Recently in Acquisitions Category

Marcel Arland (1899-1986) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Maternité (Motherhood) (Paris: Sans Pareil, 1926). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

Marc Chagall moved to Paris in 1923 and received several commissions for visual narratives, beginning with designs for Nikolai Gogol’s Die toten Seelen (The Dead Souls) in 1923 (printed in 1927 and published in 1950), followed by Maternité 1925-26, Les Sept péchés capitaux (The Seven Deadly Sins) in 1926, and the Fables of La Fontaine 1927-30. Many of the prints are drypoints, for which Chagall drew directly into a copper plate with a sharp needle.

Arland’s short story is a narrative told in reverse, beginning with the death of a young girl’s illegitimate baby and ending with the first night she and her lover spend together. The girl is vilified by her neighbors and Chagall’s first image shows her being taken away by the police as a crowd yells and shames her. Another plate shows the girl giving birth alone in her backyard among the chickens and empty crates.

Unfortunately, the popularity of Chagall’s prints has led many dealers to cut the book apart and sell the plates individually. To read more, see: Patrick Cramer, Marc Chagall: The Illustrated Books (Geneva: Patrick Cramer Publisher, 1995). Marquand (SA) ND689.C3 C725 1995q

Michael Schützer-Weissmann, In Nomine Domini: Lives of the Composers. Eight etchings by John O’Connor on texts by Michael Schützer-Weissmann (London: John O’Connor, 1974). Copy 1 of 100. The etchings were printed at the Octopus Press at the Islington Studio, London. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize 2012-0006E

Subjects include John Taverner; Thomas Tallis; Dr. John Bull; Orlando Gibbons; William Byrd; William Lawes; John Jenkins; and Henry Purcell. The plate to illustrate Orlando Gibbons is a catoptric anamorphosis, to be viewed with the accompanying cylindrical mirror.

Henry B. Wheatley (1838-1917), London Past and Present, Its History, Associations, and Traditions, based upon the Handbook of London by the late Peter Cunningham (London: John Murray, 1891). GAX Graphic Arts 2012- in process

This copy of Wheatley’s guide to London has been extra illustrated with 170 plates including engravings, etchings, and lithographs (15 hand colored) from many well-known sources. Here are a few examples.

Klimsch’s Jahrbuch (Klimsch’s Yearbook) (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag von Klimsch & Co., 1900-1940). Complete in thirty-three volumes. Subtitle varies from Eine übersicht über die Fortschritte auf Graphischem Gebiete (An Overview of the Progress in the Field of Graphics) to Technische Abhandlungen und Berichte über Neuheiten aus dem Gesamtgebiet der Graphischen Künst (Technical Papers and Reports about Innovations in all Areas of the Graphic Arts).

Ferdinand Karl Klimsch (1812-1890) established the Frankfurt printing firm Klimsch & Co. in 1858. Originally a specialty firm offering commercial lithographic printing, the company expanded into all aspects of printing and continued to operate through 1995.

In 1900 the company issued a report on the state of printing arts in Germany and continued the practice each year until WWII got in the way. Articles ranged from general histories and biographies to in-depth studies in paper technology, electroplating, typography, photographic printing processes, and the evolution of press machinery, much of it written by Friedrich and Konrad Bauer.

But it is the samples of contemporary printing that really make the publication unique. Each issue includes specimens of coated papers, varnishes and inks, embossed labels, monochrome and multicolor typography, as well as printing on foil, on cellulose, and cloth. Paging through the volumes, we see the German graphic aesthetic transform from the decorative Jugendstil to the dynamism of the Futurists and then, the social realism of the rising Nazi party.

The 1932 issue features a retrospective on the first 25 volumes. All of the volumes include tables of contents and the 1935 issue includes an index to volumes 25-28.

Josef Halfer, The Progress of the Marbling Art, from Technical Scientific Principles (Buffalo, N.Y.: L.H. Kinder, 1893). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

Graphic Arts recently acquired a number of books on the history and making of American, British, French, and German papers. Here are a few other titles:

L.L. Brown Paper Co., Makers of the Standard Linen, Ledger and Record Papers: Samples, Sizes, Weights and Price-List (Adams, Mass.: L.L. Brown Paper Co., 1887). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2012-0044N

Union centrale des Arts Décoratifs, 7e Exposition organisée au Palais de l’Industrie 1882. Deuxième exposition technologique des industries d’art, le bois, les tissus, le papier (Paris: Quantin, 1883). Supplément au numèro de la Revue des Arts Décoratifs du 20 Février 1883, numéro exceptionnel du bulletin officiel de l’union centrale. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.

