Evening roundtable “Artists Approach the Book”

Join artists, scholars, and specialists at the Library of Congress for a symposium celebrating the donation of the Aramont Library. A monument to modern Western creativity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and literature, the Aramont Library’s 1,700 books strike a perfect balance between book design, content, illustration, and binding. In private hands for over 40 years, the Aramont Library is comprised of literary first editions, illustrated books, exhibition bindings, finely bound author collections, and illustrated books by some of the most important artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including: Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst, and many more.
The collection also includes first editions of landmarks in Western literature by authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf, as well as three variant first edition copies of James Joyce’s Ulysses, one of which includes a very rare schema and annotated anatomical figure describing Joyce’s novel. Famous binders such as Sangorski & Sutcliffe, Paul Bonet, and Rose Adler elevate many books to holistic works of art with stunning displays of craft and careful artistry. Making the Modern Book will offer visitors an introduction to the Aramont Library and its formation over the past four decades. It will also address the way in which the Aramont Library’s unique combination of art, literature, and non-fiction embodies the spirit of modernism, challenging historical conceptions about the content, design, and format of modern books during the nineteenth and twentieth century.
For transcript and more information, visit www.loc.gov/item/webcast-10703