Pliure. Prologue (La part du feu)

Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian

January 30th - April 12th 2015

Published at Hyperallergic here:http://hyperallergic.com/188050/from-pulp-to-pop-seven-centuries-of-book-art/

Pliure (meaning Fold) is a book-based small show, tastefully curated by Paulo Pires do

Vale about the artistic metamorphosis of books (those folded paper things). The

exhibition brings together some forty works dating from the 16th to the 21st centuries:

films, sculptures, installations, paintings and rare books. It is one of those art shows done

so well in small Paris Museums and Foundations (this one is Portuguese) where

contemporary art is brought into close contact with dated art from the centuries through a

coherent theme.

Here the theme is loosely the danger of the paper of books in contact with fire (feu) – a

contact that implies and recalls the still relevant menace of book burning. Thus the

exhibition explores the significance of the book and its precarious existence as pulp

through various artistic gestures. It asks the question: How is art transformed in dialogue

with the paper book - and how is the paper book transformed by art?

With the fold, the book has two possibilities: it opens or it closes, reveals or hides.

Thanks to the fold, something unexpected is on the other side of the page and this is the

characteristic mystery of the book played with here. An obvious inspiring metaphor for

this dialogue is the concept of the fold as interpreted by Gilles Deleuze in his dazzling

book “Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque” (1988) translated as “The Fold: Leibniz and the

Baroque” (1993), where he traced the fold concept back to the Baroque’s emphasize on

the transmutation of formal objects into temporal unities. Here the French philosopher

features reflections upon continuous changes and dissolutions into infinity as expressed

in folded art objects and gardens from the Baroque era. In applying this idea to our time,

Deleuze concluded that form and matter (here applied to books) must be recognized as a

temporal modulation that implies as much the beginnings of a continuous variation of

matter, as a continuous solid existence.

Marcel Duchamp, “Readymade Malheureux” (Unhappy Readymade) (1919)

Marcel Duchamp, “Readymade Malheureux” (Unhappy Readymade) (1919) (detail)

Marcel Duchamp, “Readymade Malheureux” (Unhappy Readymade) (1919) (view from above)

Appropriately, the visitor is first greeted with Marcel Duchamp’s suspended “Readymade

Malheureux” (Unhappy Readymade) (1919), a geometry book that swings from a wire

outside in the courtyard, open to the air, sun and natural elements. It is already a bit

bleached out from the fire of the sun, and we must accept the idea of its inevitable

collapse into nothingness.

Suzanne Duchamp placed one like it outside her door in 1920 at Rue de la Condamine. It

was Marcel Duchamp’s wedding gift for the marriage of his sister to the Dada painter

Jean Crotti. Sent from Buenos Aires in 1919, Marcel provided instructions for its

realization and chance-based eventual demise into entropy. As such it is an early

conceptual art precedent that went on to inspire much Fluxus art and conceptual earth art.

Each day it hung outside in the weather and wind, it crumbled more and more, losing its

content, its cohesiveness, it’s sense of being in the world.

Inside the door, some solid sense is restored. Placed safely under glass, we see two

unfolded untouchable pages from Lawrence Weiner’s fanciful book of his trademark

graphic texts pieces juxtaposed with erotic and sea images, “Deep blue sky / Light Blue

Sky” (2003). That and what follows, all beautifully installed, adheres to this classical

protective exhibition method, where I was only able to peer through the cool green glass

at a selected open page or two of such splendors as Olafur Eliasson’s “Your house”

(1967) and Helena Almeida’s “Estudo para Dois Espaços” (1977). It was enticingly

juxtaposed within a stones throw of such masterpieces from Lisbon as William Morris’s

“The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer” (1896) (gorgeously ornamented with pictures

designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones), Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d´Alembert’s

exquisite “Encyclopedia” (1779) (containing the magical formula ABRACADABRA), and

a marvelous René of Lorena “Book of Hours” (15th C) with paintings by Maitre Francois,

the Parisian illustrator who productively worked on numerous manuscripts between the

years 1462 and 1480.

Regardless of the hands off restrictions, it is conceptually delightful and fruitful to see

these rare works rubbing shoulders with the much more recent artist books such as those

by Wolf Vostell and Robert Filliou (both Fluxus artists enjoying something of a

comeback recently in Paris) along with other 1960 and 70s classic conceptual art books.

