Pli Selon Pli: Leporellos' D'artistes, co-curators: Marie Boivent (Universite Rennes 2) and Stephen Perkins (Curator Emeritus, UW-Green Bay), Cabinet du livre d'artiste, Universite Rennes 2, Rennes, France

Poster for the show

Marie Boivent, a Professor at the Universite Renne 2 and myself, Stephen Perkins, an independent curator & artist, co-curated this exhibition titled "Pli Selon Pli" (Fold Upon Fold) featuring leporellos from the university's collection Cabinet du Livre d'artistes and my own personal collection of leporellos. The opening reception was on Thursday, November 6, 2023 and the show runs through to December 22, 2023.

This is a tight show featuring 57 works representing a wide range of ways in which different artists have utilized the unique properties of the leporello format. The opening reception was distinguished by the presence of the president of the Universite who spoke at the event and it was also well attended by students from the university. This exhibition is a groundbreaking occasion as it's the first exhibition devoted solely to leporellos in France.

The day after the show opened there was a one day conference with a variety of speakers who all addressed different facets of leporellos, their history and the manner in which artists have taken advantage of the medium's format. See program for the event below.

The leporello exhibition catalogue features a joint introduction by Boivent and myself, and on the length of the back side there is a specially commissioned page work by the artist & publisher Simon Cutts that addresses the definition of the leporello, or as he calls it "concertina." The title of the show was taken from a work of his titled "Pli Selon Pli" which is included in the show and features a leporello displayed on a block of mahogany. As can be seen below, this block of solid black wood caught the attention of the security personnel at Chicago International Airport and it was put through a number of different screening machines until it was decided that it posed no threat and was returned to me!

4 double-sided pages, individually 11.75" x 8.25", and when fully open 2ft 11inches.

Front page of the catalogue

Exhibition checklist

Simon Cutt's "Pli Selon Pli" (2014), on its mahogany pedestal 

Students at the opening reception

The brochure for the one-day conference on Friday, November 10th

Here security can be seen handling the block of mahogany 

before scanning it in a machine

Cutt's "Pli Selon Pli" block of mahogany undergoing testing for explosives 

at Chicago International Airport

Louise Odes Neaderland, Sadat's Journey (1982), Force Grim Force (1983), Shock and Awe (2003), A Mideast Kaleidoscope (2011), self-published, New York City, NY

The ISCA Quarterly, Vol. 4, #2, Winter 1985

Louise Odes Neaderland (1932-2022), who recently passed away, was an early experimenter and promoter of xerography as well as being a photographer, printmaker and book artist. She received her BFA from Bard College and her MFA from the University of Iowa in 1957. A recent exhibition at Printed Matter, New York, titled A Selection of Works by Louise Odes Neaderland and the International Society of Copier Artists featured the spectrum of her printed matter works and artists' books production, including a number of artists' accordion works from 1982 onwards.

For documentation of the Printed Matter show and catalogue: Selections from Louise Odes Neaderland - Printed Matter

I had previously known of Neaderland from her semi-assembling magazine, The International Society of Copier Artists (ISCA) see above, which she published quarterly between 1982-2003 [c. 84 issues!] and which featured a wide range of different kinds of works produced by artists using the xerographic process. 

Sadat's Journey, 1982

There's a Middle Eastern theme that runs through a number of Neaderland's books and this early one is dedicated to Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat (1918-1981) who most famously signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1978, which ultimately led to his assassination on October 6, 1982. Against a background from an article in the New York Times a day after his death we see repeated images of Sadat until the last frame in which the figure is empty and has been cut out, and is slipping off the page of history.

5 single-sided pages, each 8.5" x 9.5", and when unfolded 3ft 11.5"

___________________________________________________

Force Grim Force: Violence is Legitimate Politics, 1983

Once again Neaderland repeats images from the media to comment upon political events in this case Peru, and she plays with the panorama of the accordion to bring together both a uniformed soldier with a gun and a peasant woman who are both walking in opposite directions. The despair in the subtitle of the book, "violence is legitimate politics" already points to who the victims will be in any encounter with the army.

