This is the perfect time of year to get spooked out and The British Library is helping the cause with their latest exhibit, Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination. Comprised of two hundred objects spanning two hundred and fifty years of Gothic literature the exhibit "presents an intriguing glimpse of a fascinating and mysterious world." image Universal /The Kobal Collection Starting with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto and ending with the current zombie craze: The show provides plenty of insight into novels such as The Mysteries of Udolpho, Frankenstein, Northanger Abbey, Dracula and Rebecca but it also explores, among many other themes, the...
Coming Soon: The four surviving copies of the Magna Carta will be under one roof
In many respects it is the document that laid the seeds for the western world as we know it. It is where the pursuit of liberty and the rule of law make their first appearance in print. Some highlights of the Charter: - It was the first document forced onto a King of England by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. - The charter required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties and accept that his will was not arbitrary. - It was an...
Unbinding the Book: A New Era of Book Creation
Kate Morrell Unbinding the Book is a collaboration between the independent publishing platform Blurb and the visual arts studio Jotta. The challenge: push the boundaries of how books can be experienced, by evoking the storytelling properties of print and the way in which images evoke a narrative, whilst bringing to life the materiality, form and physicality that make books so alluring and different from their digital counterparts. [vimeo width="640" height="300"]http://vimeo.com/106487007[/vimeo] Nine artists and designers were commissioned to get to work creating a "book". Here is a sampling of some of the great stuff that has materialized so far: -Exploring the temporality and tactility...
Mel Bochner: ‘Strong Language’
Language is not transparent (1970), Mel Bochner. Recreated for the exhibition at the Jewish Museum, New York. If you are anywhere near the Jewish Museum in New York you have a few days left to catch the Mel Bochner exhibit 'Strong Language', a gathering of 70 works where language takes center stage. Bochner, a founding figure of the Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s, now focuses his energies on "the possibilities of language as image, medium, and content." The use of words as sources for painting stems from Bochner’s interest in philosophy on the one hand and humor and popular culture on the...
The Novel That Writes Itself is finished
Allen Ruppersberg began The Novel That Writes Itself in 1978. The plan was to create a "fictionalized autobiography where he would talk of his adventures as a young artist." The main characters were slated to be the artist’s friends including Ed Ruscha, his gallery owner, Rosamund Felsen, and the collectors Elyse and Stanley Grinstein. Amazingly, Ruppersberg exhibited a Kickstarter mentality 35+ years before crowdsourcing became the rage by offering the Grinstein's places in the story for 300 dollars. He also offered the opportunity to become a supporting character for 100 dollars or to be an extra in the book for 50 dollars. A decade later,...