Willy Grünewald, Papierhandel: ein Hilfsbuch für Papierhändler, -Verarbeiter und -Verbraucher (Berlin: Verlag der Papier-Zeitung Carl Hofmann, 1927). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.

Richard Parkinson, A Treatise on Paper, with an Outline of its Manufacture, Complete Tables of Sizes, etc., for Printers and Stationers (Clitheroe: R. Parkinson; London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1894). Graphic Arts GAX 2012 in process.

A wonderful checklist of the Aldine “tip top” detective novels can be found at http://mysteryfile.com/TipTop/Detective.html.

Steve Holland posted a biography of Robert Prowse Jr. and his father, also a prolific artist of penny dreadfuls. This can be found at: http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2010/01/tale-of-two-roberts-by-steve-holland.html

Holland writes, “It was around 1893 that Robert Prowse junior began his association with the Aldine Publishing Co., producing illustrations for their partwork publications of Burrage’s The Lambs of Littlecote and The Island School amongst many other contributions. His illustrations appeared in Aldine’s Garfield Boys’ Journal (1894-95) and Aldine Cheerful Library (1894-95), and he worked for most of Aldine’s library titles, becoming their main cover artist from the mid-1890s.”

“His work can be found on Boys’ First-Rate Pocket Library, Aldine Detective Tales, and Aldine Romance of Invention, Travel and Adventure Library in the 1890s. Probably his most famous covers were for the Aldine Robin Hood Library, and he continued to provide cover art for years to come, his last known work appearing on the Aldine Invention Library (1913) and Aldine Cinema Novels (1915).”

Note, the book covers really are blue, not just bad photography.

“The 100 copies half-bound in Oasis leather and pre-war Fabriano Ingres are printed on the Flower paper made for the Kelmscott Press, and also contain the proofs and additional engraving. The 160 regular copies are half-bound in Fabriano Ingres papers and printed on the Crown and Sceptre paper”.

David Claypoole Johnston (1799-1865), The House that Jeff Built, 1863. Etching. Graphic Arts GA 2012 in process.

4.These are the chattels babes, mothers, and men, to be sold by the head, in the slave pen;— A part of the house that Jeff built.
5.This is the thing, by some call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span; In and out of the house that Jeff built.
6.These are the shackles, for those who suppose their limbs are their own from fingers to toes; And are prone to believe say all that you can, that they shouldn’t be sold by that thing call’d a man; Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
7.These buy the slaves, both male and female, and sell their own souls to a boss with a tail, who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
8.Here the slave breeder parts with his own flesh to a trader down south, in the heart of secesh, thus trader and breeder secure without fail, the lasting attachment of him with a tail, who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adult’s of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
9.This is the scourge by some call’d the cat, Stout in the handle, and nine tails to that, t’is joyous to think that the time’s drawing near when the cat will no longer cause chattels to fear, nor the going, going, gone of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
10.Here the slave driver in transport applies, nine tails to his victim, nor heeds her shrill cries, Alas! that a driver with nine tails his own, should be slave to a driver who owns only one, albeit he owns that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
11.Here’s the arch rebel Jeff whose infamous course, has bro’t rest to the plow and made active the hearse, and invoked on his head every patriots curse, spread ruin and famine to stock the slave pen, and furnish employment to that thing among men, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
12.But Jeff’s infamous house is doom’d to come down, so says Uncle Sam and so said John Brown. — With slave pen and auction shackles, driver and cat, together with buyer and seller and breeder and that, most loathsome of bipeds by some call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.

Joanna Southcott (or Southcote) (1750-1814), wrote prophecies “at the command of the spirit of God.” From 1792 to her death, Southcott attracted many followers as well as skeptics. Her most important prophecy came in 1813 when she announced that she would give birth to a messiah, called The Shiloh. Southcott was sixty-four years old but spent the last year of her life expecting a child by “the power of the Most High,” who was to “rule the nations with a rod of iron.”

Throughout the year, caricatures and cartoons were published ridiculing her. Here are two examples from July and November 1814. A baby was supposedly born in December and Southcott died soon after.