10 single-sided pages, individually 10.75" x 8", and unfolded 6ft 8"

___________________________________________________

Shock and Awe, 2003

"Shock and Awe" was what George Bush famously said he wanted to instill in the Iraqi army's leaders as he commenced the American invasion of Iraq known as 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' in 2003. This book takes a look at this historical moment from a variety of viewpoints with all of them forecasting more danger and harm, especially to the civilians as the cover suggests.

6 pages, individually 5" x 8.5", and unfolded 4ft 3"

___________________________________________________

A Mideast Kaleidoscope, 2011

[subtitle: "Happy is the nation whose warrior sons these are." Menachem Begin 1982]

Of this accordion Neaderland writes:

 "A mideast kaleidoscope is based upon a photograph by Fadi Mitri and a portion of the Israeli Government statement announcing a cease fire in Lebanon on June 11th, 1982.

The book consists of 25 pages of the same image, with a hole punched in each of the four corners [ed note: in a previous edition]. A removable fastener may be moved to any one of the four corners, and the pages opened into a clockwise or counter clockwise to produce eight different configuration of the original image. The buzz saw blade shape speaks for itself about war."

12 single-sided pages, individually 6" x 6", and when unfolded 6ft

Art Spiegeleman (ed), Si Lewen's Parade: An Artist's Odyssey, Abrams Comicarts, New York, 2016

the accordion's slipcase

This is an impressive publication about a passionate artist and it serves as a testimonial and act of recovery for someone who turned away from the artworld. Born into a Jewish family in Lubin, Poland, Lewen (1918-2016) grew up in Germany, and then he and his family fled to the United States when he was sixteen. Returning to Europe in World World II as part of an elite intelligence unit of native German speakers (The Richie Boys), he was one of the first witnesses to the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Thoroughly shaken by the horrors of the camp he broke down and fled, later writing in an unpublished memoir:

"I checked into the nearest medical station: I was urinating and vomiting blood worse than ever, and my insides were one wrenching mess. I knew that I was finished as a solider, seeing the world for what, I thought, it was: a slaughterhouse, a bordello, and an insane asylum, run by butchers, pimps, and madmen. And Man? A festering, putrid, slimy excretion polluting the face of the Earth. A hospital ship brought me back to America, and half a year later I was discharged— "as good as new," one of the doctors said. I was not sure."

One side of this accordion features 63 reproductions of the drawings from his powerful pictorial narrative "The Parade," which was begun in 1950 and reflects in a gritty manner the "...recurring drumbeat of war that lures every generation into devastation." [Spiegelman]. The other side of the accordion is devoted to Lewen's journey as an artist and includes a long essay by Spiegelman introducing this irrepressible artist, accompanied with images of his works from the various stages of his career. Altogether this is a dense publication that goes a long way in explaining what motivated this complex artist and his responses to the world around him —always flavored by his experiences during the war and man's inhumanity to man.

Of this book's accordion format Spiegelman notes in the introduction that "The artist was delighted with the idea that this edition would be presented as an accordion-fold book, realizing his childhood dream of pictures sitting close to each other so that they could have a conversation."

For further information about Si Lewen check out this comprehensive website: SI LEWEN | Art Gallery | The Ritchie Boys | The Parade

Her's a link to a 2016 piece by Steven Heller with an interview with Spiegelman: 

Art Spiegelman’s Forgotten Parade – PRINT Magazine

Seventy-three double-sided pages, individually 7.75" x 11" and when unfolded 67ft 10inches.

slipcase with accordion

this side contains the drawings for "The Parade"

the side of the accordion that surveys Lewen's life and work

opening page to Spiegelman's essay with photo of Lewen

back cover of slipcase