1960 --- ---- ------- ----------

----- ---------------- --- ----- ----------- -------- 2010

PLOPP

in my hands

What’s that?!

A Literary History of Wallpaper

E.A. Entwisle, B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1960

---- No, it didn’t happen that way. I found the book, I chose it. At the school’s library.

And not from scratch; the start existed of the following three tags:

- form/content-assimilation

- form/content-contrast

- form/content-paradox

With this background the book that I found seemed a good choice. To me. I’ll start this research by applying the tags on the literary history:

OFFICIAL QUESTIONNAIRE .

Assimilation yes/no

Because:…. The book looks like wallpaper!

Wallpaper pattern on cover.

Contrast yes/no

Because:… It is not wallpaper.

(not a roll of imaged paper)

Paradox: yes/no

Because:… The book shares a lot of

similarities with wallpaper

But if you look at the function of wallpaper, this book is not that different from wallpaper: the looks of the book are nostalgic, cozy, jocular, corny, waggish. It gives a grandma atmosphere: Earl Grey tea, dizy cookies, a ticking cuckoo clock, a kind of musty smell due to the old Persian table-cloth on the: table, dark wood everywhere, maybe even forgotten dentures in the window sill.

Just as wallpaper does.

In that way it becomes… a paradox! (quite personal, subjective, I know)

and eventually 1.

Form content become

And imagine this:

* Wallpaper of this particular book.

You could turn over the pages whenever you want to change the dessin on your wall.

You can mix, switch, tear it (when you’re angry).

* Or: use this text as wallpaper on your computer’s desktop!

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s highly personal and subjective to almost see this book as wallpaper. BUT! I’m convinced that I can give some information that will change your look – if necessary – on this book; to see it not just as a book, but also as a special object.

‘The main distinction between the livres d’artistes and the artist’s books is that the former were almost always initiated by the publisher with often a little or no relationship between the artist and the writer. The binder was only an afterthought, though a significant one as it now turns out. By contrast, the artist’s book is understood to be the work of one individual of a collaborative effort. In either case, it is conceived from start to finish as an integrated unit.’
(Peter D. Verheyen: ‘Development of the Artist’s Book’, 1998)

Ceci n’est pas un livre d’artiste

Nope. The images have different makers and are primary works – not illustrations.

Then… maybe… an artist’s book?

‘It’s easy enough to state that an artist’s book is created as an original work of art, rather than a reproduction of a pre-existing work. And also, that it is a book which integrates the formal means of its realization and production with its thematic or aesthetic issues. But this definition only raises then answers: What is an “original” work of art? […]’ (Drucker: ‘ The Artist’s Book as Idea and Form’. From: The Century of Artist’s Books, 1995.)

Hmm. Comes close. But…

No.

Without putting it in an academically justified box – why I think this book is an interesting book:

External: form/content (cute wallpaper on the cover of a literary history of wallpaper – clear!)

Retro: I know not everyone is fond of retro, but a significant part of humanity is. Take for instance the allure of a personal library.

With a stepladder! – only for rich people.

Internal: it’s almost poetry what has been written in it. Mysterioussszzz:

‘ 1953 CONSTANCE DE PINNA. I.C.I. Magazine (November). ‘Wallpapers’.

Wallpaper is like gunpowder, if you are too timid with it the effect is unsettling; if you overdo it the result can be devastating.’

The images in this book are divers and, as everybody knows: nowadays images work.

!! not too many words! Eeehk! People are afraid of long texts!

fragmentary short

No: short Google Wikipedia internet Google

short Internet Google

etceteraaaaa

Then there is more! What uebercreative mind develops the idea of making a literary history of… wallpaper! Wallpaper. Wallpaper! Not the technical progress, not examples of the newest trends, but a li-te-ra-ry his-to-ry..! Someone has put hours, days, weeks of time in this research that treats a literary history of *tududum*:

wallpaper!

I t m u s t b e a g e n i u s .

-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING--WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING-WARNING

DEVICES OF INFLUENCE ON THE-

no: MY EXPERIENCE OF THE BOOK

TIME

This book is old.

I like old books.

Books that seem to have made a trip to the inside of the teapot of the grandma I spoke about earlier.

PERSPECTIVE

What am I looking for?! I’m looking for a book that I can relate to the tags I chose.

With this perspective, these glasses (made out of the tags) I look at the books at the library.

Differently. Without these glasses I would have thought about this book as a funny, old book;

I would not have given it more than one – or maybe 6 – glimpse(s) of attention.

CONTEXT

… consists of course of the conscious and deliberate context of the tags.

But this I already mentioned under ‘perspective’.

But what I think is more important concerning context is this:

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[unconscious cargo in my mind that makes that I chose this book, that I liked this book, that I saw this book; thinks like culture, friends and other nature/nurture-shizzle]

ZEITGEIST

Romanticism. This book can easily be seen as an outcome of the retro-trend.

I think it appeals to a romantic feeling.

The nostalgic, the old, the melancholic, the perishableness…