Richard Meier, Voix Editions/accordion publications, France

I just had to feature this selection of 16 accordion publications published by Meier's Voix Editions. I have only recently come across this impressive and wide-ranging publishing house, and found these tucked away in their catalogue. I have previously posted about this work by Albert Merz in a separate entry in this blog.  Éditions Richard Meier

Gianfranco Baruchello

Jean-Yves Bosseur

Cueco

Remi Dall'Aglio

Luis Darocha

Zingjiang Gao

Daniel Humair

Francois Martin

Albert Merz (see elsewhere in this blog)

Gerard Michel

Francois Morellet

Jean-Luc Parant

Michel Paysant

Horacio Sapere

Emmanuel Saulnier

Claude Vallat

Antoni Muntadas, Red, Arts Libris, Spain, 2019.

"On October 1st, 2017, the People's Republic of China commemorates its 68th anniversary with various celebrations. At the time, Antoni Muntadas was finishing his project Asian Protocols in China. On October 1st, 2017 he set out to identify and gather images and graphic items in which red, a symbolically loaded color in Chinese culture, affiliated with and used by the Government was predominant."  Antoni Muntadas

Four strips of 9 cards, individual cards 4" (h) x 5.75" (w), when opened each strip is 3ft long.

the text on the back of all the postcards

Julian Tuwin, and Matgorzat Surowska & Joanna Ruszczk, Locomotive/IDEOLO, Centrala, Poland, 2015

This is a really wonderful 78 foot accordion that takes as its cue a poem by the well-known Polish artist, Julian Tuwin (1894-1953) in which he describes a train and the varieties of things and people it was carrying in its 40 wagons.  Surowska and Rusczczk have brilliantly extended this idea into a train with 43 double-page wagons carrying a huge variety of people, animals and things. The black and white design works perfectly on the page and the graphics really pop. On the back of each page are texts related to that particular carriage and its contents, with all of them being concerned in some way with a variety of social, political, economic and aesthetic issues and themes, as well as a number of quotes by Tuwin.  

96 pages, double-sided, individual page 9.75" (t) x 9.75" (w), when fully opened 78 ft. 

Julian Tuwin, The Locomotive, 1938

sample of back page

on the floor and not fully extended either!

Cy Twombly, Fifty Days as Illam, Edition Cantz, Germany, 1990

An interesting accordion that reproduces this major work by Twombly. I particularly like how some of the images of the individual works wraparound the accordion's pages. Interestingly, this accordion has a central binding and the two halves of the work fold out from the center, kind of odd really. The work is located at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The online label for the work states:

In the summer of 1977, Cy Twombly began working on a "painting in ten parts" based on Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad. Completed in 1978 and collectively titled Fifty Days at Iliam, the works evoke incidents from Homer's epic poem in Twombly's characteristic synthesis of words and images. The ten large canvases follow one another much like a developing narrative. They are ordered as follows: Shield of Achilles; Heroes of the Achaeans; Vengeance of Achilles; Achaeans in Battle; The Fire that Consumes All Before It; Shades of Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector; House of Priam; Ilians in Battle; Shades of Eternal Night; Heroes of the Ilians.

16 pages, single-sided, individual pages 11.75" (h) x 8.25 (w), when fully open 11ft long.

For photographs of the work installed in the museum see:  

https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/85709.html

Warja Lavater (1913-2007), Tanabata, Adrien Maeght, Paris, 1994

Another of Lavater's pictographic accordions and this one recounts the story of Deneb, the king, who gives permission for the daughter of Vega to interrupt her celestial weaving and to leave for a bath in the luminous stream, the Milky Way. How can one resist a story such as this!  

The cover flap includes the chart for interpreting the pictographic images and is a guide to all the characters, players and locations in the story. Look for the other two Lavater accordions on this blog.

Warja Lavater (1913-2007) was a Swiss illustrator and designer who adopted the accordion format for all her artists' books. A neglected contemporary of Edward Ruscha, she published her first artists' book (William Tell) in 1962, the same year Ruscha published his first (26 Gasoline Stations), and perhaps more significantly the same year as Etel Adnan created her first accordion book.

17 pages, double-sided, individual pages 8.5" (h) x 5.5" (w), when fully open 7ft 9.5".

the chart with the guide to her pictographic language

reverse side

map showing location of Deneb and Vega