Key among them: Ed Ruscha’s small “Various Small Fires and Milk” (1964) wherein

Ruscha photographed different forms of tiny fires. (The first edition 400 copies were sold

at $3.50 dollars apiece). Bruce Nauman, for his book “Burning Small Fires” (1969)

(released just four years after the publication of the book by Ruscha) tautologically set

fire to the pages of Ruscha’s book and photographed it. Other very important artist books

like Sol LeWitt’s crisp “Autobiography” (1980), Richard Long’s rather redolent

“Labyrinth: local lanes walks” (1990) and books by Christian Boltanski (“Recherche et

présentation de tout ce qui reste de mon enfance”) (1969) and Michael Snow (“Cover to

Cover”) (1975) round out the selection. A rare highlight is a very beautiful book by the

tragic American photographer Francesca Woodman, “Some Disordered Interior

Geometries” the only artist's book containing Woodman's photographs that was published

during her lifetime. On the pages, Woodman attached photographs and added

handwriting and white correction fluid. Released in January 1981, shortly before her

young death at 22, it here conceptually gestures towards Marcel Duchamp’s unhappy

book project, as it is based upon selected pages from an Italian geometry exercise book.

Olafur Eliasson, “Your house” (1967) Library Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006 edition 198 of

225 + 25, 29 x 45 x 11,5 x 11,5 cm. Collection of Teixeira de Freitas, Lisbon

Helena Almeida, “Estudo para Dois Espaços” (Study for two spaces) (1977) Collection Museu Coleção Berardo,

Lisbon

William Morris / Geoffrey Chaucer, “The works of Geoffrey Chaucer” (Middlesex: Kelmscott Press, 1896) edited by

F- S- Ellis; ornamented with pictures designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones engraved on wood by W. H. Hooper.

Édition William Morris, 554 pages, 44 x 30 x 7 cm. Collection of Bibloteca de Arte, Lisbon (E-LT 2)

Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d´Alembert, “Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des

métiers” (1777-1779) 38 vols. 26 x 21 cm, Collection Biblioteca de Arte, Lisbon

René of Lorena “Book of Hours” (15th C) with paintings by Maitre Francois. XVe siècle Parchemin, 78 folios 15 x 12 x

3 cm. Collection Museu Gulbenkian, Lisbon

Ed Ruscha, page from “Various Small Fires and Milk” (1964)

Bruce Nauman, “Burning Small Fires” (1969)

Richard Long, “Labyrinth: local lanes walks” (1990)

Francesca Woodman, “Some Disordered Interior Geometries” (1981) Courtesy of George and Betty Woodman

Francesca Woodman, “Some Disordered Interior Geometries” (1981) Courtesy of George and Betty Woodman

Four film selections are woven into the show as loops, including Alain Resnais’s “Tout la

mémoire du monde” (1956). But the most thematically pointed (being about book

burning) is the scene from François Truffaut’s “Fahrenheit 451” (1966), a film that is

based on the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953).

Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution” (Alphaville: A

Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution) (1965) also provides an ominous ambiance for

the materiality of pulp books with its black-and-white science fiction film noir dystopian

vibe. In Alphaville, in a country of the future that is dominated and organized by the

Alpha computer, the lead character can only be saved by reading the Surrealist poet Paul

Éluard’s book of poems “Capitale de la douleur” (Capital of Pain) (1926) provided by a

foreign secret agent as an act of resistance (as it contains traces of subjectivity, feelings

and individual consciousness - features that have been banned in Alphaville). Near was a

stony mid-16th century anonymous Portuguese granite sculpture of Mary holding a

reading young Jesus from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.

François Truffaut, “Fahrenheit 451” (1966) still from loop, Vineyard Films LTD.

John Latham’s silent 16mm film “Encyclopedia Britannica” (1971) records in an

overload haze every page in the Encyclopedia Britannica at a speed of seventeen frames

per second. This reduces the text to an illegible blur that produces some fretfulness as the

viewer attempts to understand the book pages as they speedily flicker by under the fire of

the projector bulb. This is a seminal piece in John Latham’s career, which brings together

a number of the his work’s principal concerns: the way history is written, memory,

interest in the word as a container of knowledge and the reflection on art as an

autonomous object. It starts with a shot of the open outer covers of a copy of the

Encyclopedia Britannica, then the first double page spread, before plunging the viewer

into single-frame shots of every double page spread of sequential volumes. Looking

quietly upon this flashing dystopia is Albrecht Dürer’s majestically apocalyptic woodcut

“Saint-Jean dévorant le livre de Vie” (St. John devouring the Book of Life) (1498). It has

that spidery feeling I remember from childhood. An inner intertwining with those weedy

images in Germanic fairy tale book illustrations that beckoned me to look deep into a past

communal memory.

