Holiday Recommendation Guest Post: Sarah Bodman

Daniel Lehan
LAKE DISTRICT FIRST AID COURTSHIP

One of Daniel Lehan’s Day Pages was recently featured as the cover artwork for the November issue of the Book Arts Newsletter, No 114. Lehan has been making these intricate Day Page diary collages for many years, one each day, text typed on a manual typewriter with visuals collaged from found materials: newspapers, flyers, magazines etc., as a reflection on the day’s events, often made at the end of the evening. The featured day page was made after an artist’s book surgery with Simon Goode and myself at the London Centre for Book Arts, UK in 2017, where we advised him to start producing editions.

Lehan’s collage works start their lives as one-off works, texts and imagery are carefully cut from old medical manuals or tourist guides and intermingled with the backdrops of gardens, beaches, landscapes and cities in vintage postcard books, atlases and travel guides. 2017 has seen Lehan develop a new body of editioned books alongside his unique works which are now stocked at bookartbookshop in London. They include Wookey Hole Caves Creche populated by mystery babies, Exercises for Full Development – Knutsford which has a strict regime, and Rotterdam, where things have gone wrong.

You can view more images of his work and contact him here. He will launch a new website of his bookworks in the coming months which will also be announced in the February 2018 Book Arts Newsletter.


Sarah Bodman is Senior Research Fellow for Artists' Books at the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR), and Programme Leader for MA Multidisciplinary Printmaking at the Bower Ashton Campus, UWE Bristol, UK. http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman turns 76 today.

Simon Johnston | Unsigned

Simon Johnston
Unsigned
Los Angeles, USA: Verb Edition, 2003
40 pp, 25.5 x 19.5 cm., softcover
Edition of 1000

"Even though the book Unsigned is a photographic project, at its heart it is also a study of language, or rather its absence, in this case. Both the empty signs and the graphic faux-captions are typically sites of information, but in both cases the language is absent or withheld."

- Simon Johnston, in conversation with Ben Schwartz for the Walker Art blog

Available from the publisher, here, for $20.00 US.

Crown Point Press Holiday Sale

Beginning today and continuing until December 8th, Crown Point Press is offering discounts on both printmaking supplies and artists books & monographs. Books by or about John Cage, Tom Marioni, Ed Ruscha, Amy Sillman and others are 20% off when you use the code HOLIDAYBOOKS on the checkout page.

Visit the store here, for details.

Printed Matter Holiday Gift Guide

Printed Matter launched their "Holiday Gift Guides" yesterday, with virtual tables featuring artists books and editions by Queer artists, Activist works, 'Zines, Photo-based projects, works involving illustration, and an assortment of out-of-print rarities (Christopher Wool, Allan Kaprow, John Baldessari, Fluxus, Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, etc.)

Printed Matter will be closed from Dec. 25th - Jan. 1. To ensure items are received in time for Xmas, they recommend:

USPS Economy - Orders must be received by Dec. 12
USPS Priority - Orders must be received by Dec. 18

Order today (December 3rd) for free domestic shipping on "select new arrivals, artists’ multiples, and Printed Matter fundraising editions and publications."

Enrico Castellani, RIP

Enrico Castellani, who Donald Judd called "the father of Minimalism", died yesterday at the age of 87.

Born in the Castelmassa municipality in North-Eastern Italy, Enrico Castellani studied sculpture and painting at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1952, and architecture at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Belgium. In 1956, he returned to Italy and befriended the artists Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni.

With the latter, Castellani cofounded the Azimuth journal and Azimut gallery in Milan, presenting the works of Fontana, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean Tinguely, Günter Uecker and others. The gallery and magazine were only active for a short period of time (September 1959 to July 1960) but proved influential. They were the subject of a recent exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, in 2014.

Azimut exhibited a number of artists connected with the ZERO group, which Castellani was then associated with for a number of years.

Castellani's work has been exhibited at the MoMA, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Stedelijk Museum, the Prada Foundation, the Palais des Beaux Arts and countless other institutions.

He represented Italy at the Venice Biennale four times across five decades: in 1964, 1966, 1984 and 2003.