Study Art - Peter Müller (Germany) [Verlach Friedichrodaer Hefte]

From my favourite book artist in Bremen:
Study Art

Unnumbered book of loosely bound copies of paintings which appear to have watercolor beginnings and digital endings.  Included in this sending were three other books and three prints from a “set of single cards”, a series of 39, numbered 1, 10 and 11.

“for breeding or bounty

for fun or fame

for prestige or spite

for style or glory

for pride or power

for profit or hobby”

This book is based on the words/work of John Waters from an exhibition in Baltimore:

 "This is a weirdly Baltimore-based work," Waters said.

"Many years ago, there was a real sign for a real art school in Baltimore on St. Paul Street below 25th Street. It said, 'Study Art for profit or hobby,' which is about the most politically incorrect thing you can say if you're an artist. I loved the sign and was astounded by it. It was completely unironic, and I decided to parody it."

And Peter decided to interpret it.

Müller, Peter (Germany) Verlach Friedichrodaer Hefde. Living at Home.

Living at Home

Unnumbered artists book of photocopied images taken on travels through South Africa. I KNOW these places, and I hope the title suggests that Peter felt right at home in our beautiful country.  There are many thinks that make for ‘home’, but one of the major contributors are good memories, where it does not matter where on earth one is, just that one feels at home.

Müller, Peter (Germany) Verlach Friedichrodaer Hefde - Hinterland

Hinterland (boredom and tristesse) - beyond your boundaries

Peter is an avid traveller and I think he has traversed the corners of the world. Hinterland is comprised of images taken in Queensland Australia - a part I know quite well. It is curious the way the banal follows humans, yet for each human involved there are layers of complexity in the ordinary.  This appears to be life in its most abject state of melancholy sadness. Its interesting too, the treatment of the images.   They are ‘filed’ in no particular shape or order or fold, just layered in a manila folder and although randomness is suggested, I think Peter’s ways are far more multifaceted than that.

Kentridge, William (South Africa) Everyone their Own Projector

Kentridge, William (South Africa)

Everyone their Own Projector

Unnumbered copy.

“Everyone Their Own Projector is an artist's book published by Captures Edition in Valence, France. It was created as the focus of the exhibition of the same name held recently in Paris. Kentridge made roughly one hundred drawings for the book, using collage on text pages torn from books he has cannibalized for years, such as Mrs Beaton's Book of Household Remedies, and the French Larousse Encyclopaedia, favouring ink and brush drawing with crayon on the text pages.

The artist romps through the history of art on each page of the book, looking at and bringing his own perception to Giotto, Masaccio's Expulsion from Eden, Manet's famous bartender and Rembrandt's beautiful study of his second wife, Hendrickje paddling in a stream. These visual quotations are punctuated by typical Kentridge imagery and obtuse rhetorical questions. His new character, Nicholai Gogol's Nose appears, intimately exploring the female body: contemporary female bodies from South Africa alongside studies of Degas' femmes apres le bain. The Nose travels with Kentridge, examining the artist's selected artistic lineage, and the classic subject of the European artist until the mid twentieth century, that of the female nude”.

from:

http://www.davidkrut.com/otherBookKentridgeEveryone.html

Cyclopedia of Drawing - William Kentridge.

Signed copy dated July 2008, gift from the artist.

 “Using pages from an American Technical Society reference book published in 1924, Kentridge creates each cell of his animation over mechanical and architectural engravings used to illustrate the fabrication of sheet metal and tinsmith projects. Kentridge has often used existing printed material from encyclopedias, maps and charts, indexes to create foundations that reflect knowledge, history or metaphysics.

In Cyclopedia of Drawings, Kentridge’s alter ego Felix jumps into the air and quickly morphs into a bird taking flight. After his brief stint as Icarus, he somersaults back to the ground and ends in a relaxing, almost comic pose. On each page, the diagrams and formulations from the technical book seem to be ‘proving’ the possibility of this remarkable feat while at the same time the page headers of SHEET METAL WORK and TINSMITHING humorously mock with their connotations of home-made construction and physical weight.

This book was published in an edition of 1000 copies, 100 of which were signed and numbered. I know of at least one other flipbook that was published in 1999 which I have heard animates a nude Felix as he scoops water up in his hat. The animation is supposedly drawn over pages from a Catalan grammar course book. Both of these have become very rare and very difficult to find. Originally priced at 28 euros, Cyclopedia of Drawing is now usually a couple hundred dollars. It is soft cover and approximately 6 by 8 ¼ inches with a strip of black binder’s tape on the edge. The reproductions are well done on a creamy yellow heavy paper stock common to technical manuals which is edged in red”.

from:

http://5b4.blogspot.com/2008/01/william-kentridge-prints-and-cyclopedia.html