Elisabeth Tonnard | One Swimming Pool

Elisabeth Tonnard
One Swimming Pool
Leerdam, The Netherlands: Self-published, 2013
3164 pp., 14.8 x 18.8 x 19 cm., softcover
Edition of 9 (+1 AP) signed and numbered copies


A few pages back I posted a picture I took at the Stedelijk Museum, when we visited Amsterdam in the summer, of a work called One Swimming Pool. I misattributed the work to another artist in the exhibition somehow, which was just brought to my attention.

The work is by Elisabeth Tonnard, a Dutch artist and poet who has produced thirty-one books, some of which are held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Brooklyn Museum, Centre Pompidou, Columbia University, International Center for Photography, MoMA Library, New York Public Library, Tate Library and the Walker Art Center collections.

One Swimming Pool is a response to Ed Ruscha's Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass. The nine-volume bookwork can be dismantled and destroyed to produce a life-size swimming pool (648 x 648 cm.)

The exhibition, On the Move, continues until January 18th, 2015. For more information, visit the museum's website here and the artist's site here.