THE DARK SIDE OF DESIRE

Henry, Barbara

Love & Violence [Signed — No. 3 of 10 Copies]

Jersey City, NJ: Harsimus Press, 2009. No. 3 of only 10 copies. Hardcover in Slipcase.

TWELVE ORIGINAL LINOCUTS TELL A WORDLESS STORY OF INTIMACY AND CONFRONTATION—SIGNED, NUMBERED 3 OF ONLY 10 COPIES, AND BOUND BY BARBARA MAURIELLO.
A striking large-format artist's book by printer and book artist Barbara Henry, constructing its narrative entirely through twelve original linocuts. Boldly cut figures, faces, hands, and symbolic imagery move between intimacy and confrontation, allowing the relationship between love and violence to unfold without conventional text.
 
LOVE, DESIRE, POWER, AND VIOLENCE WITHOUT WORDS.
Henry's expressive black-and-white prints are punctuated by red pochoir hand imagery, while the hand-drawn lettering of the title becomes part of the visual vocabulary. Produced in an edition of only ten copies, the book brings together printmaking, book design, handwork, and binding as a single artistic object.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: TWELVE IMAGES. NO WORDS.
+++ Twelve original linocuts by Barbara Henry, printed directly from the blocks onto Okawara paper. The images employ strongly contrasted black line and solid areas, with the natural tone and visible fibers of the Japanese paper forming an integral part of their presentation.
+++ Pochoir elements include the recurring red hand motif, also used on the limitation/title leaf.
+++ Bound by noted book artist and binder Barbara Mauriello in red cloth. Housed in a matching red cloth slipcase with inset printed cover label bearing Henry's calligraphic Love & Violence design. Black ribbon pull. 
+++ Large square folio, approximately 13 by 14 inches (33 × 36 cm); [24] pages.
+++ The accompanying original prospectus describes the production as: 'Twelve linocuts by Barbara Henry printed from the blocks onto Okawara paper and bound by Barbara Mauriello in cloth with a slipcase. An edition of ten copies with pochoir endpapers.'

CONDITION: FINE — GIFT QUALITY.  No flaws or blemishes noted. Binding, pages, original linocuts, pochoir work, and matching slipcase are clean and well preserved.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: THE ARTIST'S BOOK AS VISUAL NARRATIVE.
Barbara Henry established Harsimus Press in the 1980s as a vehicle for exploring relationships between text, typography, and illustration. Her work encompasses letterpress, linocut, typography, and books in which visual imagery itself carries the narrative. 

Her books are represented institutionally at the Morgan Library, Columbia, Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore, and the Library of Congress, among others. The Morgan, for example, holds Henry's later Walt Whitman's Faces, another collaboration with binder Barbara Mauriello.

LOVE AND VIOLENCE IN IMAGE.
Love & Violence belongs particularly to Henry's tradition of wordless picture-books. As early as 1995, Henry discussed the importance of place and personal experience in her wordless books while presenting the forceful linoleum cuts she designed and printed at Harsimus Press.

BETWEEN TENDERNESS AND VIOLENCE.
Here the twelve prints use the vocabulary of the human figure—faces, hands, bodies, gestures, ornament, and symbolic transformations—to explore the proximity of tenderness and aggression. The stark carving of the linoleum block makes that tension physical: areas of dense black are repeatedly interrupted by fine white cuts, producing images that are simultaneously decorative and unsettling.

AN EXHIBITED WORK.
Significantly, Love & Violence was included in the Center for Book Arts exhibition Racism: An American Family Value, where it was specifically catalogued as Barbara Henry's 2009 work in letterpress / linoleum cuts.

SUBJECTS: Original Prints, Artist's Books, Wordless Books, Visual Narrative, Contemporary Printmaking, Book Arts, Pochoir, Okawara Paper, Fine Press Books, American Book Arts. Linocuts, Printmaking.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE: Center for Book Arts Exhibition Catalog ('Racism: An American Family Value', 2009); Morgan Library & Museum Harsimus Press Records.

Item #22467

Price: $1,850.00