Albrecht Dürer, “Saint-Jean dévorant le livre de Vie” (St. John devouring the Book of Life) (vers 1498) Ancienne

collection éditoriale: Dürer, L’Apocalypse (éd. latine) Est 3524 coll. ENSBA © Beaux-Arts Paris, Dist.

But the best piece in the show for me (one unable to be adequately photographed) was

Raffaella della Olga’s “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard – constellation” (2009).

Here there is a flow of speech that has been halted and exalted. It returned me to the

childlike delight first encountered under the covers with joyful books suggestive of inner

freedom and mystical self-enhancement that made me enthusiastic about solitude and

privacy.

The artist had very skillfully and painstakingly painted each letter of the great symbolist

poem Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish

Chance) (1914) by Stéphane Mallarmé with white paint mixed with fluorescent powder.

One sees it by entering a pitch-black room. Unnoticed to me, a young woman had slipped

past me and installed herself behind the book that is now glowing in the dark. She begins

to magically turn pages. Then she reveals herself by speaking softly to me, gently

explaining the poetic relationship of the glowing text with constellations of the night sky.

It was a wonderful and sensual experience.

The poem itself beems, spread over twenty large pages in various typefaces amidst liberal

amounts of black blank space. The language seems to stutter and float with contentment

as the words crackle against each other, making luminous clusters. Each pair of

consecutive facing pages is read as a radiant single panel, as the text flows back and forth

across the two pages along irregular lines in various typefaces throughout. At the bottom

right of the last panel is the sentence Toute Pensée émet un Coup de Dés (Every Thought

issues a Throw of Dice). Indeed this indicator of cosmic emerald energy seemed to be so.

Raffaella della Olga’s tremendous interpretation of this highly poetic book called to my

mind the artist’s book with the same name that Marcel Broodthaers published in 1969.

That work is a close copy of the first 1914 edition of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem of the

same name, but with all the words removed, replaced by black stripes that correspond

directly to the typographic layout used by Mallarmé to articulate the text.

Raffaella della Olga, “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard – constellation” (2009) based on the symbolist poem

Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance) by Stéphane Mallarmé,

éd. Gallimard, 1914, 35 x 50 cm, acrylic white paint and fluorescent powder © Raffaellea della Olga (image #1)

Raffaella della Olga, “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard – constellation” (2009) based on the symbolist poem

Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance) by Stéphane Mallarmé,

éd. Gallimard, 1914, 35 x 50 cm, acrylic white paint and fluorescent powder © Raffaellea della Olga (image #2)

Lewis Carrol (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) with illustrations by Henri Holiday, “The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony

in Eight Fits” (1876) James R. Osgood and Company, 13,7 x 9,5 x 2 cm. FCG - Biblioteca de Arte, Lisbon

Pliure successfully emptied out and enlarged my traditional perception of books and art.

So it was fitting that I took a second glance at Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark:

An Agony in Eight Fits” (1876) with nine illustrations by Henry Holiday on the way out.

Lewis Carroll, of course, is the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, author of

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865). I was amazed at the open page that showed

a white monochrome labeled “Ocean Chart.” It perfectly closed the show for me, with its

sublime and amusing blank map bearing only the accoutrements of orientation and an

inscrutable scale. In the vein of Duchamp’s “Readymade Malheureux” (Unhappy

Readymade), it left me hanging in the open air.

Joseph Nechvatal

Pliure. Prologue (La part du feu)

Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian

39, blvd de La Tour-Maubourg 75007 Paris

January 30th - April 12th 2015

Entrance is free of charge

Organized in collaboration with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts

(ENSBA) the show will have a second part of the exhibition titled Pliure. Epilogue (La

bibliothèque, l’univers) (Fold. Epilogue. The Library , the Universe) from April 10 to

June 7, 2015 at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Paris,