Art at the Taylorian

Le Livre d’Artiste: The W.J. Strachan Collection of Artists’ Books

The W.J. Strachan Collection is a collection of livres d’artiste, or artists’ books, that was donated to the Taylor Institution Library by the eponymous W.J. Strachan, who devoted much of his life and career to the collection, exhibition and study of 20th century artists’ books designed and created in France. Strachan was able to travel to Paris and witness the production of these works by artists, and published extensively on the subject. Today, the collection is housed at the Sackler Library, with selected pieces intermittently displayed at the Taylorian. Several graduate library trainees as well as other staff members at both libraries have undertaken project work on the collection, and have written on particular works or associated events; you can read about these on the Taylorian Blog (search using keywords artists’ books or livres d’artiste).

Artists’ books are interesting materials with a fascinating history. The simplest way to describe an artist’s book is that it is a work of art that utilises the form of a book. Stephen Bury, in his publication Artists’ Books: The Book As a Work of Art, 1963–1995^[1], defines them as “books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself.” Each work is an original hand-produced piece of art which, while issued as a limited, often signed edition, has not undergone mass publication, unlike other “book-like objects.” A collection of artists’ books may include, as the W.J. Strachan Collection does, essais, or preliminary drafts and experimental pieces that the artist creates before he/she decides on the form of the final work. See, for example, Mario Prassinos’s many versions of the bird that is the subject of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven.

Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven. Illustrated by Mario Prassinos (Paris: P. Vorms, 1952).

At the risk of being philosophical, what does it mean to be “a book-like object”? What features may an artist’s book have that would class it as such? Firstly, we should consider the physical form or structure that the work takes. Several of the works in the collection take the form of the codex, that is to say leaves of paper put together so that the pages can be turned and read in a particular order, much like the traditional book. Crucially, though, the leaves in Artists’ Books are typically gathered rather than bound – meaning that the leaves are not sewn, glued, or otherwise fixed in place, unlike a traditional book. (The final form of the book was usually determined by the owner, who would commission the binding.) Given this the W.J. Strachan collection also contains several incomplete artists’ books in which we have just a handful or even single page as that was as much as Strachan was able to collect.

Secondly, the idea of the book is inextricably linked to the idea of text, and the artist’s book is no exception to this. A key feature of the artist’s book is that it exemplifies a coupling of printed text and original images created by an artist, with the printed text (sometimes original, on other occasions a ‘classic’ work) in and of itself forming a part of the artwork as a whole.

William Shakespeare. La Tempête. Illustrated by Léonor Fini (Paris: Aux dépens d’un amateur, 1965).

As an art form, the livre d’artiste type has a storied history, spanning at least a century and incorporating multiple art movements ranging from Cubism to art informel. The following is only a brief overview. Artists have long been party to the process of bookmaking, as anyone who is familiar with medieval manuscripts will attest.

Dante Alighieri. Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XV, illustrated by Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1485). Facsimile in Zeichnungen von Sandro Botticelli zu Dantes Goettlicher Komoedie: nach den Originalen im K. Kupferstichkabinett zu Berlin (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1887) Taylor Institution Library: REP.X.55 (plates)

William Blake. Le Mariage du Ciel & de l’Enfer. Illustrated by Yves Charnay (Paris: Les Impénitents, 1965).

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794 edition) is often cited as the earliest direct antecedent of the modern artist’s book.^[2]This is the first work which demonstrates the twin concepts of integration of text, image and form, coupled with the principle of limited distribution, which remain funda-mental aspects of the artist’s book to this day. Blake is also represented in the Strachan Collection: Le Mariage du Ciel & de l’Enfer (illustrated by Yves Charnay, 1965). We can see 20th century examples of the livre d’artiste form produced as part of pre- and post-war avant garde movements^[2].

The 1950s and 1960s – the ages of surrealism and pop-art – bring with them a new wave of artists’ books, radically different from the livre d’artiste interpretation; Dieter Roth, whose works systematically deconstructed the form of the book, along with his US counterpart Ed Ruscha (for example in his Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1996), are credited with defining the modern artist’s book^[2]. The climate of social and political activism of the late 1960s and 1970s gave rise to the phenomenon of independently published works providing a forum for artists denied access to traditional gallery and museum establishments^[2].Artists’ books were central to the development of conceptual art in the 1970s, and contemporary post-conceptual artists have made them an important element of their practice.

The W.J. Strachan Collection contains over 200 works in varying print media, from lithographs to etchings, and in varying stages of completion. Given the provenance of the collection, it is not surprising that the texts mostly comprise a wide variety of French literary works. These range from medieval texts such as Aucassin et Nicolette (illustrated by Walter Spitzer, 1961) to well-known authors such as Gide, Rabelais and Racine, to more modern texts such as Marguerite Yourcenar’s Alexis ou Le traité du vain combat (illustrated by Salvador Dalí).

Aeschylus. Agamemnon. Illustrated by Abram Krol (Paris: Krol, 1965).

However, we can also find translations into French of passages from the Bible, such as the description of the Apocalypse in the Gospel of John; Classical texts such as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon; and translations of foreign language texts including Shakespeare’s Macbeth (illustrated by Marcel Gromaire, 1958) and Lewis Carroll’s Chiméra (illustrated by Mario Avati, 1955). Hence scholars interested in the artistic interpretation of French and other literary texts will find this collection well worth a look. If you want to know more, you can start with Strachan’s own catalogue of his collection (1987).

Erin McNulty (Graduate Trainee 2019-2020, Sackler Library)

References & Further Reading

Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook (Rochester: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985).

W.J. Strachan. Le livre d’artiste: a catalogue of the W.J. Strachan gift to the Taylor Institution (Oxford, 1987)

^[1] Bury, S., 1995. Artists’ books: the book as a work of art, 1963-1995.

^[2]Drucker, J., 1995. The century of artists’ books.

Tracing Voltaire’s Built History: A Closer Look at Works on Paper from the Taylorian’s Collections

Amongst the more than 50 works of art now represented on this site are prints, drawings, posters, and watercolour paintings which form a varied collection of works on paper. In many respects this collection is a refreshing contrast to the Taylorian’s more staid, albeit imposing, paintings and sculptures that perhaps too easily enable a ‘great man’ approach to the study of history. Digitally gathered here, it is possible to appreciate how the works on paper collection facilitates a balanced study. Mediums in the collection range from fine engravings and commercially produced prints to watercolors and drawings, some of which are by women and non-white artists, covering subjects that range from a 1921 Dada exhibition to academics associated with the Taylorian.

The collection also contains a number of architectural studies, some of which depict the Taylorian’s history, reflecting a time within living history when grass covered the Ashmolean forecourt and different sculptures sat atop the Main Reading Room’s mantlepiece.

The rest of the architectural works in the collection pertain to François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), an indication, perhaps, of the Taylorian’s strength in French literary and visual culture. I was drawn to look into these further as they provide an opportunity to examine Voltaire’s adult life through the great châteaux associated with his later years. The first of these works, a painting by early 19th century artist Jean-Antoine Linck, depicts Voltaire’s home, Les Délices in Geneva, where he lived from 1755 to 1760. Titled O maison d’Aristippe! ó jardins d’Epicure! in reference to Voltaire’s 1755 ode, the work was given to the Taylorian by American professor of French and Voltaire specialist, George Remington Havens in 1978.[1]

Linck, Jean-Antoine. O maison d’Aristippe! ó jardins d’Epicure! c. 1770-1843. Watercolour. Taylor Institution Library Collection, University of Oxford.

Linck depicts Les Délices largely hidden from direct view, obscured by a statuesque pine in the middle ground and cut off entirely on the right-hand side by the edge of the paper. It appears almost as if the dense forest on the surrounding land is closing in, relegating the built and non-natural to the perimeter. Certainly, Voltaire saw his estates as offering a respite from the sprawling European cities where he previously lived and wrote. This work by Linck in many ways illustrates Geoffrey Turnovsky’s argument that estates like Les Délices provided Voltaire with an opportunity to exercise total freedom and explore ideas of autonomy in his writing through rustic property ownership.[2] Linck seems to play with this notion of pro-prietorship here, allowing the boundaries between the natural world and Les Délices to blur, as manicured shrubbery battles the vines that encroach on the entry steps and the dense forest which surrounds the home casts a long shadow across the front lawn.

