Book selected: Catalogue of Foreign Paintings I, Before 1800, C.M. Kauffmann, V&A Museum, 1973
New title: Residua
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‘Klein came to regard all art objects... as “the
remains of creative operations, the ashes'.
Sidra Stich, Yves Klein (1995)
The glossy paper was less absorbent, and the colour of each liquid less strong, than I had hoped. Other than the ‘collage’ on the title page, the visual impact was negligible, so I selected four paintings featuring the respective liquids, and added further quantities to these particular pages. By this time the pages were wrinkled from the previous interventions, so the liquids found their way across the pages like water over a landscape – somewhat like Andy Goldsworthy’s ice and snow drawings, where a snowball mixed with earth and berries et cetera was allowed to melt on a piece of watercolour paper, the drawing being the patterns left after evaporation.
As a writer and editor of books, I aim to make books which will be treated with care and respect, and treat my own books thus, sometimes writing in them, but otherwise being loath to alter or amend them. I enjoyed this opportunity to sidestep that attitude and to alter a book physically, messily, playfully and unpredictably, nonetheless remaining true, I hope, to some of the ideas contained within it.
The four liquids have been added as follows:
p.78, Virgin and Child - apple juice “The apple symbolizes death...”
p. 103, A group of vegetables, including pumpkins, artichokes, asparagus, sweetcorn, carrots and parsnips - carrot juice
p.224, Autumn - red wine “The subjects, especially... wine-making for Autumn are well known from engravings...”
p. 243, Chained flask, brown teapot and globe; and teapot, ginger jar and slave candlestick - black tea
email : kencockburn@blueyonder.co.uk
web : www.spl.org.uk/poets_a-z/cockburn.html
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