Those driven mad by war
By: design & printing by Helen Frederick and Peter Winant ; poetry by Susan Tichy ; found text by Lutifiya al-Dulaimi
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Winant, Peter, artist; Tichy, Susan, 1952- poet; Dulaimi, Lutifiya, essayist; Beausoleil, Beau, 1941- editor; Shehabi, Deema K., editor; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Fairfax, VA]
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; Artists' books; Pulp painting; Lithography; Printing; 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.

"Those driven mad by war is a collaboration between Helen Frederick, Peter Winant and Susan Tichy for the Al-Mutanabbi Starts Here artist book project. Noted poet Susan Tichy is a full professor at George Mason University, where she has taught since 1988 in the MFA and undergraduate programs. International visual artists Helen Frederick and Peter Winant are professors in the School of Art and Design. Found text is from the book Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi. Essay is 'Al-Mutanabbi Street' by Lutifiya al-Dulaimi."

"Helen Frederick is known mainly for hand-driven media such as custom-formed paper, artist books, paintings, drawings, and prints that often incorporate the use of language. She also adapts electronic media and sculpture in her installations, and in 2016 will exhibit an interactive work at The Phillips Collection, Washington DC. Frederick's work is included in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC and many other national and international collections. Major exhibitions of Frederick's work have been held at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, VA, Dieu Donne' Gallery, NY, Henie-Onstad Museum, Norway, and in traveling museum exhibitions in Japan, Scandinavia, Greece, The United States and South America. Frederick founded Pyramid-Atlantic, a center for contemporary printmaking, hand papermaking, and the art of the book, which she directed for twenty-eight years. Currently she directs printmaking and enjoys working with graduate students at George Mason School of Art, where she serves as director of the department's imprint Navigation Press, in tandem with her interest in curating and coordinating international cultural projects. In 2008, she received the Southern Graphic Council distiguished International Printmaker Emeritus Award. She is featured in the Feminist Art Base of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Art Institute Oral Traditions archives"--George Mason University School of Art website (viewed June 24, 2015).
Notes: Medium: Pulp painting and smart plate lithography.

"Last May, I collaborated with my friend and colleague Helen Frederick on three invited artist books for Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, the ongoing response by artists to the March 2007 bombing of Baghdad's Al-Mutanabbi Street, a center of bookselling, printing, and intellectual life. San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil began the project with a handful of artists and print-makers. Today so many artists are involved, and so many venues asking for an exhibit, that the works are divided among two touring collections and a permanent collection in a Baghdad library. Thus, three books: one for each collection. Each of our three books, Those Driven Mad by War I, II, & III, is distinct in its materials, concept, and use of text"--Susan Tichy's personal website (viewed June 24, 2015).

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.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.