Author Archives: hockensm

February 15, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — Postscript

Although she’s away at a conference this week, Heather wanted to share her own art-historical crush — a quick Valentine tribute to the master draftsman with the rock-star locks, Albrecht Dürer.

Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait at 26. 1498; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.


Who could resist that hair? (Or his hare, for that matter?)

And if you missed them the first time around, be sure to check out our three earlier Valentine’s Day posts about the artists we adore from afar:

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh

Leave a Comment

Filed under Valentines

February 14, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — in which Sloane Art Library staff reveal their secret art historical crushes… (Part 3 of 3)

And finally, here’s the third of three Valentine’s Day posts celebrating some of the artists who make us weak in the knees.

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

Oh Sophie – I’ve Calle-d and called but you never answer…

Rrose Selavy, a.k.a. Marcel Duchamp, 1921

You encounter so many inspiring artists here in the Art Library that you can never have a crush on just one. In the way of crushes, the flame will burn bright for one artist for a couple of days only to shift to another when the next sexy new book comes along.

My choice for Valentine’s Day came down to two artists: Sophie Calle and Marcel Duchamp – or more accurately his female alter ego, Rrose Selavy. Ever the painful punster, Duchamp’s cross-dressing name is pronounced “Eros, c’est la vie…”

Yes, love is life, and since we’ve already featured another gender-bending representative in Claude Cahun, I’ll gush about Sophie Calle this time.

What can I say, I love the literary types. Her biography in Oxford Art Online describes her as a French photographer, but photography is such a small part of her work. Her photographs aren’t objects for aesthetic appreciation – they’re not “retinal art,” as Duchamp would call it. Instead, they are documentary, telling the elaborate, intimate, obsessive stories which are her true works of art.

Calle captures her Venetian subject at lunch in Suite Venitienne

In one project that eventually becomes the artist’s book Suite Venitienne, she meets a man at an exhibition opening in Paris and learns that he is soon taking a trip to Venice. She decides to follow him and photograph him there, completely unknown to him.

She bases another book project (Take care of yourself) on an email she receives from a lover breaking up with her. She shares the email with 107 colleagues in different professions – actresses and opera singers, professional archers and chess players – and asks them all to interpret it. Their responses are gathered together into an exhibition and a book that is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious.

The musician Feist reads Calle's break-up letter in Take Care of Yourself.

Sophie’s work is the logical result of Duchamp’s desire to replace “retinal” art that’s appealing to the eye with an art of ideas and concepts. She has turned herself into a readymade. Just as Duchamp made a simple snow shovel into a work of art by calling it one, she has made portions of her life into a work of art by declaring them so. So maybe I’m not choosing between Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy and Sophie Calle at all – one is the other is the other.

When asked what he did after he gave up making works of art, Duchamp called himself “un respirateur” — a ‘breather.’ I would call Sophie Calle “une obsessioniste.” And what better obsession is there than a good crush?

– Josh

[With apologies to my wife, Margarite, the greatest possible artist-crush. Happy Valentine's Day!]

Leave a Comment

Filed under Valentines

February 14, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — in which Sloane Art Library staff reveal their secret art historical crushes… (Part 2 of 3)

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, here’s the second of three posts celebrating some of the artists who make us weak in the knees.

Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1927, 117mm x 89mm (whole), Jersey Heritage Trust

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

“Don’t kiss me, I’m in training”

Gender benders make me swoon – from Judith Butler to Lady Gaga, I just can’t help myself. Most alluring of all are the visual artists whose works are characterized by slippages, sauciness, and shifting identities – the masculine, the feminine, and beyond. Claude Cahun, who began making photographs over 90 years ago, created images of unimaginable complexity.

Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1928, 118mm x 95 mm (whole), Jersey Heritage Trust

Portraying a multitude of personas, her photographs pre-figure Cindy Sherman‘s work but with a surreal twist. She often stares into the camera with a fierce gaze – in braids and theater makeup, or a saucy driving jacket. In one carefully composed image, her perfectly round bald head sprouts twice from the same neck – two Claudes in one. Constantly shifting ground, her photographs and writings de-center gender in ways both playful and extremely serious, and deal with sexuality in a manner that defies labels.

Her biography is a remarkable one. In the 1920s she began living with her stepsister, who went by the name Marcel Moore. Lovers and collaborators for life, they moved to the Island of Jersey in 1937. During the war, they created a secret counter-propaganda office to produce literature in opposition to the Nazi occupation. Imprisoned and barely spared execution, they made it out of the war alive, although Cahun passed away soon after, in 1954.

