Borges always imagined that paradise would be a library of some kind, and now it's a pleasure to learn that Slovak artist Jaro Varga is giving himself a triple treat as he prepares the upcoming exhibition The Yellow Book.
During his residency in the room, Jaro works to question the transmission of hegemonic knowledge through books and libraries. He has initiated a research after which he will present a critical reading of the collections of Biblioteca Pública Arús, Fundació Antoni Tàpies and Museu Picasso de Barcelona compared with references from his personal archive, making visible possible gaps in the dominant discourses.
The project will be inaugurated next Thursday, March 25, and consists of ephemeral interventions in these emblematic libraries of the city, an exhibition installation in Chiquita Room and the publication of an artist's book. Jaro intervenes the covers of the titles he selects. These exist outside the books and are also part of them. In general, covers protect books, literally and also metaphorically. As in World War II, for example, when banned Polish books were covered with dust jackets of German detective novels to give them a chance to survive. This tactic was also used to smuggle books across the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany. But covers can also exist without books, just like empty shells, as there can be books without them.
Here some other stories about it.
👉 In the precious portable encyclopedia of astonishment that is the book Pequeño mundo ilustrado, by Maria Negroni, I came across this wonder. Toute la mémoire du monde is the short film that Alain Resnais shot in 1956 about the Bibliotèque Nationale in France. As Negroni says, in this "true gem of cinema and drastic reinvention of the documentary genre, the French filmmaker's work alone is enough to tell the essential of that in creation, architectural and dreamlike, which is the library."
👉 This is the cover of issue #1 of The Yellow Book, the British literary peariodical that was published in London from 1894 to 1897. The quarterly publication was priced at 5 shillings and lent its name to the "Yellow Nineties," referring to the decade of its existence. Associated with aestheticism and decadentism, the magazine contained a wide range of literary and artistic genres, poetry, short stories, essays, book illustrations, portraits and reproductions of paintings. Aubrey Beardsley was its first art editor, and he is credited with the idea of the yellow cover, associated with the unashamed French fiction of the time.
Although Oscar Wilde never published in its pages, he maintained a friendly relationship with many of the contributors, and in The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1891), he draws "the yellow book" as one of Dorian's main corrupting influences, which Lord Henry sends him to amuse him after the suicide of his first love. Critics understand this "yellow book" to be À rebours, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, the bible of Parisian decadentism that greatly influenced British aesthetes. In Paris, such books were wrapped in yellow paper to alert the reader to their lascivious content, and Wilde was purported to have been carrying a copy when he was arrested in 1895 at the Hotel Cadogan on charges of sodomy. Pleasure, always persecuted.
🌬️ We can already see the arrival of spring through a little and today I'd like to say goodbye with a song that is a miracle. I must confess that I had not quite got the hang of Maria Arnal. Much less after witnessing a rather unfortunate performance of hers last summer. But the other day I got those goosebumps when I listened to her well-known Tú que vienes a rondarme watching Teresa, by Andrés Corchero, at the Mercat de les Flors. I don't know if it was the emotion of seeing dance again in a theater or that the tune really goes deep and deep.
Actually, I had never paid too much attention (what a powerful attribute) to her because the color of her voice made me indifferent. But now I have succumbed to the hype after the release of her latest album and I think Milagro should be the anthem of the astrological new year and the beginning of this spring, to "start again even if the wind is blowing against us". I hope you enjoy it.