Rare Books and Special Collections holds over 100 books and pamphlets concerning Southcott. A favorite: Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), Prophecies Announcing the Birth of the Prince of Peace: Extracted from the Works of Joanna Southcott (London: W. Marchant, printer, Ingram-Court, [1814]). (Ex) BF1815.S7 S68 v. 5

How would you like the ability to see another person’s secret thoughts? Even if it is a fictional person. This is the basis of a graphic novella called SVK (special viewing kit). The small paperback is written by Warren Ellis with art by Matt “D’Israeli” Brooker, foreword by William Gibson, and published by the London design firm BERG (Jack Schulze). Their publicity describes the book as “a story about cities, technology, and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.”

The trick comes when the detective story is illuminated with a small ultraviolet light (included with the book) and the secret thoughts of various characters appear. More than a gimmick, the invisible text moves the plot along, exposing character strengths and weaknesses you wouldn’t otherwise know.

The leading character is a security consultant named Thomas Woodwind. “A man of six feet or so, quite lean, with a good Patrick Stewart-ish skull fuzzed with very short pale hair. Paranoid eyes. Tending to very long black coats, with poacher’s pockets sewn on the inside. A bluetooth earpiece cupping each ear. Black gloves - no fingerprints, reduction of epithelials.”

Also included is a short essay by comic historian Paul Gravett on the history of the word balloon, as well as at least one ultraviolet advertisement. I wonder if you get a discount for advertising in invisible ink?

Enrique Chagoya, Escape from Fantasylandia: An Illegal Alien’s Survival Guide, 2011. 10/30. Lithograph on papel de amate printed in ten colors with gold metallic powder from nine aluminum plates. Published by Shark’s Ink, Lyons, Colorado. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

“Chagoya limits his use of the Western written word, instead favoring pictorial signifiers combined with the glyph-based syllabaries of the Mitzec-Zapotec, Nahua (of whom the Aztec were members), and Maya cultures. The books are also printed on amate (a traditional Pre-Columbian paper made of banana fibers) and folded in the traditional accordion style. Within these parameters, the artist sets out epic cultural exchanges in which he “cannibalizes” Western culture in the same way that traditional Mesoamerican cultures have been appropriated into contemporary Mexican and U.S. culture.” —Sarah Kirk Hanley (Art in Print January/February 2012)

Chagoya writes, “My artwork is a visual reflection on various, and often opposite, cultural realities that I have experienced during my life, from growing up in Mexico, living a couple of times in France, and becoming a citizen of this country in the year 2000 after being a permanent resident living in the Bay area for 20 years. I integrate diverse elements: from pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography, ethnic stereotypes, ideological propaganda from various times and places, American popular culture, etc.”

Enrique Chagoya lives in San Francisco where he is a professor of Art at Stanford University. See also: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Friendly Cannibals. Art by Enrique Chagoya (San Francisco: Artspace Books, 1996). Firestone Library (F) PS3557.O459 F75 1996

“I started work on Dero Abecedarius in mid-July 2001,” writes the artist Klaus-Peter Dencker. “…it develops alphabetically and uses New York’s Statue of Liberty as a primary motif. Dero presents the statue, a sort of public-relations symbol, in several variations. This allows me to explore the theme of freedom—poetically and theoretically—as it relates to the somewhat absurd representations of it that abound in consumer culture.”

“Within this work are personal experiences of many visits to the USA and the absurd idea, that a letter has its own meaning/importance. The ABC as an own sign-world and as an example for the dealing with seeming/apparent unliberties and so called rules. I work on the sequences usually by making first all collages on the pages, then the text-elements and finally a follow-up of a few corrections in the existing collages.”

This special edition is published by Redfoxpress, founded in 2000 by the Belgium artist Francis Van Maele. In 2002, he moved to Ireland and settled on Achill Island, along the cliffs of County Mayo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. To learn more, see www.redfoxpress.com

Le Hanneton: illustré, satirique et littéraire (Cockchaffer: Satirical and Literary Comics) (Paris: [s.n.], 1962-1868). Complete run of the weekly magazine with stenciled color. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2011- in process

The artists for this satirical weekly include Honoré Daumier (1808-1879), André Gill (1840-1885), Alfred Le Petit (1841-1909), and Philippe Auguste Cattelain (1838-1893), among others. Cattelain published his first drawings in Le Hanneton and worked regularly until his career was interrupted by a three-year jail sentence for his part in the Paris Commune.

