House of Books

ARCHItextURE: Experiencing Books as Buildings

Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th St., through Aug. 24, 545-4302

Julia Lehman/City Paper

It could be a brain thing. Whatever the reason, although one form may echo or reinforce the other, prose and visual art have different essences. It's pretty much impossible to track on both "channels" simultaneously.

This paradox is interestingly engaged by ARCHItextURE: Experiencing Books as Buildings at the Art Alliance. In an intelligent curatorial statement, Karen Schiff discusses historical and metaphorical links between books and buildings. Although many of the 23 works in the show resonate nicely with the building metaphor (a popular one lately), others seem peripheral. The artists' books are the strongest element in the show.

Speaking Volumes: This Will Kill That, a complex installation by Carol Emmons and Paul Emmons, is theoretically and physically central to the exhibition. "This Will Kill That" is a chapter heading from The Hunchback of Notre Dame in which Victor Hugo, Schiff says, "laments the role books play in the downfall of great architecture and people's experience of it."

On the landing in the Art Alliance the Emmons have placed a dioptera, rotating lenses which supposedly allow the visitor to see works in each of the three exhibition galleries. The lenses do not actually focus, but they can line up to three satellite works mounted on the walls. In addition, a plastic mat connects two pieces along the longitudinal axis.

The dioptera itself is handsomely constructed of unfinished blond wood, balanced on wooden crutches (perhaps borrowed from the Hunchback). THAT is the most engaging satellite work. It's about Notre Dame, and includes small printed acetate pages seemingly taken from a text on the cathedral and, visible through a tiny window, a floor plan of the cathedral with a cunning souvenir model of it and the word "THAT."

On an opposing wall in another gallery is a photograph of the "World's Smallest Bible" in a teaspoon and the word "THIS." A third image, sited (and sighted) at right angles to the main axis, is a domestic floor plan and a lens with the words "THIS" and "THAT" mirrored.

Plumb bobs reinforce the architectural motif and the idea of a kind of rigorous vision. The plumb bob on the house plan is a tiny pair of scissors. Throughout the work the crafting and sense of scale is satisfying.

It might be a bit quibbly, but one could easily question the premise of this work. A cathedral like Notre Dame would never have been built if not for the Biblical texts which preserved Christian belief for hundreds of years prior to its construction

Churches have been called "sermons in stone," and it is true that in an era when few people could read and write, the elements of the church building, from carvings above the door to stained glass windows, had a pedagogical purpose; however, in today's society, aren't books a lot more likely to be "killed" than buildings?

Books have often been compared to buildings (William Morris: "Cathedrals built of black type and strong white paper"), but, although the Roman emperor Hadrian made a temple to illustrate a piece of wordplay (it was dedicated to Venus and Rome and had two facades bearing the words "AMOR" and "ROMA"), no one, as far as I know, ever made a building in the image of a book.

In other words, I'll buy the idea that books can be like buildings. But, except for the fact that both must be experienced in time, a building is not much like a book.

Perhaps that's why the section called "Reading Buildings" is the weakest part of the show. Architect Robert Kirkbride's book mounted in a vertical bend of pipe is ingenious, but it is not architecture; it's about architecture as a metaphor. And Matthew C. Morgan's 10-foot-tall double-headed model of the top of Liberty Place, Engaging, seems more impressive as a construction than as a meaningful work of art. The reflective surface of the structure is nicely mirrored in the reflective nature of the work itself, but this elaboration and repetition of angled deco-like surfaces is trivialized and confused by a silly fish weathervane.

A book lives as an object. As a child, I acquired a hand-me-down volume of fairy tales, the first altered book I ever saw. It was exquisitely illustrated by someone like Arthur Rackham, but a former owner had systematically scratched out the eyes of all the witches, goblins and selfish stepsisters. I resented this mutilation (and tribute to the power of the illustrator's art) because I wanted to see those pictures whole. Yet, the symbolic punishment visited on pictures of imaginary creatures added a curious element to the tales of fantasy, causing me to think about the difference between the representation of things and the things themselves.

Terry Braunstein alters books, too, but much more elegantly. The artist adds photographs of architecture, figures standing by open cut-out windows, and a seeming commentary on religion to two volumes which were handsome even before they were transformed.

Artists' books usually use language in a non-literary way — or, at any rate, a non-prose way. In this show, some artists pay homage to the magic of writing by abstracting it. Andrea Silver's The Deluge is a series of long sheets of Japanese paper embossed with oversize Braille evocative of drops of water.

In Un-titled Margaret Arnold abstracts letter forms, reducing them to squares in which negative shapes define the sign, almost an illustration of Lao Tzu's maxim: "The wall is the shape around open-windowness." The detached letters range across the wall above low-set postcards of Giotto's frescoes. Their textural qualities and object-nature present an interesting contrast of "real" art in opposition to reproduced art, creating a context in which a picture plays the explanatory role that text (in the form of signage) often plays in a museum. This essentially horizontal piece based on square letter forms is a nice contrast to the nearby circles and verticals of Silver's piece.

Windows and openings are important in many of the books in this show. A unique untitled book of poetry by elizabeth mcghee has a fragile understated presence, its approachability emphasized by the feathers placed nearby. Gray Read's Book of Keels is very solid, but open, built on a window frame with curtain. It contains many found objects, including newspaper clippings descriptive of abandoned houses in the declining Newfoundland fishing village of Keels.

Clarissa Sligh's What's Happening with Momma? has house-shaped pages with writing on the steps. This book is thematically linked with others in the "Memory Theater" section which interpret the house as home. Dan Tucker's unique accordion book Art Comes Home uses snapshots and captions to tell Art's story.

Each page of Susan Lee's A Reliquary contains an object or framed image. The text of the accordion book consists of isolated words which act as titles to each image and form a sentence: "Such simple things make the story of life and death.""Death" is a window with a curtain. "Life" is a white satin pillow. Its reverse contains a zipper.

Eriko Takahashi's tunnel book of curved handmade paper My mind is a long tunnel (one can go through one to another) utilizes subtle light effects. It makes a good contrast to James Engelbart's Tunnel book (The Quick Brown Fox II), which uses an identical form in a cartoonish format which seems to suggest that "All the world's a stage."

Abby Donovan's Partial Translation of "The Overcoat" is reminiscent of scatter art, with three-dimensional letters strewn across the floor and traced onto walls, where it is possible to recognize some words.

The "Book Room" houses printed books with text and thoughtfully provides chairs for readers. It includes another book by Braunstein, offset printed with more windows and collaged fantasy images. Claire Owen's Gabriel's Family (handsomely bound by Daniel Kelm) is a real illustrated story, a fantasy which takes a little time to read.

The attention lavished on book forms by artists is the keystone of ARCHItextURE. A house, a book, a language, the self, a family, the world, life, eternity: all are overlapping spheres of meaning forming a shifting pattern which can be entered at any point. This show is a provocative point of entry.

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Downstairs at the Art Alliance, Michael Grothusen's installation of plaster and ink makes excellent use of the small sitting room where it is housed. The bed-sized plaster oval extends from a fireplace of dark veined marble. Ink has been poured into a long groove in the plaster. Grothusen likens the patterns of its slow absorption to flames in the fireplace. The colors are quite appealing. For unknown reasons, the artist heaped the mantle with plaster powder and, presumably to focus the visitor's attention in the room, coated the uncurtained windows with Vaseline. Visitors have poked their fingers into each.

When I visited the Art Alliance on a Saturday, it seemed more lively than it has in years. Happy sounds emanated from the restaurant and there was a small but constant stream of visitors to the galleries. Good news for one of Philadelphia's historic institutions!