Al-Mutanabbi
By: by Dikko Faust & Esther K. Smith
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Smith, Esther K., designer, collaborator; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Purgatory Pie Press; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Purgatory Pie Press]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: [New York City, NY]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Decalcomania; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

Dikko Faust is the founder, hand-typographer, and printer at Purgatory Pie Press, New York City, where he works with designer, Esther K. Smith, author of How to make books and magic books and paper toys (Random House). Faust and Smith collaborate with other artists and writers, making artists' books and limited editions. They have had solo exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London) and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Group exhibitions include the 2012 Artists' Alphabets exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. The Getty, the Whitney, the Tate, the Walker, and the National Gallery of Art also collect Purgatory Pie Press. Faust teaches letterpress at School of Visual Arts. Smith teaches Artist Books at Cooper Union.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 4 unique books, artist's proofs.

Media: handset metal type ATF Alfa-Blox relief printed onto letterpress/decalcomania Papier Refusè, torn, collaged flag books.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

"Time is no object at Purgatory Pie Press, but this project was on a tight deadline, so Dikko Faust and I collaborated in a different way. Dikko became interested in Square Kufic in Islamic architectural mosaics, researching Non-Western Art History and Typography, which he taught at CUNY City University of New York. The mosaic tiling process is similar to setting up real type with leading, spacing, and furniture on a press. Dikko hand-set and relief-printed Al-Mutanabbi in a Square Kufic inspired typographic illustration, tiling Roman letters of TDF Alpha-Blox metal type. My initial response to the al-Mutanabbi tragedy was a flashback to the destruction 11 years earlier of our local Lower Manhattan neighbourhood bookstore. Our bookworm daughter Polly and I would visit the delightful children's section. Just days before, we stood before the shelf of Oz books wishing we could buy all those gorgeous hardbacks and finally settling for a paperback Ozma of Oz. Those lost Oz books became my symbol of that unspeakable incomprehensible horror. At first I thought we would distress Oz books for this project. But I could not bring myself to destroy more books. So we worked with Papier Refusè - the recycled magazine paper that Dikko uses to clean our Vandercook press - resulting in a gorgeous random Decalcomania (a Surrealist technique). To repeat Dikko's typographic image in a chant-like keening wail, I worked with a version of Hedi Kyle's flag book. I tore and collaged the prints, making 4 unique books. Several are vertical, to hang on a wall or suspended in a space. One is horizontal and more complex, its torn pages collaged onto whole Decalomania/distressed papers. Too delicate to stand, it lies open in a vitrine"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.