Fragile
By: Andrew Law ; poem by Emily Dickinson
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2011
Place of publication: [United Kingdom?]
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; Memory in art; School children in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Other titles: Al-Mutanabbi Street book
Description: "This book is concerned with memory - of what used to be. The school children are my contemporaries - the maps represent a sense of place - the text triggers a remembrance of fifty years ago. The paint hides the images and reinforces that feeling of half-remembered places and faces"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"I have been making artists' books for nearly 40 years, although I did not realise that is what they were for a long time. I began making mail-art pieces; sending and receiving artwork from around the world in the 1970's. I looked at the collages of Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornell, and was heavily influenced by them. Max Ernst's books were an inspiration, and I began to make some pastiches from old engravings; the tutors on my Sculpture Degree course were not sure what to make of them. In the 1980's, I began to exchange collages with Malcolm Gibson; we were soon joined by James Hall, and together we started to combine these images into a magazine. We named the magazine 'REAL ART.' We soon realised we would need more artwork ... this was comparatively easy to get ... artists seemed to fall over themselves to send us art. Most of the work was easily assimilated into the magazine, but some ended in the dustbin (300 crushed Rich Tea biscuits). Since the interruption in the magazine's publication in 2002, I have been making my own books. Initially they were editions of 10 or more, but more recently I have been making unique pieces that involve photographs, collage, paint and drawing. I have printed some of my books as laser prints and have printed these as small editions. My subject matter is varied: landscape, nature, travel, memory and loss, and other stuff as well"--The artist's website (viewed June 30, 2015).
Notes: Medium: Mixed media.

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.

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.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.