Sampler Italiano, Darden Concepts, 2011

Liberated from Olive Garden restaurant, Green Bay, Wisconsin, June 16th, 2011. 10" (H)  16.5" (L)

Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski & Matt Lamothe, The Exquisite Book, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2010

I was in San Francisco last week and quite by chance I come across this remarkable accordion book at Green Apple Books on Clement Street. Utilizing the Surrealist game of 'Exquisite Corpse' the editors invited 100 illustrators to contribute one page to this project. The artists were placed in 10 groups with the first artist in each group being given an open-ended phrase with which to start each section. The final book contains 10 double-sided accordions (!) that are made up of 10 artworks and 2 pages that contain the phrase for each accordion.

This is a really wonderful publication that I'm sure created all kinds of headaches & challenges for the printers & binders — but it's a gem. The images are first class and they come together to create some smart and unexpected juxtapositions. The book also includes short interviews with a number of the artists, as well as biographical information for them all. Aside from the 2 publications from La Dernier Cri (France) documented earlier in this blog, this book stands out as one of the most technically innovative accordion publications that I've come across! If you only buy one accordion this year, make it this one - you won't be disappointed. Each individual accordion is 9" (H) 3.75' (L)

Art: From Prehistoric Art to Modernism (Flipguide), 2001, DuMont Buchverlag, Koln

The accordion format is ideally suited to displaying large amounts of information in a sequential and chronological format. This accordion catalogues art works made over the last 35,000 years. 12" (H) 67.50" (W)

Map & Guide to Powell's City of Books, nd, Powell's Books, Portland

A faux old style guide to Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon, USA. This accordion catalogue displays the location of different subject areas and where in the store they can be found. Also includes potted history of the bookstore whose first store was opened by Michael Powell in Chicago in 1971.  7.25" (H) 36" (W)

Hamish Fulton, Ajawaan, Art Metropole, Canada, 1987

Brit walk artist Hamish Fulton estimates that since 1969 he has made walks in 26 countries. This publication is the documentation of an 8-day walk in Central Saskatchewan, Canada, by way of Lake Ajawaan in August, 1985. Superimposed on the panoramic image of the lake are columns of four letter words related to the natural environment. 7.5" (H) 52.25" (W) 

Richard Meade (USA) & Jurgen Olbrich (Germany), Los Angeles Photo-Copy-Strip, 1985, photocopy

A cool collaborative photocopy work by these two longtime networkers, publishers and artists. Edition of 17, singed. 8.5" (H) 32.5" (W)

Carlos Pileggi, Pulga: Parque Vitória, 2010, photocopy, Sao Paulo, Brazil

About this 2-sided accordion the artist says, "Pulga Parque Vitória is a compilation of notes and drawings that were made in the past four years at my grandparent’s house. It deals with the passage of time, preservation of memory and the sentimental value that a simple household object can build or gather throughout time.”  6" (H) 59.5" (W) For images of other zines and books by Pileggi see: zines - a set on Flickr

Kurt Ryslavy, Hambourgeois, screen print, Brussels, 1988

Kurt Reslavy was born in Austria in 1961 and now lives in Belgium. This 2-sided accordion mixes text and image in a cool expressionist swirl. For more info about this painter and conceptual artist see: Kurt Ryslavy  10.25" (H) 27.5" (W)

Lewis Koch, Double Caution Totem (Book One), Nexus Press, Atlanta, 1993

Presented in a smart slipcase, this contemporary totem is an assemblage of photographs of natural and man-made structures from the urban environment. This is one of a series of three books, all of which comprise smaller versions of the original wall-mounted photographic works. Each original assemblage was made in an edition of 8 and was 108" (H) x 19" (W). This publication is 42" (H) x 8" (W) For further photographs by Koch: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/lewis-koch-touchless-automatic-wonder

Addenda: when Lewis came over a couple of months ago to attend an opening in my home-based gallery, Subspace, it was dark when he tried to enter my back door, he managed to walk into the screen door and wreck it!  No big deal, but he must have been feeling guilty about it, and knowing that I had posted Book One of the trilogy on my blog, he gave me the other two as compensation. I was very happy about that!  The two publications are below titled "Surplus Koan Totem: Book Two," and "Slender Thread Totem: Book Three," 1993.

Saul Steinberg, The Line, The Saul Steinberg Foundation and Nieves, New York City, 1954/2011

    

In 1954, Saul Steinberg, the celebrated Romanian born cartoonist and artist, was invited by Ernesto Rogers, a partner in the Milan based architectural firm BBPR, to design a series of sgraffito murals for the “Children’s Labyrinth” at the 10th Triennial of Milan.(1) The labyrinth was designed with walls that formed a trefoil ‘clover leaf’ design and Steinberg created four long drawings that were photographically enlarged and then incised into the walls using the sgraffito technique.(2) Each of Steinberg’s drawings drew upon themes close to his heart and were titled: The Line, Types of Architecture, Shores of the Mediterranean, and Cities of Italy.

The Line was first published as an accordion in 2011 by the Swiss publishing house Nieves, and in 2014 they published all four of Steinberg’s drawings as accordions and presented in a slipcase.(3) The central formal feature of this nearly 19 foot accordion is a thin black line that runs just above the midpoint along the whole length of the work. Above and below this line Steinberg has drawn in his inimitable style, scenes of travel, exotic locations, train stations, women’s fashions, palaces, old buildings, grand courtyards and one cat amongst other subjects. There’s a real feeling of improvisation and spontaneity to Steinberg’s ‘laundry line’ of drawings with all of them imbued with an underlying sense of mischievousness that would appeal to the imaginations of young children. 

In some ways this work is a realization of a discussion Steinberg had had with a fellow architectural student, Aldo Buzzi, from 1933 in which “…they found themselves deep into a philosophical discussion of what would happen if an artist drew a single line and allowed it to evolve into a drawing.”(4)

Looking at the larger aspects of this accordion three themes emerge. Firstly, there are its origins as a working prototype for a temporary site-specific work. It would, however, take fifty-seven years before it became available to a much wider audience as an accordion. Alas, Steinberg, never got to see this work as it came out twelve years after his death.(5)

Secondly, this accordion also serves a documentary function in preserving this ephemeral work’s original design and imagery for the future. Thirdly, this accordion is also a children’s book, since its imagery was specifically designed to be installed inside in a child friendly environment. Additionally, the drawings all promise a journey of adventure accompanied by all sorts of twists and turns to keep younger audiences following the line.

Footnotes:

1. The Milan triennial was originally established in 1923 and serves as a showcase for Italian architecture and design, and currently takes place in The Triennale di Milano, a museum of art and design in Milan.

2. Sgraffito is a technique where potters can put a layer of glaze or slip on a piece of pottery, let it dry, then use a pottery carving tool to scratch at it to show the base layer of color.  Sgraffito derives from an Italian word meaning “to scratch.” diamondcoretools.com. Accessed: 4.2.24

3. The original drawings were created on long sheets of paper and then rolled up and mailed from New York to Milan, see: Deirdre Bair, Saul Steinberg: A Biography, Doubleday, New York, 2012, pgs. 325-326.

4. Bair, Deirdre, Saul Steinberg: A Biography, Doubleday, New York, 2012, p. 37.

5. The Line, Nieves, Zurich, 2011, consists of 30 single sided pages, individually

10” x 7.5” and when unfolded 18ft 9”.

front page 

back page