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Ester Partegas, Things You Don't Like, cabinet (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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Lugo Vargas, Cabinet (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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William Christenberry, Esopus (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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(Cabinet) (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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(Esopus) (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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The pop-up makes a comeback
National Post
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Page: SP5
Section: Saturday Post
Byline: Sarah Lazarovic
Source: Saturday Post
Pop-ups -- those clever paper sculptures we associate with
children's books -- have been making forays into the art-magazine
establishment of late. Tod Lippy of Esopus and Sina Najafi of Cabinet have both published
examples of paper sculpture -- beautiful hybrids of origami and
engineering. A medium that previously limited itself to glossy
paper, the occasional poster, gate-fold pull-out and a great many
objectionable scent strips, the pop-up has suddenly reinvented
itself on art's cutting edge. The second issue of New York-based Esopus, a biannual magazine that
started up last year, contains a pop-up sculpture by William
Christenberry, an artist better known for haunting barren
photographs of his native Alabama. True to form, the work that
appears in Esopus consists of a ghostly white house that stands
alone atop its two-page base. And, of course, when the magazine is
closed, the house has to collapse in precisely the right way --
which required consultation with paper engineers skilled in the
intricacies of such projects. Mass-producing such a creation is prohibitively expensive for any
small culture magazine, so Lippy, Esopus's editor (and sole
employee), took the project to Winnipeg-based Westcan Printing, a
firm with a reputation for taking on quirky projects, such as Drawn
& Quarterly and Dave Eggers's The Believer. Westcan's Chris Young proposed an innovative alternative to the
costly process of having the pieces machine made. "They ended up
being made by the Hutterites," says Lippy. "But it was Lent, and we
had to meet a deadline, so people at the plant made some ... I made
some. It was truly a community effort." Indeed, Lippy's mother-in-law made 600 of them, while the Manitoba
Hutterite community (descendants of German Mennonites) made 4,000
inserts. Thus did the pop-up artwork take on aspects of traditional
handicraft. For Lippy, one of the most gratifying aspects of the pop-up feature
is that it means the magazine will be a keeper: "As a magazine
project it's sort of by definition temporary art. People say it's
the one magazine we don't throw out, which frankly I'm relieved to
hear," says Lippy. Cabinet, a quarterly publication, recently took the idea of paper
sculpture even further. In its fourth issue, the Brooklyn-based arts
and ideas magazine commissioned five artists to make paper
sculptures. "One artist did a flame on the page, and by cutting it a
certain way, cutting it almost out and folding it back, it looked
like the flame was spilling out of the magazine," says editor Sina
Najafi. Another project involved a cutout coffee cup that came with
"six different shades of brown paper, based on how much milk you put
in there," she says. The idea was so well received the magazine decided to create a
touring paper-sculpture show and accompanying book. Cabinet invited
29 artists to create three-dimensional sculptures for the book that
the reader could fashion by doing the folding. The companion show is
touring galleries in the United States for a year (Regina has been
its only Canadian stop). Each of the DIY sculptures is accompanied
by a colour-coded scale indicating degree of difficulty and time
commitment. "People took very seriously the question of craft that
comes into paper sculpture. Some are very difficult to make and some
are very simple," says Najafi. And so the paper sculpture pop-up evolves from mere magazine bonus
to distinctive piece of build-it-yourself art. "But I'm nervous about being gimmicky," says Lippy. "The idea is
not to make it eye catching but to have some substantial
relationship to the artist itself." His comment is prompted by
another issue of Esopus, in which conceptual artist Jenny Holzer's
artwork involves classified documents and disappearing inks. "The
ink is almost completely invisible to the eye, but when you take it
out into the sun, it darkens." This is not the first time high-end arts publications have sought
to introduce creative surprises within their pages. It began in the
1950s with Flair, a short-lived but influential publication that
featured fold-outs, die-cuts and unevenly cut pages, often adorned
with art by the likes of Saul Steinberg, Jean Cocteau and Salvador
Dali. The magazine was the baby of Fleur Cowles, a free-thinking woman
who was married to Gardner Cowles, the wealthy publisher of Look.
The first two issues of Flair included pullout art and postcards. Tod Lippy also cites Alexey Brodovitch, creator of the beautiful
art magazine Portfolio, as an influence. Like Flair, Portfolio
experimented with layout and tactility in a way that elevated it
from disposable ephemera to keepable art. Najafi says magazines -- particularly ones that emerge from the
arts and culture establishment -- don't create conceptual-art
projects to the extent they did in the 1970s, the movement's heyday.
"When you have conceptual art there's no need for it to be in the
gallery anymore. In the '70s, even magazines like Artforum had these
crazy projects in them." So the pop-up, the paper sculpture and even the sound art CDs that
Cabinet includes on alternate months are representative of a new
exploration of magazines as mass-produced art space. And the pop-up, the most accessible and least conventional of these
projects, is a great way to get people thinking about art. "I think
the original idea was to create this unmediated space for artists,
and [offer] access to people who aren't just art fans or
collectors," says Lippy. "I wanted to reach a wide range of people
whose lives could be enriched by art." But he and Najafi are newcomers to the pop-up world, at least
compared to Joan Irvine, an Owen Sound teacher and unofficial
"pop-up lady," who at countless workshops over the years has taught
pop-up art to thousands of children and educators in Ontario. Next
fall, Dover Press will reissue her book, How to Make Pop-Ups, which
was first published in 1987. "You don't know what's going to happen
with pop- ups," says Irvine. " There's a magic about them, the way
they come out at you." Her words remind us that there's really nothing new about the
appeal of pop-ups. They have always been used to engage open minds
in creative thinking and reading. It's just that now the audience is
somewhat older. And if we start seeing pop-ups of Nick and Jessica in the pages of
US Weekly or entreaties to build-your-own abstract paper art in the
folds of Vanity Fair, we'll know who to thank: a few innovative
magazine editors. And of course the bonneted Hutterites of greater
Winnipeg.
Illustration:
• Color Photo: Ester Partegas, Things You Don't Like, cabinet
• Color Photo: Lugo Vargas, Cabinet
• Color Photo: William Christenberry, Esopus
• Color Photo: (Cabinet)
• Color Photo: (Esopus)
Idnumber: 200501150030
Edition: National
Story Type: News
Length: 1076 words
Illustration Type: CP
PRODUCTION FIELDS
BASNUM: 4297149
NDATE: 20050115
NUPDATE: 20050115
DOB: 20050115
POSITION: 1