Clemente Padin, Art Against Apartheid, photocopy, 1986

As I was rooting around my archive the other day I was a little surprised to come across this cool work by the important Uruguyan artist and activist Clemente Padin. This was a piece that Padin submitted to a mail art exhibition that I organized with Nathan Yrizarry and Bill Washburn in San Francisco in 1986 titled "Images from South Africa." As the anti-apartheid struggle intensified in South Africa the government banned the circulation of images of the struggle. This show was conceived to compensate for this lack and to offer some images of the struggle, and to show our solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle in S. Africa. 

The show opened at Media Gallery (director, Patti Davidson) in San Francisco and then travelled to a number of venues across the country including: Zellerbach Auditorium, University of California, Berkeley, CA; Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco, CA; Survival Graphics, Madison, WI; and 320 Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA, & Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA.

Four years later the apartheid regime in South Africa had fallen, and in June 1990 I had the incredible good fortune to see Mandela and Winnie at the Oakland Coliseum where he gave an impassioned speech — this was one of the most wonderful days of my life!

12 pages, individual pages 11" (h) x 8.5" (w), single-sided and when opened 8' 6".

    The crowd during Mandela's speech at the Oakland Coliseum, June 30, 1990

photo: Stephen Perkins

Zven Balslev & Daniel Milan, Kokt, Cult Pump/Milan Verlag, Sweden, 2019, ed. 69

A lively package of materials accompanies this graphzine with two fold-out accordions. 'Kokt' in Swedish translates as 'cooked' or 'boiled' and it's no surprise that this publication was made for a restaurant exhibition in Cophenhagen. Two quite distinct graphic styles are rather awkwardly folded together in the main book, resulting in an aesthetically ill matched and quirky combination. 

While I understand the magazine to be the 'main course' as it were, but in actuality the small little booklet with the diamond image on the front that accompanies the book, is really the 'gem' of this package. With its smart silkscreen wraparound cover, and a much more considered combination of xeroxed and silkcreened images inside, this book has a really tight and sharp feel as you peruse its 20 pages!

Book size 8" (h) x 6" (w), accompanied by 2 six page double-sided accordions 17" long and silkscreen printed. The small booklet is 5.5" (h) x 4" (w) and 20 pages. A couple of printed cards accompanied this publication.

two artists' postcards at front

 the booklet that accompanies the book

Kokt opened

back cover

Warja Lavater (1931-2007), Tell, NordSüd Verlgag AG, Zurich, Switzerland, 1962/2019

As far as I know this was the first accordion work that Lavatar published, and it was presented as a single lithographic sheet, folded accordion style. Trained as an illustrator and designer Lavatar produced accordions throughout her life from 1962 onwards, as well as working in other media. However, the date of her first artists' book is significant as it comes the same year that Etal Adnan, who only worked in the accordion book format published her first artists' accordion book. Throw in the fact that 1962 was significant because Edward Ruscha published his first artists' book that year (and his first accordion in 1966), and you have two early women book artists' occupying very significant positions at the beginning of the history of artists' books. A lot more could be said about this, but I'm going to hold back for the moment!

This book is based around the fairy tale and myth of the Swiss hero William Tell, and Lavatar uses her now famous pictograms to tell the story, a device that she continued to use throughout her artists' book output. This book is accompanied with a card in English (and French, German and Italian) that explains to the reader to the meaning of the assorted symbols. First published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Single-sided, individual pages 6.25" (h) x 4.5" (w), 20 pages, and when fully opened 7' 6".

Andy Warhol, Portraits of Ingrid Bergman, Galerie Börjeson AB, Malmo, Sweden, 1983

Inspired by the recent death of Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982), Warhol collaborated with Per-Olov Börjeson, director of the Galerie Börjeson (1969-2005) to publish an accordion book featuring three new screenprints of this well known actress. The result is a stunning 40 foot long accordion, printed on thick and glossy paper that complements well the different colored versions of Bergman presented here. 

On the inside of the two book covers are quotes by Warhol, and in his typical fashion they hide more than they reveal, but they make good reading anyway...with such beauties as "my paintings never turn out the way I expect them to but I'm never surprised," and "I never wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be a tap-dancer."