Voltaire left Les Délices and Switzerland in 1760 for Ferney where he built a grand château and surrounding estate just across the French border. The Taylorian’s works on paper collection contains both a drawing and a lithograph of this château, showing its 18th century grandeur. These works may have joined the collection following the establishment of the Voltaire Reading Room, formed following a donation to the university by Theodore Besterman, a scholar of Voltaire and founder of the Institut et Musée Voltaire at Les Délices. The first of these, a drawing by Sir Thomas Phillips (1792-1872), prolific English antiquarian and book collector, dates either from his August 1823 visit to France or to his childhood, as is written on the verso.

Phillipps, Sir Thomas. West Front of Ferney. Early 19th century. Drawing. Taylor Institution Library, University of Oxford.

The work itself reveals a trajectory of reproduction tracing back to an original drawing of Ferney by Louis Signy (fl. 1768-82) in c.1769, engraved shortly thereafter by L.M.Y Quéverdo (b.1788). Voltaire himself describes Signy as “un prodige de l’art” [an art prodigy] saying that his prints of Ferney and Les Délices were “un honneur que ni elles ni moi ne méritons” [an honour that neither they nor I deserve] and that “vos dessins dureront plus que mes maisons” [your designs will outlast my homes]. [3] This is not the case in regard to Ferney, however, which remains very much intact and can be toured virtually here. Sir Thomas’s drawing of Ferney indicates a memorializing of Voltaire’s estates as he knew them, and although his work closely mirrors Signy’s original, the composition lends itself particularly well to the medium of printing where the château and mountain range can be appreciated in more precise detail.

Pernot, François Alexandre. Château de Voltaire à Ferney. early 19th century. Lithograph. Taylor Institution Library Collection, University of Oxford.

The other work in the collection depicting Voltaire’s château at Ferney is by the French painter and draughtsman François Alexandre Pernot (1793-1865). The composition of this lithograph allows the nearby lake and trees to fill the foreground, thereby emphasizing the picturesque landscape which surrounds the château and stretches beyond its stone boundary wall. Pernot also includes the figure of a man, almost certainly Voltaire himself, standing with book in hand as if surveying his estate. While the inscription that accompanies the lithograph clearly labels the work as the “Château de Voltaire à Ferney” it also includes the text which Voltaire had carved above the doorway of his former apartments at the Château de Cirey where he lived prior to Les Délices and Ferney.

It reads:

“Asile des beaux arts, solitude où mon cœur
Est toujours occupé dans une paix profonde,
C’est vous qui donnez le bonheur
Que promettait en vain le monde.”[4]

– Voltaire, 1744

English translation:

Refuge of fine art, solitude where my heart
Is always busy in deep peace
It is you who gives the happiness
That the world promised in vain.

Ultimately, although this praise for a house which offers “le bonheur que promettait en vain le monde” is not in reference to Ferney at all, Pernot’s inclusion of this annotation alongside his lithograph nonetheless serves to underline the consistent enjoyment and rural solitude that Voltaire’s châteaux granted him through his later years.

– Madeleine Ahern (Graduate Trainee 2019-2020, Taylor Institution Library)

Works Cited

Cronk, Nicholas. Voltaire: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Desnoiresterres, Gustave Le Brisoys. Iconographie Voltairienne. Geneva: Slatkine, 1970.

Geoffrey Turnovsky. “The making of a name: a life of Voltaire.” The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire, ed. Nicholas Cronk. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 17-30.

Voltaire. Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, avec des notes et une notice historique sur la vie de Voltaire, Volume 2. Paris: Furne, 1835.

Voltaire. Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: avec des remarques et des notes historiques, scientifiques, et littéraires. Paris: Delangle Frères, 1828.

References

[1] Voltaire, Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: avec des remarques et des notes historiques, scientifiques, et littéraires (Paris: Delangle Frères, 1828), 238.

[2] Geoffrey Turnovsky, “The making of a name: a life of Voltaire” in The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 25.

[3] Gustave Le Brisoys Desnoiresterres, Iconographie Voltairienne (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 48.

[4] Voltaire, Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, avec des notes et une notice historique sur la vie de Voltaire, Volume 2 (Paris: Furne, 1835), 778.