Claude Cahun, Untitled, c. 1920, 210 mm x 124 mm, Jersey Heritage Trust

In Disavowals – or Cancelled Confessions, a recent English translation of a series of “poem-essays” originally published in 1930, Cahun’s narrative voice shape-shifts over the course of nine sections, many of which are equally literary and lusty. Seriously, you might find yourself blushing… Of art she writes:

“art is the very great morose delight,
A sad and tender attempt to immortalize our
    pleasures,
To remember passing love.”

 

– Madeline

Information and images from: Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore

Leave a Comment

Filed under Valentines

February 14, 2012

A Suite of Valentines — in which Sloane Art Library staff reveal their secret art historical crushes… (Part 1 of 3)

So, you’ve long wondered what nerdy passions lurk beneath the surface of your friendly art library staff. Well, today’s your lucky day. In the following series of posts you’ll find accounts of the art historical crushes that we carry in our hearts as we stamp your checkouts or tidy up the stacks. They cause us to pause by a familiar monograph, to take it down from the shelf as our hearts skip a beat. Today we share these three posts, which serve as our collective valentine to some of the artists we so adore.

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

Tamara de Lempicka in an evening gown by Marcel Rochas. Photo by Madame d'Ora ca. 1931, Alain and Michèle Blondel collection.

Look out – dandy coming through

Tamara de Lempicka: The queen of modern.

Tamara de Lempicka: Goddess of the automobile age.

And my particular favorite, from a blurb for the latter book:

Tamara de Lempicka: “…a female dandy brimming with cool elegance”

Tamara de Lempicka could not even begin her artistic career in a boring way. Debuting in Paris in the Salon d’Automne in 1922, Tamara was widely admired as Monsieur Lempitzky, her male Russian alter ego.

Images and egos, alter or not, were a big part of Tamara’s life. She cultivated her image as a glamorous, fast-moving, aristocratic artist/starlet (an artlet?), and she seems to have been more than happy living the life. Tamara had a reputation even at the time for her love of elegant automobiles, the modern metropolis, and beautiful women.

Tamara de Lempicka, My Portrait, 1929; private collection.

Her art bears this reputation out. In her most famous self-portrait, she depicts herself with flowing scarf and immaculate gloves, slouching languorously behind the wheel of a convertible, an untouchable poise in her eyes.

Tamara de Lempicka, Rafaëla sur fond vert (Le rêve), July 1927, private collection, courtesy Duhamel Fine Art.

She also produced myriad images of those aforementioned beautiful women, including a particularly sensual series featuring one model, Rafaela. The unabashedly gorgeous lines and shapes in her paintings just lure me in further, as does Tamara’s clearly evident appreciation of them. The recent publication of a novel exploring her relationship with Rafaela, The Last Nude, doesn’t hurt my interest, either. (We don’t have a copy at Sloane yet, although there is one at Davis Library. Did I mention that my birthday is coming up?)

Of course, this high-flying lifestyle probably wouldn’t make her the best choice for a life partner — but aren’t crushes supposed to be a little unreasonable?

– Eva

Information and images from: Tamara de Lempicka: The Queen of Modern

Leave a Comment

Filed under Valentines

November 11, 2011

Coming up on Tuesday, Nov. 15th: Hanes Visiting Artist lecture by James Elkins

Insert text of caption here

Event details:
“Farewell to Visual Studies”
James Elkins
Tuesday, November 15
Hanes Auditorium, Hanes Art Center
6:00 pm

James Elkins is the E.C. Chadbourne Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a student he studied at the University of Chicago where he first earned a graduate degree in painting, and then switched to earn a PhD in art history.

Dr. Elkins’ writing focuses on the intersection between the study and practice of art as he explores the history and theory of images.  Some of his books are exclusively on fine art (What Painting Is and Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?, for example). Others include scientific and non-art images, writing systems, and archaeology (e.g. The Domain of Images and On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them), and some are about natural history (How to Use Your Eyes).

Elkins’ talk at UNC will be titled “Farewell to Visual Studies.” In it, he will explore the rapid growth of visual studies as an intellectual field at colleges and universities throughout the world.  Visual studies have at least four different forms in North America and the UK, in Scandinavia and German-speaking countries, in Latin America, and in China and Taiwan. However, despite its range, one has to wonder: are visual studies really asking the most interesting questions?  The discipline has not fulfilled its initial promise as a means to study visuality and visual practices of all sorts, and it has not consolidated a common set of purposes or methods. Why look only at the same handful of theorists? Why exclude non-Western art or scientific images? Elkins will survey the original purposes of the field and its current condition, and will suggest several reasons why it may be time to say farewell to visual studies.