The Political “Siamese” Twins: The Offspring of Chicago Miscegenation, 1864. Lithograph. Published New York: Currier & Ives. Graphic Arts GA 2011- in process.

The firm of Currier & Ives produced this caricature around the Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1864. The oddly-paired democratic ticket included George B. McClellan (1826-1885) and “Gentleman” George Hunt Pendelton (1825-1889), shown here as Siamese twins. They are held together by “the party tie.” McClellan says, “It was not I that did it fellow Soldiers!! but with this unfortunate attachment I was politically born at Chicago!” Pendleton says, “I dont care how many letters Mac writes, if it brings him votes; for every vote for him, count one for me!!”

Brock’s only complaint was that Woolf’s most famous portrait, that of George Bernard Shaw, was not included. Days later, in a letter to the editor, Howard C. Rice, Jr. of Princeton’s Department of Rare Books & Special Collections reported that Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Colen of Holicong, PA had read the story and loaned the drawing, which they owned, to the University exhibition.

After the close of the exhibition, all the charcoal drawings were returned to Woolf’s widow. Now, over sixty years later, thanks to the generous gift of Sue Kessler Feld and Stuart P. Feld, Class of 1957, we again have a substantial collection of Woolf’s portraits. Here is a small selection.

Saint-John Perse (1887-1975) and Georges Braque (1882-1963), L’ordre des oiseaux (The Order of Birds) ([Paris]: Au vent d’Arles, 1962). 44 x 56 cm. “L’édition originale … a été tirée a cent trente exemplaires dont trente exemplaires numérotés de 1 à XXX accompagnés d’une suite des eaux-fortes signées et numérotées par l’artiste, et cent exemplaires numérotés de 1 à 100 signés par les auteurs…”—Colophon. Bound in black morocco-backed moiré silk-covered boards by Jean Duval, upper board with onlaid paper collage bird design after Braque. Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process.

In 1962, the Nobel-Prize winning French poet-diplomat, Saint-John Perse, composed a poem in honor of the artist Georges Braque’s eightieth birthday. He wrote about birds in general, but also about Braque’s birds in particular. Braque responded with twelve aquatints, realized at Aldo Crommelynck’s atelier in Paris. Together these were published as L’ordre des oiseaux (The Order of Birds).

The men only met twice, in 1958 and again in 1961, introduced by Jean Paulhan at the artist’s request. Braque had recently visited the bird sanctuary in Camargue and he spoke to Perse about developing a project around these birds. They worked independently and Braque chose as their epigram Perse’s line: “…L’oiseau plus vaste sur son erre voit l’homme libre de son ombre, à la limite de son bien.”

Victor Brombert writes, “Saint-John Perse’s unexpected collaboration with Braque began as a poetic meditation on birds and turned into a poem about space and the rapture of the poet. Exile, migrant and navigator of the air, Perse’s bird, like the rhapsodist, brings the seasons together. His allegiance to life and to nature is that of the ascetic. Launched on his wings, doubly loyal to air and land, he liberates himself from the “tragic shores of the real,” only to reaffirm, through the austerity of flight, a sense of peace and unity achieved at the very frontiers of man. He is a “prince of ubiquity,” a creator of his own flight.” (Hudson Review, 1966)

See also: http://www.sjperse.org/oiseaux.html

A complete English translation of Perse’s poem can be found in Birds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966) Firestone Oversize PQ2623.E386 O73713 1966q

In 1858, Mathew Brady opened a Washington D.C. gallery in Willard’s Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th street. http://tinyurl.com/bradygallery. Built eleven years earlier, the hotel was both close to the White House and frequented by both northerners and southerners. Some called it the “Residence of Presidents.” Nathaniel Hawthorne said it was “more justly called the center of Washington and the Union than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department.”

It was from this location that Brady and his staff began to photograph the politicians and celebrities of Washington D.C., including the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. When he finished capturing all the heads of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, Brady combined the individual portraits into two enormous panels measuring three by five feet. Then, he rephotographed them and sold large prints at $5.00 each. See the Senate photograph in an earlier post.

As the Southern states began to secede from the Union, Brady’s photographs were copied to wood engravings and published in magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Monthly. Sales to Brady, however, were not good and he lost a great deal of money on this project.

