CENTENNIATIONS FOR 2022
Celebration the centenaries of great artist books
At The Flowerdew Press, we are committed to producing centennial editions of exceptional artist books, featuring translations that reproduce the original typography and layout, while also cleaning up the illustrations.
We are also committed to making these affordable for students and scholars alike.
ROOM 14
Vicente Huiidobro
This book is a recreation of the painted poetry exhibition of Vicente Huidobro in Paris, May 1922, with English text written out in a digital recreation of Huidobro's own handwriting. The painted pictures were the natural final stage of his experimentation with calligrams, using coloured text painted over naive abstract landscapes to create encapsulations of how the poet sees the world. They were created within the context of Huidobro's artistic movement, Creationism, that saw the poet as creating his own worlds.
Seven of the original tableaux survive, and these are recreated in English with restored colours. The two calligrams are recreated in colours in a way that conforms to Huidobro's practice, and there is a recreation of the lost painting Eiffel Tower by the translator from contemporary notes. The final three lost tableaux, Rainbows 1-3, are realised in homage by the translator.
TWENTY POEMS TO BE READ ON THE TRAM
Oliverio Girondo
This volume is a faithful mimotype of the 1922 edition of Oliverio Girondo's Twenty Poems to be read on the Tram, in form and typography as well as the original positioning of the vivid watercolours. The cycle is a set of 20 Candide-like Ultraist postcards recounting Girondo's travels around Europe and South America in the first years of the 1920s, revelling in the splendour and squalor he encountered in equal measure. The ideals of the Ultraist movement - sparsity, vividity, two-image metaphors - are nowhere better seen than in this cycle.
THE END OF THE WORLD FILMED BY THE ANGEL N.D.
Blaise Cendrars
Blaise Cendrars' "The End of the World as filmed by the Angel N.D." is an artist's book created in collaboration with Fernand Léger. And that is what the book describes: the Angel of Notre Dame shows the demise of the world in time lapse, and then towards the end, describes the angel playing the film in reverse. Leger's Tubist illustrations with their circus poster colours and typographic games complement the strangeness of the prose. First English translation.
THE LITTLE TOWN
Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont wrote a series of prose poems that were vignettes of life in his home town Coutances, which was published by Mercure in 1913. In 1922 it was made into an artist's book with woodcuts by de Gourmont's friend and fellow town-dweller Joseph Quesnel. That edition is mimotyped here in the first English translation
THE MIZZEN TOPGALLANT
Paul Dermee
Paul Dermee vision of voyage as pilgrimage, illustrated by 4 woodcuts of Henri Marcoussis (First English translation)
