‘‘There is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, as I may say from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon you.’’ —Thomas Love Peacock, Crotchet Castle, 1831. John J. McKendry, Curator in Charge, Department of Prints and Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973
‘The primary function of a book cover, whether it be simply paper or a lavish jewel-encrusted gold binding, is to protect the book's pages. But protection is only the beginning. Covers are also used to inform us of a book's content, sometimes directly, sometimes quite subtly; often they are used to enhance, to give delight and pleasure. Covers have been made from a wide-ranging assortment of materials, paper, wood, cloth, leather, ivory, and metal, and they have been designed or decorated in a great variety of fashions. Some conceal, some reveal, some surprise, some detract, but all of them are part of our experience of enjoying a book.
Books are ambiguous objects, for cover and contents combine to make a three-dimensional object that can be looked at in an enormous variety of ways. In this exhibition the emphasis is on the covers. However, the contents of the book should not be ignored, as both are inextricably linked together, both figuratively and literally.
Frankenthaler is a book consisting of text and illustrations, dealing with the paintings of one of the foremost painters of the New York School, Helen Frankenthaler. It is a beautiful book, designed by Robert Motherwell, with a text that is a unique blend of familiarity and perception, by Barbara Rose, who has known Frankenthaler as both a friend and a painter for many years. The cover of the regular edition reproduces a drawing by Frankenthaler, mainly eggplant in color against a white background, with touches of green and yellow. The book is substantial but not ponderous, capturing the essentials of Frankenthaler's oeuvre without attempting to be complete or in any way final; this would be an impossible task with an artist so young and active as Frankenthaler.
After the book had been completed, the artist and publisher decided to do a special edition. The first suggestion, which is a tradition in book publishing, was that an edition of a print should be done for a limited number of copies. But Frankenthaler was not excited at the idea of adding, as she said, what seemed like a premium to an already completed book. Instead she decided to paint a number of specially bound cloth covers. She attacked this project with characteristic spontaneity and verve.
Somehow the very limitations imposed by the nature of a book cover - its flatness and three-dimensionality and the repetition of the format-- led her to do a remarkable series of paintings, uncontainable yet strictly confined, which combine discipline and spontaneity equally. In these covers Frankenthaler's full range of shapes and colors is suggested. With ease and precision she draws on her extensive invented vocabulary. Frankenthaler has said that she does not want her paintings to look like images that have been labored over, and they do not look as if they were. But the ease of Frankenthaler's work is deceptive, for there is enormous control behind those dashes and blots of paint.
The covers were done over a short period of time, on weekends. When Frankenthaler told me this I could not help thinking of Rubens, whose publisher, Moretus, wrote that when he commissioned title pages from the artist, "I must inform him six months ahead, that he may think over the title and delineate It with complete leisure on Sundays." Both artists seem to have approached their book projects in somewhat the same spirit. Three centuries separate them, and their aims were completely different - while Rubens dashed off free sketches that were translated by skilled craftsmen into finished engravings, Frankenthaler painted the books themselves-- but both lavished their talents on enhancing books.
Other artists have specially designed covers for their books or the books of others, and some have decorated individual copies of books with drawings or paintings, but this series of book covers is unique. It is in many ways characteristic of Frankenthaler, who so often acts counter to what is common, that she should make a special edition that is not an edition at all, as each of the sixty-two covers is different. Frankenthaler, like a true artist-magician, has transformed this book. She has made a book on art into a work of art.’