For more information, see
Mary Panzer, Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), Firestone TR140.B7 P36 1997

Sonorama: le magazine sonore de l’actualité. Edited by Claude-Maxe. Paris: [Sonopresse], No 1, Octobre 1958-No 42, Juillet-Août 1962. Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

Graphic Arts is fortunate to have acquired a complete run of Sonorama, an innovative French news magazine that readers can both read and play. Published eleven times a year, each issue consisted of six articles and six flexi discs offering contemporary news, sports, interviews, speeches, and music. The discs are playable by folding back the pages and placing the entire issue onto a turntable (note the center hole).

Featured celebrities include Edith Piaf, Brigitte Bardot, Sacha Distel, Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Pagnol, André Malraux, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Albert Camus is interviewed about his new play Les Possédés, only months before his death. Musicians include Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Maria Callas.

This complete run of forty-four issues includes the supplement to No 15 on cycling legend Fausto Coppi and a special number, hors série, celebrating Charles de Gaulle’s December 20, 1960 speech on Algeria.

Thanks to the assistance of the Executive Committee for the Program in Latin American Studies, Graphic Arts recently acquired thirty-four painting and drawings by the novelist, critic, poet, and visual artist Severo Sarduy (1937-1993). Artifacts from his studio accompany the paintings, along with several works by his friends Roland Barthes, Jorge Camacho, and José Luis Cuevas.

Sarduy continued to draw and paint throughout his life. A retrospective of his art was held in 1998 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and many of the painting now at Princeton were first seen by the public at this exhibition.

"I write only in order to make myself well," Sarduy once said. "I write in an attempt to become normal, to be like everybody else, even though it's obvious I am not. I am a neurotic creature, a prey to phobias, burdened with obsessions and anxieties. And instead of going to a psychoanalyst or committing suicide or abandoning myself to drink and drugs, I write. That's my therapy."

More information on Sarduy and this new collection will be published in an upcoming issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle, including an essay by his colleague François Wahl. Until then, here is an interview with Sarduy completed shortly before his death:

Catherine E. Docter, William George Lovell, and Christopher Lutz, The Village Churches of Santiago de Guatemala, 1524-1773 / Fachadas de las Iglesias de los Pueblos de Santiago de Guatemala, 1524-1773 (Santiago Zamora Sacatépequez, Guatemala: Libros San Cristóbal, 2010. Copy 7 of 200. Graphic Arts 2011- in process.

This fine press edition documents the remaining sixteenth-century village churches in and around Santiago de Guatemala. Pen and ink drawings of twenty-two buildings were transferred to metal relief plates, printed and hand-colored by Grove Oholendt. The accompanying two letterpress books—one in English and one in Spanish—include twenty-two tipped-in photographs by Mitchell Denburg. Each volume is covered in traditional Maya hand-woven petate paper weaving and the woodcut endpapers are printed by the Guatemalan artist Guillermo Maldonado.

“Libros San Cristobal is a fine book press and atelier located in Antigua, Guatemala. Our hand-publishing studio produces limited edition fine books and portfolios on Central American subject matter. …Between Mexico and Colombia, we are the only fine press making [letterpress] books about the region, in the region. …All publications are made under one roof, by a team of three Americans and four Guatemalans, all Kaqchikel Maya. We do [letterpress] printing with type [cast] in San Francisco and metal plate impressions made in Guatemala City; we hand craft our boxes, case work, and fine bindery; we illuminate, paint, hand stamp on imported as well as our own fine amate fig park paper … .”

“For the past 23 years, all books have been designed, crafted, and printed by bookmaker Christopher Beisel…. The press team for all books is: Sergio Bucu Miché, bookmaker and binder; Felipe Bucu Miché, printer and binder; Carlos Bucu Miché, painter and printmaker; Roquel Lopez, papermaker, printer, and master painter/designer, Grove Oholendt.”

See also:
Italo Morales, U cayibal atziak: imágenes en los tejidos guatemaltecos = images in Guatemalan weavings (1992). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) F1465.3.T4 M67 1992q
Ana Livingston Paddock, Onamuh y la luna: un mito de la creacion = Namuh and the moon: a creation myth (1994) Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) 2005-0096Q
Barbara G. Nottebohm, Ancient ceremonial hachas of Southern Mesoamerica (1996). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) F1434.2.S38 N67q
Caly Domitila Kanek, Hueso de la tierra (1996). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA): PM3576.Z95 S5 1996
Christopher Beisel, Guatemalen designs from woven paper (2005). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2009-2354N