To find out more about James Elkins’ thoughts on visual studies as well as his broader body of work, take a look at his many books in the library’s online catalog. His many publications can make it difficult to tell where to start, so here are a few recommendations:

Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003.

What Happened to Art Criticism? Chicago, Ill.: Prickly Paradigm, 2003.

On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings. London: Routledge, 2001.

Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999.

The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

– Laura Fravel

Leave a Comment

Filed under Events

October 24, 2011

Curl up with a good (artist’s) book: Clifton Meador’s The Nameless Dead

This is the first in a series of posts about artists’ books in our collection. Since most of our artists’ books are kept behind the desk, we hope that these posts will help you to begin your own exploration of the collection.

The Nameless Dead, by Clifton Meador (PABA Publishing, 2004)

If you’re familiar with artists’ books as handmade examples of bookbinding craft or innovative, unusual structures, you may look at The Nameless Dead and wonder “Why on earth is this an artist’s book?” It looks like any hardcover you would pick up at your local bookstore. Open it up and start to read, though, and it quickly becomes obvious that this is no ordinary book.

The book-within-a-book featured in The Nameless Dead.

Some artists’ books are like lyric poems, others are more like one-liners. Clifton Meador‘s book is a novel, packed with detail, plot, and multiple levels of narrative. A conventional novel would do those things solely with text, but Meador uses all of the tools of the page to tell the story. Text shares space with photographs, diagrams, even an entire book-within-the-book that Meador inserted to add an extra layer to the fiction.

Through his arrangement of all the elements on the page, he guides you through the story’s multiple levels and controls the pace of your reading. The first pages of the book are a good example:

The opening pages of The Nameless Dead.

The first spread has no text at all — just a photo of a roadside scene. The empty white space of the sky gives the impression of expansive desert. The blurriness of the photo gives the impression of speed.

The book’s first words appear on the next spread of pages:

The second spread of pages.

Above a similar roadside landscape are the words “Let’s say you just woke up in a car, a car going too fast on a narrow winding road.” The shortness of the text and its placement on the righthand side of the page help to continue the feeling of speed.

The subtle touch, though, is the way he splits that first sentence into two lines and italicizes the second line. There’s no textual or grammatical reason to do it, but there is an artistic one. It prepares the reader to expect two voices. That becomes very important as the book goes on and the layers of the story multiply.

On the surface the story is about traveling to a ruined city in the desert, but it becomes obvious that all is not as it seems. Midway through the book, while exploring this ruined city the narrator asks, “Am I dead?” Suddenly we must re-think the whole story up to that point.

Things get a little weird later in The Nameless Dead.

Part travel narrative, part meditation on the afterlife, part postmodern novel — and we haven’t even begun to look at the visuals or the exquisite offset printing! I can’t adequately describe The Nameless Dead in this small space. You’ll just have to come curl up with it and read for yourself.

– Josh Hockensmith

Leave a Comment

Filed under Artists' books, Special collections in the Art Library

September 9, 2011

Coming up on Tuesday, Sept. 13th: Hanes Visiting Artist lecture by Thomas Nozkowski

Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled (8-135), 2010, oil on linen on panel, 22 x 28 inches (55.9 x 71.1 cm), copyright Thomas Nozkowski, courtesy The Pace Gallery, Photo by: G.R. Christmas, courtesy The Pace Gallery

Event details:
Thomas Nozkowski
Tuesday, September 13th
Hanes Auditorium, Hanes Art Center
6:00 pm

Although he started out working in sculpture, Thomas Nozkowski has built his career around small-scale abstract paintings. His compact pictures are filled with lively organic and geometric forms. His works reward close looking — trying to understand their inventive and whimsical compositions can feel a bit like peering through a microscope or a kaleidoscope.

The brightly colored canvases seem strangely familiar, perhaps because Nozkowski finds inspiration in the real world. He is always on the lookout for a truly bizarre subject, though, from a state of mind to a road map. For example, in An Autobiography — included in the artist’s vertical file at the Sloane Art Library — works by Nozkowski on the right-hand side of the page respond to map fragments and photographs of New York on the left. In Flare, Nozkowski collaborated with poet Cole Swensen to develop prints that responded to the written word.

