Is a projection of shifting words on a wall a book (commission by Charles Sandison)? How big can a book be? What does a wallfull of splattered plaster snowballs (installed by Not Vital) have to do with books, anyway? Can a suitcase (Francis Bacon), or a cabinet (Damien Hirst), really be a "book"?
It was Anselm Kiefer's books that really grabbed me. Not just because they're so big, but because they're so beautiful. The pages would be hard to turn (you're not allowed to touch them of course) - that would make "using the book" an important matter indeed. Then there's the method and materials question - how did those particular marks get onto the paper - and is it paper anyway?
Looking for a picture of a book by Kiefer, I found this 1.5m-wide spread from one of his Secret Life of Plants volumes on the blog of woolgathersome - amid a treasure-box of diverse and haunting images, poetry, and music recommendations. So much to follow up on there. And for the image-hungry I'd also like to recommend theartofmemory - which is opening my eyes to narrative via film stills. How about "pictures in search of sounds" then?Hmm we seem to be moving away from books... Another favourite was the Spanish sculptor Chillida - this image is a 1995 print, Ibiza -
Also memorable: Cai Guo-Qiang, "the fireworks guy", was shown on video making a"suicidal fireworks" volume -- inserting a firework in a big book and exploding it. The finished book is lying meekly in a case, and there's a pic of it happening on the V&A site.
I'm glad you enjoyed the exhibition. I loved it when I saw it in April, and am sorry that I was unable to visit it again. I too was particularly drawn to the Kiefer pieces and so wanted to handle them.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the links to two very interesting looking blogs.