that was designed and illustrated by artist Onchi Kōshirō. The book is part of the Pulverer Collection of Japanese Illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/460/title/1

David Mabb
‘Announcer’
Printed newspaper, produced in an edition 2000
This publication was produced to accompany David Mabb's exhibition 'Announcer', Focal Point Gallery, 12 April to 12 July 2014.
ISBN 978-1-907185-17-5
Free
http://www.focalpoint.org.uk/printed_matter/publications/
"This exhibition marks the culmination of Mabb’s work which, for over fifteen years, has investigated the utopian socialist concerns in Morris’ designs by contrasting them with other forms of modernist and utopian production. The main gallery space was dominated by a new installation of paintings entitled Announcer. Composed of thirty large canvases, the work covers three walls of the space and surrounds the audience. Each canvas is pasted with pages from facsimile editions of the Kelmscott Chaucer, a collection of works by Geoffrey Chaucer published by the Kelmscott Press [1896], which Morris founded and worked on as a typographer and designer. Onto this surface are painted enlarged recreations of El Lissitzky’s Constructivist illustrations from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s book of revolutionary poems For the Voice [1923]. In this work, the publications cease to be objects that can be held and digested, instead becoming an environment. Rather than simply combining the designs, Announcer interweaves and juxtaposes them. Sections of the Kelmscott Chaucer are left unpainted to disrupt the geometric Lissitzky designs. A dialogue is created between the two, which are simultaneously frozen, but never fixed, unable to fully merge or separate".
See also https://www.academia.edu/11592255/Announcer
https://www.academia.edu/15684201/The_Background_Speaks_David_Mabbs_Announcer_and_the_Emergence_of_Information

В статье рассматривается проблема изучения художественного оформ-
ления книжно-рукописного наследия старообрядческих общин Лат-
вии, в частности Рижской гребенщиковской общины. Автор, используя
сравнительный метод, на обширном источниковом материале (к иссле-
дованию привлечено 175 рукописей) выделяет три условных группы
оформления рукописей. Первая группа — рукописи, при оформлении
которых источником вдохновения служил орнамент поморского стиля;
вторая — рукописи с орнаментом, подражающим старопечатному сти-
лю, и третья — рукописи, оформленные в авторском стиле

"Perversions of Paper comprises two events, an invitational workshop on 20 June 2014 and a one-day symposium on 28 June 2014. Both investigate the outer limits of our interactions with books and with paper. They consider unorthodox engagements with texts, from cherishing or hoarding them to mutilating and desecrating them, from wearing them to chewing them, and from inhaling their scent to erasing their content. ‘Perversion’ may apply to deviations from normal usage but also to our psychological investments in paper. To talk of having a fetish for books is common, but is there more to this than merely well-worn cliché? These events provide for reflections on perverse uses of – and relationships with – paper and parchment. What part do books,, manuscripts and other written artefacts play in our imaginary and psychic lives, and what complex emotional attachments do we develop towards them? Also, how might literary studies or cultural history register these impulses and acts; what kind of methodologies are appropriate?

The Perversions of Paper newspaper which includes the programme and speakers can be downloaded below.

"

The issue of the journal “New Art Studies” 03/2020 was prepared based on the materials of the conference “The Art of the Book of the
Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time: Problems and Prospects of Study”, which took place on September 24-25, 2020 at Russian
Academy of Sciences Library with the participation of the New Art Studies Foundation. The articles of the conference participants, published in the journal, address the most important issues for Russian and Western European book art related to typology, visual narrative, reception, migration and transformation of iconographic and decorative samples.

The work of teachers and literacy specialists has a lot of potential overlap with that of teaching artists of visual and literary arts within early childhood education. When young people in preschools and kindergartens practice early art and literacy, these two areas build in a sort of symphony as youngsters tell stories, make drawings of their experiences, and have illustrated books read and shown to them by others. Over the past five years as a professor, Courtney Weida has organized collaborations within her institution's community literacy center between preservice art teachers and preservice literacy specialists, bringing book arts projects into a sort of dialogue with literacy curricula for educators and young people. This article explores key book arts activities with young people from those teaching experiences that promote and document early art and literacy learning.

Le but de l’ouvrage est de mettre en lumière certains aspects du rôle multimodal qu’a joué le livre depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Autrement dit, ce volume se concentre sur le livre en tant qu’objet patrimonial, objet rituel, vecteur de connaissance, document historique, lieu d’interaction entre texte et image, entre patrimoine matériel et patrimoine immatériel, où les révolutions technologiques rencontrent les courants historiques, théologiques et artistiques, mais aussi en tant que source perpétuelle d’inspiration pour la création artistique.

In this essay I explore new ways of literary transmission edited in formats other than the codex in Latin America and Spain. My study also analyzes what Armando Petrucci called exposed writings. Taking as departing point a review of the concept of book, I will scrutinize several object-books to offer an analysis of literary materials edited in non-codex supports. This essay also proposes a clear distinction between book-object and object-book. Since the object-books I analyze convey literary texts, a main aim of my research is to vindicate the inclusion of these new materialities of literature into the field of literary studies, an area that historically has omitted non-codex formats considering them non-serious literature or literary diversions.

The French word "éditeur" and the English "editor" are false friends; but Gervais Jassaud is a true friend to book publishing as he assumes both the role of generous publisher and rigorous editor. Under the imprint of Collectif Génération, Jassaud has distilled the most innovative esthetics of the French "livre de peintre" tradition and confronted them with the lessons of American avant-garde experiments in book art.
French translation follows English text.