Unlike many abstract painters, Nozkowski chooses to work on a small scale. Many of his paintings are 16 by 20 inches, allowing him to experiment with forms in a single session. In an interview with BOMB magazine, Nozkowski described his process:

“Every time I work on a painting, I’ll make sure the entire surface is opened up with a wash of pigment or has been rubbed down so that everything is put back in question. If you see a painting that I worked on for fifteen years, what you’re actually seeing is the final day’s work. The entire surface of the painting has been worked on in that last session.”

To Nozkowski, painting is a process of discovery, of finding forms and relations that you never could have predicted at the start. His goal is to create a truly energized space, something interesting and beautiful — though you may not be able to explain why it’s beautiful.

Nozkowski will give a 30 minute introduction to his work, which will be followed by a conversation with Cary Levine, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art, and a Q&A with the audience. Reception to follow.

For more detail, see the Art Department’s announcement.

– Laura Fravel

Leave a Comment

Filed under Events

August 29, 2011

When the book is art

"Memory Loss," by Scott McCarney, is one of more than 600 artists' books in the Sloane Art Library collection.

Every day we read new articles about the death of the book, the decline of print culture, the inevitable e-mergence of e-verything digital. At the same time we see frequent revelations of artists doing amazing new things with the book form. While the traditional book may be on the decline as the main vehicle for our information, more people than ever feel a special appreciation for what books can do.

That means that it’s a great time to be an artist’s book.

"Words of Chan K'in: Lacandon Jungle" is an artist's book produced by Taller Leñateros, a collective of Mayan women in Chiapas, Mexico.

At the Sloane Art Library we have over 600 artists’ books. They range from the early photographic bookworks of Ed Ruscha to the contemporary, almost architectural marvels of Julie Chen. We’re also lucky to receive many Latin American artists’ books through discoveries made by Teresa Chapa – UNC’s Librarian for Latin America, Iberia, Latina/o Studies.

A wide variety of patrons make use of our artists’ books. Studio art faculty use them to teach their students about working in the book form. Art history students use them for research. Local and visiting artists consult them for inspiration and instruction. Most of our artists’ books are kept in a cabinet behind the desk, but they are available to the public upon request and we’re always delighted to share them.

So what exactly IS an artist’s book?

It’s not the same as a deluxe edition showing an artist’s work – those are usually referred to as livres d’artistes. It’s not even necessarily an example of fine bookbinding or printing. Instead, an artist’s book is a work of art that makes use of the characteristics of a book, and can only exist as a book. As Dick Higgins says in his introduction to Artists’ books: A critical anthology and sourcebook:

Heather Weston's books do an excellent job of marrying form and content, as in "Binding Analysis: Double Bind".

“[An artist's book is] a book done for its own sake and not for the information it contains… It doesn’t contain a lot of works, like a book of poems. It is a work. Its design and format reflect its content—they intermerge, interpenetrate.”

Although their roots certainly reach back through the millenia, artists’ books have been a distinct medium since the mid-twentieth-century. For detailed histories, see Johanna Drucker’s The Century of Artists’ Books and Betty Bright’s No Longer Innocent: Book art in America, 1960-1980.

As a regular feature on our blog, I’ll be writing about artists’ books from our collection. I’ll discuss how they work and where they fit in our collection and the field of artists’ books in general.

So please stay tuned! In the meantime, you can check out our research guide on artists’ books. You can also see a full listing of the titles in our collection. If you’re interested in learning more about a specific book, please email me at hockensm@email.unc.edu. I’d be happy to send you more information or write a future entry about it!

– Josh Hockensmith

Leave a Comment

Filed under Artists' books, Special collections in the Art Library

July 25, 2011

Welcome!

Welcome to the 2011-2012 UNC-Chapel Hill school year and to the Sloane Art Library’s new blog.

The beginning of the school year is always an exciting time around here, so we thought it would be the ideal time to launch our blog. We’ll be using it to keep you posted about Library and Art Department events, to show you some of our hidden treasures, and to share the thoughts and experiences of our patrons.

Here are some things you can look forward to appearing here:

One of our most popular artists' books: Panorama, by Julie Chen.

  • A series of posts about artists’ books from our collection;
  • Interviews with studio art MFA students about how they use the library;
  • Posts about scholars and artists who will be visiting UNC as part of the Hanes Visiting Artist lecture series;
  • Interviews with art historians about several of the stunning facsimiles of medieval manuscripts we have in the collection.

And that’s just what we have planned so far.

Whether you’re just discovering the Art Library or you already agree that there’s no place like Sloane, we hope you’ll find something here to enjoy.

Cheers!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized