#gorman rare art book collection
WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: A Coloring Book - Drawings by Andy Warhol, 1991
This coloring book is an adaptation of the 1961 coloring book Warhol created entitled, The Wonderful World of Fleming Joffe. Warhol was commissioned to create this coloring book by a company that hired him to assist with their advertising illustrations,. It was given as a Christmas gift to their clients’ children.
Find more Andy Warhol materials in our Special Collections
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: The Vowels - A Congregation of Preachers, 2013
This artist book was printed by CB Sherlock at the MN Center for Books Arts and the poem was written by Ann Filemyr. There is one poem for each vowel, every word in the poem beginning with the same vowel to make one big alliteration. Each vowel poem consists of every word beginning with the same vowel. Each vowel poem was folded and stitched into cubes, becoming building blocks of language. Multiple poems emerge from this three dimensional form
Limited Edition 18/50
Find other Minnesota artists’ books in our collections
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: Marcel Duchamp, 1968
More Duchamp! Because, why not?
Here’s a 30 second video showing all the elements of this piece!
The author, Octavio Paz, was a Mexican poet and was awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature. This set contains an essay by Paz about Duchamp, a selection of Duchamp’s writing compiled by Paz, several reproductions and a stand up cut-out of Duchamp.
Find other Marcel Duchamp materials in our special collection
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: Marcel Duchamp - Deluxe Exhibition Catalog, 1991
This deluxe exhibition catalog was published for the exhibition Marcel Duchamp at Ronny Van de Velde, IJzerenpoortkaai 3 2000 Antwerpen Belgium, September 15 - December 15, 1991.
The deluxe exhibition catalog comes in a reproduction of a chessboard designed by Duchamp in 1937. Inside are several items including: a volume of essays by André Breton and Arturo Schwarz, a portfolio of reproductions of Duchamp’s works, a photograph of Duchamp, a copy of the ordinary edition of the Ronny van de Velde catalog, and an audiocassette of an interview with Duchamp in 1959 and Duchamp reading “The Creative Act”.
The portfolio of reproductions includes: Allégorie de Genre (1943), Door for Gradiva (1937/1968), Moonlight on the Bay at Basswood (1953), Self Portrait in Profile (1958), Etant donnés 1˚ la chute d’ eau, 2˚ le gaz d’éclairage (1946-1966), Where do we go from here? (1961), les anaglyphes géométriques (1912), Cheminée anaglyphe (1968), and The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (unfinished due to his death).
No. 748/850
Find other Marcel Duchamp materials in our special collection
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: Paolo Soleri Exhibition Catalogue - Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1969
A 1969 exhibition of work by the architect Paolo Soleri including drawings, plans and models.
A bit about Paolo…
“American architect of Italian birth. He received his doctorate in architecture from the polytechnic in Turin in 1946. A scholarship allowed him to travel to the USA, where he began working for Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in January 1947. Disenchanted with Taliesin he left with his friend Mark Mills in September 1948. They set up camp in the Arizona desert under a crude cantilevered column constructed of concrete blocks. The following year, with a client, Leonora Woods, and her daughter Corolyn Woods, they built with their own hands a house in Cave Creek, AZ. It consisted of two spaces of opposite character: a living room roofed by two glass and aluminium domes and a bedroom wing dug deep into a hillside and enclosed in masonry walls similar to those at Wright’s Taliesin West. The house dealt with formal, thermal, and constructional issues that inspired Soleri throughout his career.”
A bit about “Arcosanti”…
Supported by grants from the Graham and Guggenheim Foundations, Soleri began to explore massive urban applications of his philosophies, initially in the City on the Mesa project (1958–67), an urban plan for two million inhabitants on a plot the size of Manhattan. Using huge translucent plastic models to depict his ideas, he designed numerous high-density cities that he called ‘arcologies’ from their combination of architecture and ecology. From the early 1970s he built his prototype ‘arcology’, Arcosanti, on 14 acres of an 860-acre parcel in the high desert of central Arizona. The project was intended eventually to house 5000 people in a 25-storey chain of futuristic buildings perched on the edge of a mesa.”
