Title: The serving library annual 2019/20 /
Authors: Bertolotti-Bailey, Francesca,; Bertolotti-Bailey, Stuart; Latronico, Vincenzo; Reinfurt, David
Year: 2019
Subjects: Art Criticism and interpretation.; Art and morals; Artists' books; Artists' books; Art and morals; Art
Abstract: The 2019/20 issue of 'The Serving Library Annual' is entirely devoted to the late Italian designer, artist, inventor and polymath Bruno Munari. The core of the annual is the first English translation of 'Obvious Code', the 1971 collection of Munari's own writings, sketches and poems about his own work, published by arrangement with Corraini, who issued the book's anastatic edition in 2017. It includes iconic design objects such as the Abitacolo, ground-breaking artworks such as his 1952 series of hand-made projection slides, and little known rhymes about the art market, as well as an original piece from his "unreadable books" series. In the margins, dozens of artists, designers, writers and curators have been invited to annotate Munari's texts - with a sketch or a quotation, an in-depth analysis, a fragment of conversation, a free association - as a testament to the depth of the influence exerted on international art by an often underacknowledged pioneer, whose visual experiments were so iconic as to become a self-evident part of visual culture, an anonymous invention: an obvious code.
Contents: Aerial Machine 1930 -- Useless Machines 1933- 34 -- Frame As Well Pa Inting 1935 -- Useless Machines 1937- 39 -- Machines 1942 -- Photochronicles 1944 -- Manuscript 1945 -- Theorems 1945 -- Concave-Convex 194 7 -- Plastic Material 1947 -- Negative-Positive 1950 -- Arrhythmia 1951 -- Projections 1952 -- Fountains 1954 -- Theoretical Reconstructions 1956 -- Design 1957 -- Travel Sculptures 1958 -- Forks 1958 -- Theorems 1960 -- Alfabetiere 1960 -- Continuous Structures 1961 -- Fountain 1961 -- X Hour 1945 - 63 -- Cinema Investigation 1962 -- Tetracone 1965 -- Multiples -- Unreadable Books 1949- 66 -- Ancestors 1966 -- Xerographs 1967 -- Flexy 1968 -- Manifesto 1968 -- Semantic Disturbances 1968 -- Air 1969 -- Let's Look At Each Other 1970 -- AbItacolo 1971 -- Yang-Y In 1971.