Sounds Wassily Kandinsky, Elizabeth R. Napier
- Price: £18.99
- Add to Basket
Share this page:
- Format:
- Paperback
- Publication date:
- 24 Sep 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780300238495
- Imprint:
- Yale University Press
- Dimensions:
- 152 pages: 210 x 187mm
- Illustrations:
- 12 color + 44 b-w illus.
- Sales territories:
- World
Categories:
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) was a Russian pioneer of abstract painting whose work has influenced generations of artists. His Sounds (Klänge) of 1912 is one of the earliest, most beautiful examples of a 20th-century artist’s book. Its “sound poems” are alternately narrative and expressive, witty and simple in form. They treat questions of space, color, physical design, and the act of seeing in a world that offers multiple and often contradictory possibilities. The woodcut illustrations that accompany the poems range from representational designs to abstract vignettes. In its fusion of image and word, Sounds epitomizes the artist’s move toward abstraction and his aspiration to a synthesis of the arts. This updated edition of Sounds includes all of the book’s poems in English and German and its woodcuts, twelve of which appear in color for greater fidelity to the original. The translator’s introduction offers close formal examination of the poems and situates Sounds in the context of Kandinsky’s oeuvre. Although it was prized by prominent 20th-century artists, Sounds is one of the least known of Kandinsky’s major writings, and this remains the most authoritative English version.
Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist, author of Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) and Point to Line and Plane (1926). Elizabeth R. Napier is professor of English and American literatures at Middlebury College. Her literary translations include Selected Poems and Related Prose by F. T. Marinetti (co-translated with Barbara R. Studholme, Yale, 2002).
“I remember buying a copy of Sounds when it was first published in English, and the thrill of discovering this work, page by page. Kandinsky’s synthesis of abstraction and representation, of sound and meaning, remains an exciting challenge for artists and poets today. Sounds is unlike any other book. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in abstract art, poetry, and the unpredictable cavorting of the two.”—John Yau, author of Bijoux in the Dark
“Possibly the most beautiful, innovative, and influential artist’s book of the twentieth century. A landmark that synthesizes Kandinsky’s pioneering abstractions with his radical sound poems and experimental typography.”—Starr Figura, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
-
Clyfford Still - The Artists Materials
Susan F. Lake£30.00 -
Daniel Cottier
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu£40.00 -
John Craxton
Ian Collins£25.00 -
Locating Sol LeWitt
David S. Areford£40.00 -
Vincent van Gogh: Matters of Identity
Yves Vasseur£25.00 -
Artemisia Gentileschi
Jesse M. Locker£30.00 -
Fluxus Means Change - Jean Brown's Avant-Garde Archive
Marcia Reed£40.00 -
The Woman in White
Margaret F. MacDonald£40.00 -
Our Days Are Like Full Years
Harriet Pattison£35.00 -
The Collector
Natalya Semenova£11.99 -
James Ensor
Xavier Tricot£30.00 -
William Blake - Visionary
Edina Adam£27.00 -
Finding Dora Maar - An Artist, an Address Book, a Life
Brigitte Benkemoun£18.99 -
Robert Irwin Getty Garden - Revised Edition
Lawrence Weschler£16.99 -
The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist
Kate Fullagar£32.00 -
Sidney Nolan - The Artist's Materials
Paula Dredge£30.00 -
Kathe Kollwitz - Prints, Process, Politics
Louis Marchesano£30.00 -
Gordon Bunshaft and SOM
Nicholas Adams£50.00 -
The Gauguin Atlas
Nienke Denekamp£16.99