-Oxford Art Online
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: Fluxus 1
In a previous post about Fluxus, we highlighted the Fluxus Year Box One. The Fluxus 1 box was published first and the Fluxus Year Box One contains a sampling from previous works, including art pieces from Fluxus 1. Highlighted here are art pieces either unique to Fluxus 1 or not published in the previous post.
Fluxus was a group of international avant-garde artists that formed in Germany in 1962 and was active until the late 1970s… Read more
Excerpts from their manifesto:
Purge the world of bourgeois sickness and intellectual, professional and commercialized culture
Promote living art, an-art and non art reality
Fuse the cadres of cultural, social & political revolutionaries into united front & action
When you remove the book from its box, you are delighted to find a book of envelopes, each containing a different art piece. Flipping through each page and searching for the items inside the envelope, gives one a sense of receiving a letter in the mail or opening a gift.
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Left: Lindsay Keating, Assistant to the Arts and Architecture Librarian, University of MN Right: Deborah Boudewyns, Arts and Architecture Librarian, University of MN. I’m Lindsay and I’m the one that updates this tumblr! I created this poster I about this tumblr account! We presented it today at the National Art Libraries Society of North America.
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We are in Fort Worth, TX for the next few days at the ARLIS (Art Librarians Society of North America) conference! We are presenting a poster about Art Libraries on tumblr!
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EXHIBITION CATALOG: Visuals
Take a peek inside our exhibition catalog! See what’s in the exhibit!
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EXHIBITION CATALOG: Essays
Take a peek inside our exhibition catalog! Read the essays written by the curators. Learn about the caricaturist SEM, French caricature during La Belle Epoque and Colette Willy, author of GiGi.
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EXHIBITION: Sem, Gigi, and Caricature
Presented by the Gorman Rare Art Book Collection. Highlighting our recent acquisition, Sem au Bois.
Excerpt from Exhibition Essay by Nikki Otten, Art History PhD student and co-curator:
Sem revisited the subject of his first Parisian success in the Sem au Bois scroll. He drew the fashionable elite of France (and their laughable hangers-on) en route to Longchamp. The races were social events where central members of society were expected to put in an appearance. Sem adopted this obligatory parade down the Bois de Boulogne as an opportunity to gently mock the celebrities of his day, caricaturing members of the aristocracy, artists, politicians and socialites. Although the individuals were not identified in the chromolithograph, a weekly newspaper, L’Illustration, published a complete list of names in its October 5, 1907 issue. The names have also been penciled in on the Gorman Rare Art Book Collection’s copy of the scroll, possibly by a previous owner who transferred the list from L’Illustration.
This scroll also contains one carriage that is not included in the image reproduced in L’Illustration. Colette, the author of Gigi, is riding in a coach driven by her husband, Willy (Henry Gauthier-Villars). Colette is seated next to her mistress, the Marquise Mathilde de Morny. Missy, as she was known, was notorious for dressing in men’s clothing and seducing a number of women. The press assiduously documented her affair with Colette, and the pair roused a scandal when they kissed onstage as part of a pantomime production at the Moulin Rouge.
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EXHIBITION: Sem, Gigi and Caricature
We’ve been MIA for awhile as we have been hard at work preparing for our upcoming exhibit! Opens February 3rd!
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EXHIBITION MATERIAL: Le Rire - Journal Humoristique
While not in the Gorman Rare Art Book Collection, Le Rire will be used as supporting material in our upcoming exhibit on SEM and French Caricature which highlights material from Gorman.
The issue covers featured here are from the 1902-1903 volume. Published from 1894 through the 1950s, Le Rire Journal Humoristique is a French humor magazine that features many caricature illustrations from a variety of well known artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, René Georges Hermann-Paul, Juan Gris, Lucien Metivet, Georges Meunier, Jean-Louis Forain, Adolphe Willette, Joaquín Xaudaró, Leonetto Cappiello, Albert Guillaume, Manuel Luque, Jules Grandjouan, Abel Faivre, and Jules-Alexandre Grun.
Georges Goursat, also known as SEM, was published in Le Rire as well. SEM will be the focus of our upcoming exhibition.
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: SEM AU BOIS
SEM Au Bois is a brand new acquisition that we are very excited about. Georges Goursat, whose pseudonym was SEM, created the piece in 1908. It is a caricature of members of the Jockey Club of Paris and other well known persons of the time in a processional of carriages.
This piece is 30 feet long. We were only able to unroll half of it. It will be the centerpiece of our upcoming exhibit Sem, Gigi, and Caricature which opens February 3, 2015.
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: Sweet Grass : My Place
Printmaker and book artist CB Sherlock created Sweet Grass : My Place in 2010 in Minneapolis, MN. Sherlock creates small edition artist books and one of a kind artwork. The major theme in her work is the connectedness of humanity and the fibers that link us all together. Her work is about the similarities among people rather than the differences.
“Sweet Grass was written after many years of reflecting on belonging to the place our family visits every summer. In 2010, it was printed on handmade Sekishu paper…the accordion structure was bound with grass stalks with hand painted images”
The artist book has letterpress printed text and is housed in a folded vellum box.
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WEIRD FORMAT WEDNESDAY: Le Jeu de Marseille (The Game of Marseille)
Le Jeu de Marseille is a game of surrealist playing cards created in March 1941 by the artists Andre Breton, Wifredo Lam, Max Ernst, Jazqueline Lamba, Oscar Dominguez, Victor Brauner, Jacques Herold, Andre Masson, and Frederic Delanglade. These surrealists were attempting to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe to America. While they waited to leave the country, they stayed at the Villa Air-Bel in Marseille and created The Game of Marseille.
They deconstructed the monarchial playing cards and created revolutionary designs expressing their own ideals. They changed the cards’ suits to: Locks for knowledge (black), Wheels for revolution (red), Stars for dreams (black) and Flames for love (red).
The playing card designs were published in 1943 in the surrealist magazine, VVV Magazine. The game was also exhibited at the moma in NYC.
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EXHIBITION PEEK: L'Assiette au beurre
Our Gorman rare art book collection is featured in annual or biannual exhibitions held T.R. Andersen Gallery outside of the the James Ford Bell Library. Our winter exhibition will be about caricature. We mostly feature materials from Gorman and we complement with additional rare materials. L'Assiette au beurre is apart of our regular rare collection and will most likely be featured in our exhibit.
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Highlights from the Culture Wars Zine Collection that were on exhibit in the Protest Publishing and Art show
The Guerrilla Graywater Girls Guide to Water, 2001
What’s a Zine? The Revolution will be photocopied (and classified), Madison Zine Fest, 2005
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We are pleased to announce that we will be highlighted in an upcoming article, The Libraries’ Zine Collection: Inspiring Assignments and Art, written by Jon Jeffyres about our zine collection and recent exhibit, Protest Publishing and Art: From the Copy Machine to the Internet. Here’s a little taste:
“The University of Minnesota Libraries houses a unique collection of handmade publications that are sparking scholarly engagement and creative inspiration. Over the past year Arts & Architecture Librarian, Deborah Ultan, partnered with faculty to incorporate the Marshall Weber Culture Wars Zine Collection into multiple classes.The collaboration culminated with the exhibition “Protest Publishing and Art: From the Copy Machine to the Internet”, where highlights from the zine collection were shown with zines and poster art made by students, faculty, and community members.”
The article will be published in the upcoming issue of University of Minnesota’s magazine, “Continuum.”
New Acquisition: Southern Landscapes
Published by 21st century editions, this gorgeous book is a limited edition of 58 copies.
Photographs by Sally Mann
Text by John Stauffer
Edited by John Wood
Edition: 58 copies
11 bound and 3 loose platinum prints 13 x 15 inches
Handcrafted in New England
Currently being cataloged and will shortly be available for perusal from our collection.
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