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PUBLISHER
Siglio/Smith College Libraries

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 6 x 8.5 in. / 112 pgs / 73 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2014 p. 120   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781938221064 TRADE
List Price: $36.00 CAD $47.50 GBP £32.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

TERRITORY
WORLD Except France

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Chicago, IL
Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago, Winter/Spring 2016

Queens, NY
Quuens Museum of Art, 06/15-09/15

Northampton, MA
Smith College, 09/02/14-12/15/14

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SIGLIO/SMITH COLLEGE LIBRARIES

Robert Seydel: A Picture Is Always a Book

Further Writings from Book of Ruth


Robert Seydel: A Picture Is Always a BookArtist and writer Robert Seydel (1960–2011) often used personas and fictional constructs in a vast body of work that incorporated collage, drawing, photography and writing. His primary alter ego Ruth Greisman--banker by day, artist by night, friend of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell--lived in Queens, caring for her shell-shocked brother, a veteran of WWI. This book collects Ruth’s “journal pages,” typed on paper purloined from old photo albums and adorned with drawings, narrating Ruth’s inner life and the tenuous creation of self. She says, “I’ll invent who I am, against what is. My time and name: a Queens of the mind.” All of Ruth’s works--collages, journal pages and drawings--were purportedly discovered buried in boxes of miscellanea in the Joseph Cornell Study Center at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art and in the family garage. A definitive selection will be exhibited at the Neilson Library, Smith College.

Featured image is reproduced from Robert Seydel: A Picture Is Always a Book.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

The Improbable

John Gibbs

One of the beauties of A Picture is Always a Book: Further Writings from Book of Ruth is that it's primarily a book about process. I picked it up not knowing what in the world to expect, yet found myself completely entrenched—in the best sense—within Robert Seydel's complex thought processes. It could be a result of the mercurial text itself, as it strays from prose to poetry in an instant. Or the superimposed doodles and drawings Seydel himself made upon the pages themselves—made just so they interact with the text physically. Or some strange combination of both. And the effect is two-fold. You read the book, then you see the book, each reading lending new information to what the other reading lacked, or perhaps could not suggest on its own. Once or twice through the text and you will not be able to separate image from word as a symbiotic relationship develops.

Hyperallergic

Owen Daniel

He exhumes and invents, treating style, composition, imagery, and identity as raw material. It’s as if the work sprouts from the fingers of a living reading list.

Robert Seydel: A Picture Is Always a Book

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FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/25/2015

Robert Seydel: A Picture Is Always a Book

Robert Seydel: A Picture Is Always a Book

Featured image is "journal page" from Robert Seydel: A Picture is Always a Book, Siglio's follow-up to 2011's highly-coveted Book of Ruth and the accompanying publication to the Seydel show currently on view at the Queens Museum. In an interview, contributor Savina Velkova asks Seydel (1960–2011) about the productive function of Ruth Greisman, his alter ego and the "author" of the journal pages. His response: "Well, I love artists who contain a mixed pedigree, or who are contaminated in some way, who contain contradictory impulses. And I’m particularly drawn to an image of the artist as non-professional or anti-professional, outside the sphere of trade and the economies of art and product, which is a word I hate as applied to art. Ruth kind of begins in that place—she says, for instance, 'The galleries are made for fashion. Nothing I make is.'" Continue to our blog to read about related events this weekend at the Queens Museum! continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

EMMY CATEDRAL | DATE 7/17/2015

Robert Seydel: The Eye in Matter at Queens Museum

Robert Seydel: The Eye in Matter at Queens Museum

Robert Seydel: The Eye in Matter opens at The Queens Museum on Sunday, July 19 from 2-4PM. Curated by Peter Gizzi, Richard Kraft and Lisa Pearson of Siglio Press, this exhibition is the second stop of a three venue traveling retrospective of Seydel's work. The Eye in Matter originated at Smith College last year, and will travel to Chicago’s Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College in 2016. Scroll down for more information and event listings.
continue to blog


ROBERT SEYDEL MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

Robert Seydel: Songs of S.

ROBERT SEYDEL: SONGS OF S.

Siglio/Ugly Duckling Presse

ISBN: 9781938221057
USD $24.00
| CAD $33 UK £ 21

Pub Date: 11/30/2014
Active | In stock


Robert Seydel: A Picture Is Always a Book

ROBERT SEYDEL: A PICTURE IS ALWAYS A BOOK

Siglio/Smith College Libraries

ISBN: 9781938221064
USD $36.00
| CAD $47.5 UK £ 32

Pub Date: 11/30/2014
Active | In stock