Burned book 1/8
By: Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz
Contributors: McCarthy, Mary, 1951 March 20- artist; Semmes, Shawn, text designer; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA]
Language: ara
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; Future in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Other titles: Burned book one-eighth
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.

Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz is a visual artist whose signature work of detailed oil paintings on rough, cast plaster substrates is held in numerous public and private collections, among them the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Rose Art Museum, and the Worcester Art Museum. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Institute, and the Massachusetts Cultural Foundation. In 2013, Spatz-Rabinowitz will travel with thearcticcircle.org expedition residency to the North Pole for two weeks, in preparation for future work. Professor of Art Emerita of Wellesley College (2008), Spatz-Rabinowitz is currently visiting-part-time faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 8.

Medium: Each object is from 2013 and a unique part of a series of eight; each containing one burned paperback book preserved with PVA, enhanced with oil. Boxes are hand-made by Mary McCarthy, lined with archival pigment prints scanned from snapshots taken by the artist in Wyoming, printed on Rag Photographique, 210gsm, and covered in Brown Umber Asahi Book Cloth over Davey board. Text design is by Shawn Semmes.

"I seek to make work that embodies the viscerality of violence rather than depicting it. Not generally a book artist, my paintings, drawings and sculptures since 2005 have sought to express my revulsion toward the use of bombs and brutality to solve political disputes throughout the world. It was but one step from my recent work with shattered plaster to start burning books. I burned books in many languages and subjects, finally selecting eight: in English, Arabic, Russian, German, and Chinese - all languages represented on al-Mutanabbi Street on March 5, 2007. The randomness of my choices echoes the randomness inherent in all bombings, and in every act of cultural destruction throughout history. The chaos and indifference from the blast on March 5, 2007 in Baghdad was no different: it covered the sky with thick black smoke and then, soon, came 'thousands of small gray ashes - pieces of paper, books, newspapers - floating down from the sky.' After the burning came the need for burial, the need to memorialise each book by giving it its own enclosure, a coffin lined not with satin, but with open sky, a suggestion of future and possibility. When partially closed, the boxes bring to mind the shape of a new book. Unshrouded, the mute books become corpses requiring protection and commemoration. Unable to read them any longer, we honor them with labels marking the day of their demise. As though they were important"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

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.

In Arabic.