Giovanni Battista Braccelli: Oddities of Various Figures (1624)
Filed under artist publishing | Tags: · body, mannerism
“The fifty plates of the Oddities of Various Figures [Bizzarie di Varie Figure], issued in Livorno in 1624, are the liveliest and most original etchings of a highly creative, if little known, Florentine artist, Giovanni Battista d’Antonio Braccelli (active 1616–1649). The Bizzarie exhibit characteristics of Mannerism, which originated in Italy in the sixteenth century. [..]
Most of the images in the Bizzarie consist of pairs of dynamic figures constructed from fabricated elements, such as wooden boxes or frames, square and round metal links, metal plates, cylindrical containers, braided hair, wooden screws, twisted wax tapers, and so forth. Their poses are suggestive of tumblers, acrobats, contortionists, dancers, duelists, sportsmen, and actors. The bodies constructed of cubic forms recall the amazingly abstract drawings of the sixteenth-century Genoese painter Luca Cambiaso (1527–1588). Some of the most imaginative poses are impossibly contorted and bring to mind deceptive stunts or magic tricks—bodies gliding through themselves or each other.” (from a commentary by Sue Welsh Reed, 11 pages)
PDF (56 MB, updated on 2018-12-30)
PDF (clean low-resolution version, 11 MB, updated on 2018-12-30)
JPG (at RareBookRoom.org)
Ray Johnson: Ray Johnson Ray Johnson (1977)
Filed under artist publishing | Tags: · art, art criticism, mail art
The brochure reproduces several texts and works by Johnson, a number of essays by William S. Wilson, and photographs of Johnson by Toby Spiselman.
Publisher Between Books, New York, 1977
24 pages
via WithHiddenNoise.net (contains much more from and on Johnson and Wilson)
Adrien Lucca: Light Transformer Prototype, 1–2 (2010–2012) [French, English]
Filed under artist publishing | Tags: · colour, design, light, mathematics
“Le présent travail est le fruit d’une recherche qui s’étendit sur plus d’un an, et que cette première publication n’épuise pas. [..] J’ai voulu offrir à son lecteur ou à sa lectrice une véritable expérience de lecture – au sens peut-être le plus conservateur du terme – doublée d’une expérience visuelle et tactile de première main. Je prétends ainsi leur communiquer une synthèse d’observations et de pensées privées, personnelles. Cet essai pourra par conséquent contenir des erreurs ou des naïvetés qui m’auront échappées. Avant tout, j’espère y avoir trouvé un point d’équilibre entre contenus vusuels, textuels et stylistiques.” (extrait de l’avant-propos)
Interview with the author, with a Foreword by Haseeb Ahmed (in English/French)
Author
Prototype de transformateur de lumière: Essai & documents, version 1 (in French, 32 pp, 2010, PDF)
Light Transformer Prototype (picture documentation, blog post, in English, 2012)