These visual, tactile and conceptual workings realize in small what the artist’s book accomplishes on a larger almost monumental scale. This kind of material contrast recurs - bite and breath, white and black, lighter and heavier papers, rougher and smoother - in the larger work in so many ways. The close-up also gives a view of the bite of the letterpress in the raised impression from the page before and the ink-filled depth on the facing page. Opposite the insert, de Waal writes, “Your mind moves over the whiteness of the page and you try and sound what this whiteness means, its silence a place of redaction, or of held breath, or of exhalation.” The close-up of the insert turned shows the paper’s degree of translucence that de Waal uses to great effect in his artist’s book as can be seen in the videos. Smith Colorplan Ice White, one of the four different papers used in the artist’s book). One of the booklet’s inserts is a square of white paper (perhaps the G.F.
De Waal’s booklet and the Ivorypress videos further below help to understand from where the power of breath comes. Perhaps the surprise of a long anticipation’s being met, or de Waal’s impassioned talk, or the kindness of the gift created a susceptibility to the raw emotion on, in and beneath the whiteness of this work. And capping the surprise was Lady Elena Ochoa Foster’s kind gift of this eponymous booklet describing breath. Heightening the surprise was Edmund de Waal’s delivering a talk about the work to open the exhibition. In a major surprise, a copy of the edition appeared at the formal opening of the exhibition “ Sensational Books” at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries (Oxford, 28 June 2022).
The only way to have seen the book then would have been to fly to Madrid. His aim was to pay homage to the Romanian poet Paul Celan, in whose last books “there is more white page than word”, as de Waal puts it.
With the help of Ivorypress, de Waal created breath as an artwork consisting of the artist’s book (in a limited edition of six), a series of vitrines, shelves and diptychs conceived as open books, and a reading room. In correspondence with Ivorypress in 2019, I first learned of Edmund de Waal’s artist’s book inspired by the later works of Paul Celan. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Acquired from Lady Elena Ochoa Foster, 28 June 2022, “Sensational Books” exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries.