Designblog

click the orange folder to download pdf with all 'Unopened Book Stories'

In a library books are grouped together, kept on a shelf in a line with their peers. Their spines are the initial, first contact to a reader, crying for attention from the shelf, asking you to pluck them instead of their neighbors. The spine acts similar to a business-card, it communicates the essential information on a very limited space.
In being a repository of books, libraries motivate the multiplying of reading. They change the perception of each individual book in perspective of their placement in a subdivided and ordered collection. How do the neighbors define or shed a light on a book’s content?
Content is immaterial information, both images and words need a materialization either on a screen or through print. How do you represent immaterial, fictitious content (a blurb) in a material space (the vitrine)? How does one awaken a desire in the audience to get to know more about the represented content? How to present a book, an object that needs browsing through the material pages to be perceived, in a vitrine, a space behind glass where the object remains out of grasp?

You were asked to select a book from the collection based solely on its spine. Having been given only a short amount of time to make a choice, you probably made a very spontaneous and subconscious decision. We took your book away to make sure that it remains unopened. It will be kept together with the other unopened books in a vitrine in the Old Building for the time of the assignment. Now rationalize your decision: Why did you choose for this spine and not for another? What do you think this book is about?
Write a Blurb on this Unopened Book and visualize that imagined content in a vitrine!  An assignment initiated by Corinne Gisel and Nina Paim [graphic design] together with Henk Groenendijk and Matthias Kreutzer [supervision]

this post is part of he subjective library project "Unopened Book"
read all "Blurbs" and see all "Showcases" made for these selected library books

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The Spirituals of Art – abstract painting 1890-1985 is a peek with a penetrating eye, into abstract painting, with paintings that  has stood and still stand symbol for many radical thinkers ideas, and big leaps forward in the visual. From Picasso to Boccioni, from Malevich to Pollock, this “pure art” in painting has played an important role through-out its history, in art and still is. Follow as the Spirituals in Art – abstract painting 1890-1985 takes you on a photo-illustrated journey. An enlightening text, covering in detail the world of abstract painting, its mysteries, in solving many of its riddles.

“A line is a dot that goes for a walk” says Paul Klee. It is impossible to fully understand the genius mind, its visions, ideas, or something like Rothko’s great grief. His paintings however can tell us plenty of our world and personal struggles at the time of the masterpieces creation, and now, as before the works birth. In this book the paintings are presented as keys to great knowledge (also where to find the doors). Read about the process of abstract painters. Read about the progress of abstract painting through time and the conquests within the field. Easy to browse in, rich in information, this book is a true discovery and it is unique.

The Spirituals of art – abstract painting 1890-1985  is part of the appreciated and influential book series Lacma, covering art with texts of renowned authors.

this post is part of he subjective library project "Unopened Book"
the book can be found at the Rietveld library : catalog no : 735.8-cat-9b