So this is the Reading Room. This is where we provide access to our Archive and Library
collections. Those collections are firstly a reference collection part of which you can see
around the walls of the room that supports the work that the Curators do and then in terms of
archival collections we have about 140 archival holdings at the moment and those are collections
of materials that relate to one individual artist in some instances, but then also larger
collections sometimes organizational archives for example the Society of Scottish Artists have
deposited their archive with us and so there's a real range of material here and then we also
have special collections and that's the category under which the material I'm going to show you
today falls. So we have special books but we also have a really outstanding artist's books collection.
Okay so this is quite a recent acquisition, it's a little Russian Futurist book from 1912.
It is quite an early example of a book work, and it really kind of breaks the boundaries of what
an artist's book is at this period of time. It's very radical and the title is also collaged on
and you can see I mean we're actually quite lucky that things like this have survived
because they're not very durable and you can see that the stapled binding is sort of pulling
itself apart here. The pages are all different sizes the paper is very thin and very poor
quality so this is pre-First World War. These are hand lithographed images and text and then some
rubber stamp text as well. And none of this was an accident, this was on purpose so this kind of,
almost is a bit like a modern zine in that it was produced very roughly and quickly to kind of
break down those ideas of what a book was and could be. Gonchorova and her contemporaries
were, I suppose, riffing on what the Italian Futurists had been establishing which was kind
of an anti-art attitude. So they were looking at something that was quite democratic. Goncharova
was looking at lubok prints for example sort of popular cheap prints that were produced, hence
the handwriting is generally by the artist, and the poets enjoyed that collaborative element
they thought that the artist's handwriting added something to the meaning of the text.
And folk art is an influence, so it's really quite a groundbreaking little book and great for
us to have, and really important in the trajectory of the history of the artists book as well.
So this is an example of a Surrealist publication, published by Editions du Carrefour in 1930
by an artist called Claude Cahun. The book is titled Aveux non Avenus which translates as 'disavowals', and
it contains text by Cahun and photo collages which were a collaborative effort made by her partner
Marcel Moore, who also adopted that name later in life, she was born Suzanne Malherbe. And the the text
is really Cahun examining her identity and she talks quite a lot about gender actually. So the collages
are made using childhood photographs, drawn elements.They are quite surreal in their content
and their moods they use some of the classic self-portraits that Cahun is so well-known for.
She considered herself more a writer than an artist and actually the works
the photographs that she produced lay undiscovered for
decades, but this publication in 1930 is quite a groundbreaking thing
because this is actually her projecting and discussing her identity in a public forum
So this is our copy of Jazz by Henri Matisse, and it was published in 1947 by Tériade, who had
been in discussion with Matisse for quite a long time about producing a
livre d'artiste, so this the format of this book is classic livre d'artiste, and that was a form
that was established in the late 19th century. You can see when I open it up that it is loose leaf
Our copy was acquired in the 1980s and this was published both as a livre d'artiste, but also in a
portfolio edition so that people could mount up the prints. And the prints themselves
are translations of cut-outs that were produced by Matisse who was very ill by this point.
He was bedridden so he wasn't able to stand at an easel and paint, so he would sit in his bed and his
nurse, Lydia Delectorskaya, would paint sheets of paper with gouache and then he
would use scissors to make cut-outs which were then pinned to the wall according to his instructions.
So these prints are a translation of those original cut outs. This is the title page
this writing that you see is Matisse's own writing lithographically produced and it's
quite an important element of the book although he downplayed the importance of the content
the content is really Matisse talking about
the process of of painting and seeing and it's quite kind of stream of consciousness.
It does tie in in some ways to the themes that are covered in the in the images but it's also
there as a spacer so it's really important to kind of view the book as an entire object
because it makes you turn the pages
slowly and then when you hit one of the prints
if I can open the page
you have that breadth between the intensity of the colours. So Matisse traveled to Tahiti in the 1930s
and in the text he actually talks about the experience of looking down from an airplane.
These three images are really that kind of almost aerial view of the landscape of Tahiti
So this is a book - a six volume book - that was published by Printed Matter in New York and
it's by an artist called Tauba Auerbach. The title [2, 3] refers to the space between two dimensions
and three dimensions which is a key interest of of Auerbach's. It was published in 2011 but she actually
began work on it around 2008 - seven or eight, so it had quite a long gestation.
As you will see why, because it took quite a lot of technical working out.
So there are six volumes and if I take the first one out here
and open it
So each volume contains a three-dimensional geometric shape, but actually the action
of opening and closing the volumes is what's important because it moves
between two dimensions of the flat book and three dimensions of the pop-up shape.
So this is the first volume this is the pyramid and if I close it again you can see the action
move that to one side. This to me is one of the best examples of of a contemporary artist book or
book work - it really kind of explores the format it plays with the idea of what a book
is and what it can be. The second shape is a sphere and you can see why it took such
a long time to bring this into being because it's a very complex object. These are the gems
It was published in quite a large edition of a thousand copies
so an even bigger project because of that.
This is the helix which is something that crops up again and again in
Auerbach's work - she's actually founded a press called the diagonal press
to publish books like this not as ambitious as this but really interesting
nonetheless.
And then the final volume
they're quite striking which is quite unusual for a contemporary artist book which can often
be quite text heavy and quite normal in appearance, often quite commercially published, whereas this is
really quite an ambitious and exciting object and something that we really enjoy sharing with people.