Artists’ books displayed, discussed

A MacArthur “genius grant” winner and the curator of the acclaimed exhibit “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” at the Art Institute of Chicago are among speakers in the spring lecture series sponsored by the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries. The series, billed as “Artists’ Books,” begins Thursday, Feb. 7.

A multiple-location exhibit on campus — “Artists’ Books: Highlights from the Kohler Art Library” — is the centerpiece for the lecture series. Some of the most outstanding pieces from the Kohler Art Library’s artists‚ books collection, one of the largest of its kind in the nation, are now on display in four locations at the UW–Madison.

Artists‚ books combine elements of the traditional graphic arts — typography, paper, and other media — with an artist-driven concept. The resulting book itself becomes a form of art. The show includes pieces that unfold into three-dimensions or unravel into a 20-foot runner. The lectures cover the creation of artists‚ books, scholarship, and collecting, and include a gallery talk with examples of artists‚ books to handle.

The exhibits will be on display through March 15 in the Department of Special Collections, 976 Memorial Library; Kohler Art Library in the Elvehjem Museum of Art; and Memorial Library’s main lobby and second floor west.

Three events are scheduled at 4:30 p.m. Thursdays, Special Collections, Memorial Library.

• Feb. 7: The opening lecture, “Some Readings,” will be given by Buzz Spector, art professor and department chair at Cornell University. Spector’s writings highlight the relationship between readers and text, and how the conjunction of mind and body is mediated by reading. Spector’s talk will cover his 20 years of work with books.
• Feb. 28: In “Sandboxes,” William C. Bunce, former director of the Kohler Art Library at UW–Madison, will discuss the origin of the collection in the 1970s and cover the deep relationships he developed over the years with these books and many of their makers. Co-curators of the exhibit, Lyn Korenic, current director of the Kohler Art Library, and Tracy Honn, director of the Silver Buckle Press, will be on hand to give a tour of the exhibit and show examples of artists‚ books to handle.
• March 14: “Form Follows Content: Books of Unusual Format from the Janus Press” will be presented by Claire Van Vliet proprietor of the Janus Press, which has produced more than 100 titles since its formation in 1955. Van Vliet introduced book arts to UW–Madison printmaking students when she was a visiting artist in the mid-1960s. She had a profound influence on the Art Department‚s graphics program, an impact that continues to this day. Internationally recognized for her work, in 1989 she won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as a “genius grant.”

At 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 16, Howard Auditorium, Fluno Center, 601 University Ave., Douglas W. Druick, curator of the popular “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” at the Art Institute of Chicago, will give the Friends annual lecture. He is the Searle Curator of European Painting and Prince Trust Curator of Prints and Drawing at the Art Institute. It is the first show devoted to the nine weeks that artists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin spent together in southern France in fall 1888, a crucial period in the development of both painters.

For more information about the lecture series, contact the Friends of the UW–Madison Libraries, (608) 265-2505, friends@library.wisc.edu.