On view through May 7, Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California is the first large-scale museum exhibition to focus on artist books in the region.
book art
Posted inBooks
All that Glitters Isn’t Gold — Sometimes It’s Silver from Tiffany’s
The Morgan Library and Museum continues to spotlight some of its glittering books beneath the revamped lighting in its historic 1906 McKim Building.
Posted inArt
Cuban Book Art: Ediciones Vigía and the Beauty of the Everyday
From the beginning the idea has been to create beauty from that which is readily available in a world of hardship and extreme scarcity.
Posted inBooks
Bright Lights, Blinged Bible at the Morgan Library
The 9th-century Lindau Gospels, named for its former home at the Lindau Abbey on Lake Constance in Germany, wasn’t the first book J. Pierpont Morgan purchased for his library, but in the collections of the Morgan Library & Museum, it’s labeled “MS M. 1.”
Posted inArt
Mastery and Missteps in Matisse’s Books
The Morgan Library & Museum’s current exhibition Graphic Passion: Matisse and the Book Arts demonstrates the artist’s well-deserved reputation of having produced some of the most prominent livres d’artistes.
Posted inBooks
The Iridescent Elegance of Victorian Mother-of-Pearl Book Bindings
For a few years in the 19th century, books bound in covers glistening with mother-of-pearl were a gift-giving sensation.
Posted inBooks
The Lost Beauty of Book Endpapers
Bookbinding developed gradually, with the availability of materials and prevailing tastes dictating the details. One of the more overlooked aspects of book design was the creation of endpapers, when what was long a blank space or slice of vellum was replaced by exuberant patterns.
Posted inArt
The Possibilities of Paper: Czech Pop-Up Book Art
The innovative paper engineering of an overlooked Czech artist is currently filling the second floor gallery of the Grolier Club. The Upper East Side bibliophilic society opened an exhibition of pop-up books and other paper art by Vojtěch Kubašta last month, but for a long time the artist’s work couldn’t even get past the Iron Curtain.
Posted inOpinion
Happy Birthday to a Classic
Today, one of my favorite books turns 200: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s brilliant novel of wit, manners, and love. The anniversary got me thinking broadly about the — genre? category? medium? — that seems to be forever expanding these days, book art, and more specifically, about the work of Jennie Ottinger.
