COLLEGE of ARTS and SOCIAL SCIENCES Research School of Humanities and the Arts SCHOOL of ART & DESIGN
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5 COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Research School of Humanities and the Arts SCHOOL OF ART & DESIGN ART AND DESIGN HIGHER DEGREE BY RESEARCH DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ELLA MARY ELIZABETH MORRISON PETR HEREL: THE ARTIST’S BOOK AS ABERRANT OBJECT A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY 20 FEBRUARY 2018 © Copyright by Ella Mary Elizabeth Morrison 2018 All Rights Reserved 1 Declaration of Originality I, Ella Mary Elizabeth Morrison 2018, hereby declare that the thesis here presented is the outcome of the research project undertaken during my candidacy, that I am the sole author unless otherwise indicated, and that I have fully documented the source of ideas, references, quotations and paraphrases attributable to other authors. Word count: 88,148 2 Acknowledgements To my Chair of Panel Robert Wellington, for your guidance, enthusiasm and honesty. To Roger Butler and David Hansen, for your advice. To Helen Ennis, for your encouragement. To Philip Jackson at the National Library of Australia, and Australian Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Australia, for your support. To my family, for reminding me of everything else. To Frazer, for understanding and celebrating the whirlpool with me. And to Petr, for your generosity, and for creating these labyrinthine books that never end. This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. 3 Petr Herel: the Artist’s Book as Aberrant Object 4 Abstract The principal innovation of this dissertation is to present the artist’s book as aberrant object. This sustained investigation of the artist’s book draws upon interdisciplinary theories from art history, anthropology, linguistics, economics, socio-cultural studies, and material studies to examine the artist’s book’s place in art history, its collection and display, and individual analysis. I contend that the artist’s book, which defies institutional classification and sits outside of the canonical narrative of the history of art, provides a vital case study to question the inherent media bias towards traditional forms of painting and sculpture in collection, display, and discourse of contemporary art in our national cultural institutions and scholarship. The value of a critical engagement with aberrance is demonstrated by numerous case studies examining Petr Herel’s books interwoven throughout this research. Combined, this dissertation presents a nonlinear narrative. Part One, comprising two chapters, sets a foundational understanding of the artist’s book as aberrant object, before articulating a new experiential methodology necessary to engage with such works. Part Two, comprising three chapters, uses this identification of the aberrant object to expose new themes and unstudied concepts in Herel’s work. This non- linearity intentionally reflects the interpretive process of circling around such material, and mirrors the way I think about the artist’s book as a challenging, subjective object. With no concrete definition, and no prescribed start or endpoint, this dissertation identifies and engages with a necessarily nebulous interpretation of the artist’s book. I argue that the attribution of aberrance to the artist’s book is not a pejorative, but a positive term that casts new light on why the artist’s book sits so uncomfortably in art historical discourse. I demonstrate that rather than limiting analysis, examining aberrance generates room for contemporary experimentation that embraces qualities of tactility, emotion, and temporality that jar with conventional art histories. It is from this foundational idea of artist’s book as aberrant object that I have examined Herel’s work in relation to the encounter, Surrealism, the visual presence of text, and ideas of cartography and belonging. In writing the first comprehensive study of Petr Herel’s artist book practice, I propose a new manner of analysing the artist’s book with wider applications in contemporary object-based analysis. 5 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 7 Petr Herel: a biographical chronology ...................................................................................... 33 Part One: Methodology Chapter One ................................................................................................................................. 43 Artist’s Book: Aberrant Object Chapter Two ................................................................................................................................ 75 The Experience of the Encounter Part Two: Interpretation Chapter Three ............................................................................................................................ 110 The Surreal Artist’s Book Chapter Four .............................................................................................................................. 139 On Viewing Words Chapter Five ............................................................................................................................... 163 Cartography, Nostalgia, Way Finding and Nowhere Conclusion.................................................................................................................................. 197 Appendix .................................................................................................................................... 205 Image List ................................................................................................................................... 218 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 302 6 Introduction The title page of Petr Herel’s Carnet d’un Malade (1979) is largely vacant (Fig. 1a). The page, oriented in landscape, is overwhelmingly white. This immediately draws my eye to the handwritten text nearing the upper right-hand corner. Written in dark blue ink is the book’s title, which translates to ‘notebook of a sickly person’. My eyes follow the swooping lines of the handwriting, noting the large slopes and angles created within such small forms. The word malade, written on its own line, is smudged. The blue ink becomes hazy, as if the word has been covered by a thin sheet, or rests just under an uppermost layer of the paper itself. The word appears to have been smudged in one action, suggesting the movement of a damp finger. The word bleeds out into the area around it. Malade is disintegrating, falling apart, slowly decaying, and losing its physical presence, as might the sickly person it describes. This extension out into the page makes what was before vacant now an important space that supports these words—white becomes an extension of blue. Focusing on this white mass, an embossed diagonal line appears, leading my eye from the title to the text below that notes the date. Following this more conventional inscription is an unexpected form: an ambiguous shape that is also bleeding. A book is supposed to communicate clear meaning, to be readable. Instead, on the very first page of this artist’s book, Herel has left me staring into a void. The artists’ books of Czech-born Australian artist Petr Herel (1943-) are complex, challenging, and wondrous objects. They have been largely neglected by previous art historical discourse. Current scholarship on the artist’s book is vague and contradictory, with specific analyses unable to articulate the subjective, experiential encounter evoked by Herel’s work in hand. There is very little writing on the artist himself. Consequently, this dissertation not only brings to the fore an understudied artist, but also an understudied medium. It both proves and addresses the urgent need for a contemporary analysis of Herel’s work and the artist’s book more broadly. Using an innovative mix of contemporary, interdisciplinary methodologies and theory, I present a new manner to critically engage with the artist’s book that brings together the experiential, phenomenological, and subjective qualities that, despite being intrinsic to the book as art object, have been omitted in previous scholarship. In writing the first comprehensive study of Herel’s artist book practice, I propose a new manner of analysing the artist’s book with wider applications in contemporary object-based analysis. 7 Underlying this new approach is my definition of the artist’s book as aberrant object. To be aberrant is to “depart from an accepted standard”.1 The aberrant object can be understood as one “created through displacement”.2 It is an object removed from its original context, re-examined to create a new entity. In the case of Herel’s work, the conventional, recognisable codex is transformed into a holistic art object. I argue that this attribution of aberrance is not a pejorative, but a positive term that casts new light on why the artist’s book sits so uncomfortably in art historical discourse. I demonstrate that rather than limiting analysis, as has been the case in previous scholarship, examining aberrance generates room for contemporary experimentation that embraces qualities of tactility, emotion, and temporality that jar with conventional art histories. It is from this foundational idea of artist’s book as aberrant object that I have examined Herel’s work in relation to the encounter, Surrealism, the visual presence of text, and ideas of cartography and belonging.3 This dissertation