May 3: Nancy Perloff on “Unlocking the Semantics of Sound in the Russian Futurist Book”
March 19, 2013
Please join us for a talk by Nancy Perloff (Getty Research Institute)
“Unlocking the Semantics of Sound in the Russian Futurist Book”
Friday, May 3 | 3pm | HSSB 1174
Olga Rozanova (Russian, 1886 – 1918) and Alexei Kruchenykh (Russian, 1886-1969), Design and text for “Pugal’ k ustam” (“A gun to the mouth,”) in Vzorval’ (Explodity); St. Petersburg, 1913, lithograph, Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute (85-B4913)
Dr. Nancy Perloff is curator of modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute where she has organized such exhibitions as Monuments of the Future: Designs by El Lissitzky, and Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910–1917. Her scholarship addresses the Russian avant-garde, European modernism, and the relationship between music and the visual arts.
This talk comes out of Dr. Perloff’s forthcoming book project, Books to Look at, Books to Listen to: The Great Russian Avant-Garde Experiment. This project explores the hybridity of word-image-sound interplay in Futurist book art. Perloff also identifies a curious aesthetic of “calculated spontaneity”, which Futurists implemented by their distinctive way of modifying the contents and sometimes the covers of their artist’s books. Variant copies reflect a curious impulse to resist finality and to appear ephemeral and makeshift, when in fact each copy is planned and controlled. The transformation of the book, an essentially visual and verbal medium, into an auditory one exemplifies this calculated approach, carefully thought out rather than accidental.
Sponsored by the IHC’s History of Books and Material Texts RFG, the Center for Modern Literature, Materialism and Aesthetics; the Dept. of the History of Art and Architecture; the Media Arts and Technology Program; the Dept. of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies, College of Creative Studies; and the Dept. of Studio Art.
Getty Trip: Medieval Manuscripts and Artists’ Books!
January 5, 2013
The RFG is planning a trip to the Getty Research Institute on Friday, February 1, 2013. The day will include two tours: one of the artists’ books collection, and one of the medieval manuscripts exhibit “The Art of Devotion in the Middle Ages.”
Marcia Reed, chief curator, will lead the tour and discussion of artists’ books, of which the Getty holds around 5,000. Special attention will be paid to the inventive book formats created by artists who often work in other media. For more information on the Getty’s Artists’ Books, click here.
“The Art of Devotion in the Middle Ages” includes a wide variety of exquisite books meant to encourage public and private devotion, such as Bibles, missals, and books of hours. For more information on the exhibit, click here.
We will also have some time to explore other galleries of interest during the day–a preliminary schedule is below.
9:30/10am: Depart UCSB
11:30am: Arrive at Getty, early lunch, visit galleries
1 – 3pm: Artists’ books viewing
3 – 3:30: Coffee break
3:30 – 5: Medieval Manuscripts Exhibit
5:30 – 7: Dinner nearby
7/7:30pm: Depart LA
9pm: Arrive at UCSB
Please email materialtexts@gmail.com if you are interested in joining us for this unique event!
This trip is generously co-sponsored by the Department of Art, the College of Creative Studies, and the Medieval Studies Program.
Noteworthy Book Events in Fall 2012
October 8, 2012
We’d like to draw your attention to three book-related happenings that may be of interest to Californians in Fall 2012–thank you to Harry Reese for spreading the word about them to us!
Essay Contest: Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies
Pages Exhibit
October 12, 2012 (Opening)-January 13, 2013
Williamson Gallery, Pasadena, CA
“Future of the Book” Panel Discussion
Saturday, October 20
Part of the Book Club of California’s Symposium WAY OUT WEST: Fine Printing & the Cultural History of the Book in California
San Francisco Public Library
October 21: Peter Stallybrass, “What is a Letter?”
October 5, 2011
We are pleased to present a talk by Peter Stallybrass (University of Pennsylvania):
“What is a Letter?”
3:30-5:00pm, October 21 | South Hall 2635
From the late nineteenth century on, there has been a chorus of complaints about the decline of letter-writing as it lost out first to postcards and, finally, to email. This talk will show that for the great majority of letter-writers, from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, the art of letter-writing has been the art of creating as much blank space as possible so as to write as little as possible.
Peter Stallybrass is Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. He is currently the R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow at the Huntington Library (2011-12).
We hope to see you there!
Tuesday, May 17 | South Hall 2714 | 2:00-3:00 PM
Please join us to discuss Kirsten Silva Gruesz’s essay “Mexican/American: The Making of Borderlands Print Culture,” forthcoming 2011 in the Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, ed. Christine Bold (click on the essay title to download PDF).
Friday, May 20 | 1:30 PM | South Hall 2635
Aurelio Luis Gallardo, a liberal exile from Maximilian’s Mexico, serialized his now-forgotten novel Adah, o el amor de un ángel in 1868-69 in San Francisco, where he was an active participant in local politics and print culture. Evidence links Gallardo to the popular US actress/poet Adah Isaacs Menken and to the city’s iconic “Bohemian Circle” of writers Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Ada Clare. Part melancholy romance, part picaresque adventure tale, Adah encourages a reappraisal of the role that the multilingual press played in the development of US regionalism. It also begs the question of what it would mean to consider Adah as the first Mexican-American novel: what would such a retroactive claim for a Latino literary tradition reveal about the exigencies of the present moment? Kirsten Silva Gruesz is a Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work focuses on cultural and political relations between the U.S. and the rest of the Americas, particularly Mesoamerica and the Caribbean/Gulf coast. Among many other publications, she is the author of the 2002 book Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing.
February 2: Reading Discussion on Books of Hours
January 29, 2011
Wednesday, February 7th | 6:30 pm | HSSB 4041
In advance of Jessica Brantley’s talk on February 7th, the RFG and the Medieval Studies program will hold a reading discussion in HSSB 4041 at 6:30 pm. The following two chapters will be up for discussion:
“Devotional Intimacy: A Book of Remembrance” by Eamon Duffy
“Images of the Vernacular in the Taymouth Hours” by Jessica Brantley
Hope you can join us!
