BOOK:Books & Rivers

From the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BC) to the present day, rivers have called artists to create work meditating on their nature and influence on the lives on their banks. The exhibition “Books & Rivers” presents 13 artists books between 1767 and 2009 that highlight the many ways in which rivers have impressed themselves upon the artistic imagination and life itself.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive

“Books & Rivers”  is conceived and presented by Zucker Art Books in cooperation with the Gagosian. In the center of the exhibition, is the “The Thousand Longest Rivers in the World” by Alighiero e Boetti, a result of 7 years of research. The oldest book on presentation is the Japanese handscroll “Happy Improvisations on a Riverboat Journey” (presented in a reprint from 1989) by Itō Jakuchū. This scroll records a journey in spring 1767 down the Yodo River from Kyoto to Osaka by Jakuchū, one of the most inventive artists of the Edo period, and his friend and mentor Daiten Kenjō, a Zen monk. According to Daiten’s inscription at the end of the scroll, the two friends captured the scenery with his own short, impromptu poems and with Jakuchū’s impressionistic sketches, its production in a format that simulated ink rubbings used to take impressions of calligraphic texts carved on stones in China was highly ingenious and paid homage to the Sinophile taste of Daiten’s circle. In his first venture into this unprecedented mode, Jakuchū employed the unusual medium to create the grainy effects of a rock surface in combination with the velvety black and pure white of ink intaglio for a hauntingly lovely effect. Louise Bourgeois‘s “Ode à la Bièvre” (2007), is a homage to the river which runs through Bourgeois’s childhood home in suburb of Anthony in Paris. In Roni Horn’s “Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)” (2000), is a source of critical reflection; in Yun-Fei Ji’s “Three Gorges Dam” (2009), is a force of chaos and destruction. “Goodbye” (1971), by George A. Tice and George Mendoza, laments for a once idyllic river spoiled by manmade pollution. Also on view are books by Christopher Wool, Dieter Roth, Richard Long, Susan Derges, Andreas Gursky and a screenprint by Roy Lichtenstein.

Info: Gagosian Shop, 976 Madison Avenue, New York, Duration: 9/5-4/6/16, Days & Hours: 10:00-19:00, www.gagosian.com