Single-sided, individual pages 9" (h) x 9" (w), 54 pages, and when fully extended 40ft., 6inches.

back cover

Anish Kapoor, Sketchbook, Editions Dilecta, Paris, 2011

This is just an astonishing accordion!  Kapoor sequences a wonderful series of moody and dark gouaches that he made in 2011. The pairings, the page sizes and the quality paper, combined with the rhythms he sets up, are just beautiful and really take full advantage of the panoramic quality of the accordion format.

In an introduction to the book by Marie-Laure Bernadac, she quotes Kapoor on what's he trying to do in these drawings, "the main subject of the drawings is the subconscious...What i'm trying to do is paint the interior, my interior." 

21 pages, single-sided, individual pages 10.75" (h) x 8" (w) and when fully opened 14ft.

Etel Adnan, Leporellos, Galerie Lelong & Co., January 23 - March 7, 2020, Paris.

This book about the leporellos of Etel Adnan (1925-2021), a Lebanese-born artist and writer, is a wonderful contribution to the minuscule literature on accordions and of artists' who work in this format. An opening essay by Adnan "The Unfolding of an Artists' Book," sets the scene of her first encounter with an artist working in this folding book form. She relates the story of her meeting in The Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco's North Beach, with a former sailor who had picked up a heroin habit as well as inkpot, brushes and scrolls, while in China. He would sit for long periods of time studying and drawing the people in the cafe in his folding (accordion) books. 

Adnan was struck by the format, especially when he gave her one he was working on, for her to finish. Since this time in the early 1960s, Adnan has continued to work with, and refine her use of this fascinating format.  As a former philosophy student and then professor, she also writes thoughtfully and eloquently about this format, as well as exploring all the ramifications of the very particular visual/literary dance that she sees taking place across the panorama of an accordion. 

The book also has really great illustrations of Adnan's works, and at the end there's a really interesting article (in French only) by Anne Moeglin-Delcroix "PLI SUR PLI: sur quelques leporellos d'artistes," which surveys important accordion books in addition to exploring different facets of the artists' accordion book. 

I've just come across a really interesting interview with Adnan from 2021 with her and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director at the Serpentine gallery in London, in which she says the following about creating her leporellos: "The leporello is a journey. When you start a leporello, it's like getting on a boat - you have a journey in front of you and that's what's beautiful. In the middle of a leporello you are afraid of making a mistake because you would have to throw everything awayl. You have to invest in the work and you have to keep a tension. It's like composing music, [maintaining] a rhythm - that's the work of a leporello, not to fall into a hole, to continue like when you are surfing, to hold the wave."

Here's a link to an obituary in the New York Times after Adnan's passing in 2021: Etel Adnan, Lebanese American Author and Artist, Dies at 96 - The New York Times

Nikki de Saint Phalle, Harry and Me 1950-1960: The Family Years, Benteli Publishers, Switzerland, 2006

I've always enjoyed Niki de Saint Phalle's funky aesthetic, in fact her accordion book 'My Love' (1971) was the publication that made me look further at accordion books and it directly inspired me to start this blog - so I owe a lot to this formidable artist. This book is not an accordion but a very frank autobiographical account of the years 1950-60, and of her marriage to Harry Mathews. The interesting fact about this book is that she includes Mathews' comments and memories, and he offers his own perspective on events and incidents that happened during their lives together.

However, interspersed across this book are three fold-out sections and one is an accordion fold!  As you can see Phalle addresses the pressing social and political issues of this decade in a very direct manner, with the atomic cloud hovering over the whole piece. I think this is a powerful work and just had to include it in this blog.

Follow this link to check out 'My Love' (1971) in this blog: 
https://accordionpublications.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-love-niki-de-saint-phalle-malmo.html

Erika Rier, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, Portland, nd

A fun accordion with smart illustrations by Erika. This book is based on the 'nonsense' poem by Lewis Carroll, with the first stanza written and printed in 1855, but it was not until his book Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There was published, did the final version see the light of day in 1871. This lively accordion book really brings this curious poem to life!

Check out Erika's website for a number of her other accordions as well as her other excellent illustrated works, https://www.erikarier.com/

Single page 5" (h) x 4.25" (w), double-sided with 16 pages in total, and when fully opened it's 2' 10". 

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