The Art Books of Henri Matisse

This exhibition is held in the The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, it is the first public display of these works in Europe. The exhibition featured four of Matisse’s most artistically significant books, including the famous Jazz, on loan from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection and a copy of Matisse’s illustrated version of James Joyce’s Ulysses. The exhibition runs until 25 September 2011.

I wanted to view the artwork that Matisse produced for Ulysses, would have loved to have flicked through the book 26 full-page illustrations with the text. But unfortunately there were only a few framed spreads, accompanying the pieces from Ulysses were other page spreads from the poems of Charles d’Orléans and the Poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé.

It was interesting to find out on — (www.henri-matisse.net) that Joyce was happy that an artist of Matisse’s standing was to illustrate Ulysses. ‘But after some consideration, he became worried that the Frenchman might not be familiar enough with the Irish terrain to do the job. He attempted to have a friend in Ireland send the artist an illustrated weekly from Dublin around 1904. When he discovered that Matisse had not even read the book, but instead depicted six episodes from Homer’s Odyssey, Joyce flew into a rage and refused to sign any more copies’ What a conflict, wouldn’t have liked to have been George Macy the publisher trying to keep these two artist content. nevertheless  ‘It was a great idea to bring them together; celebrities of the same generation, of similar virtuosity'.

Cover of Ulysses.

Martin Parr’s Best Books of the Decade

In total contrast to the Henri Matisse’s book exhibition, but keeping to the same theme of books, I went to the National Photographic Archive, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin. As part of the PhotoIreland Festival, this exhibition is fantastic walking into the space was a bit unusual as one is used to walking into an art exhibition and being confronted with a few large scale pieces but this exhibition consisted of 30 books placed on a ledge running along the wall. But the impact of the exhibition started when you began flicking through the pages of the books.

The exhibition came about when Martin Parr back in 1999 visited the exhibition Fotografía Pública: Photographing in print 1919-1939 in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, ‘he was left breathless, in a time when photography struggled to prove its art status by ever-larger Diasec prints and rigid mounting, here was a show of loose pamphlets, worn out magazine and yellowed photography books. He bought the catalogue, edited by the curator of the exhibition Horacio Fernández, which was a beautiful photobook in itself, and showed it to his friends and colleagues back home as he remembers ‘Many people also saw this, and it became very cult, with people talking about it, so the impact was enormous. This lead Martin Parr and Gerry Badger to work on two volumes of The photobook – A History which is featured in the exhibition.

Three books I was most impressed with were:

Hans Eijelboom Portraits and Camera 1949 - 2009
Museum of photography, Antwerp, 2009. Small size book with a series of self portraits starting with a shot of him as a baby and running snaps of himself as he grows up. Below each passport size photo is a camera advertisement produced in the same year.

Nein, Onkel, Archive of Modern Conflict London 2008

This book is a series of snap shots of Nazi soldiers doing things that we don’t expect to see them doing attending parties, socialising, having a good time, some very humours.

The shocking disconcerting impact of these photos comes with the knowledge of what happened in the concentration camps in Auschwitz.

Simon Roberts, We English
A fantastic big book of aerial perspective of leisure locations of England. Very uplifting, clean summer photographs of places where people congregates but it’s the landscape and location that are the main feature.

The Clean Sweep

National Library of Ireland, new logo.

I heard on the radio that the National library of Ireland were cleaning +50,000 rare books in preparation for transit to a refurbished store. This collection comprises of early printed books in the Irish language right through to contemporary Irish authors including the holding of major Irish literary writers such as Swift, Yeats and Joyce. Went in to see the process, it’s no wonder they only open it to the public for a couple of hours a day, the person who was cleaning was bombarded with questions, mine being ‘can I take a picture?’ I noticed that the National Library has a new logo.

Signage

Gormanston College, Boarding School, County Meath, Ireland.

St Laurence O’Toole Church, Baldoyle, Dublin, Ireland.

Golden Ridge Estate, Skeeries Road, Co Dublin, Ireland.