Stones

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Stones

Artist Larry Rivers (American, 1923-2002)

Publisher Universal Limited Art Editions

Printer Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York (Robert Blackburn)

Author Frank O'Hara (American, 1926--1966)

Date1959

DimensionsPortfolio: H: 22 3/8 in. (568 mm); W: 27 in. (686 mm).
Book: H: 20 3/4 in. (527 mm); W: 25 5/8 in. (651 mm).
Sheet (untrimmed): H: 18 1/2 in. (470 mm); W: 23 3/8 in. (594 mm).

MediumOriginal drawing: oils on gray handmade paper (wrappers). Original prints: 13 lithographs. Text: lithographed on same stone as drawings, plus letterpress (colophon). Paper: white wove Douglas Howell handmade paper.

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineGift of Molly and Walter Bareiss

Object number

1984.952

Not on View

Label TextLarry Rivers, Stones. Text by Frank O’Hara (1959) Poet Frank O’Hara met artist Larry Rivers in 1950 at a party given by fellow poet John Ashbery. They were immediately drawn to one another. As O’Hara later recalled, “I was very shy, which he thought was intelligence, he was garrulous, which I assumed was brilliance—and on such misinterpretations, thank heavens, many a friendship is based.” In 1957 Tatyana Grossman had just founded the print studio Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE). She proposed that Rivers do “a book that would be a real fusion of poetry and art, a real collaboration, not just drawings to illustrate poems…” Rivers immediately suggested O’Hara as his collaborator. They worked on the lithographs for the book together—each in response to the other. O’Hara wrote the text on the plate (backwards, so it would print correctly) in a visually integral way. Rivers drew his images around, over, and through the text. Neither image nor text predominated. They worked in tandem, in the essence of artist/author collaboration. They passed the lithographic crayon back and forth, adding to each other’s work. O’Hara described their commitment to the collaborative process: “[Larry] did not work on the stone if I wasn’t there and I didn’t work on the stone if he wasn’t there to see what I was doing.” They used the term “tabloscript” to describe this method of working, “where the artist and the poet inspired by the same theme, draw and write on the same surface at the same time, fusing both arts to an inescapable unity.”Published Referencescf. Castleman, Riva, A Century of Artists' Books, New York, 1994, p. 102, repr.

cf. Phillips, Elizabeth, The American Livre de Peintre, New York, The Grolier Club, 1993, no. 42

cf. Johnson, Robert Flynn, Artists' Books in the Modern Era 1870--2000: the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books, San Francisco, 2001, no. 143.

Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, The Bareiss Collection of Illustrated Books from Toulouse-Lautrec to Kiefer, 1985, no. 75

Toledo Museum of Art, Splendid Pages: The Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books, Feb. 14--May 11, 2003.