Description
By the late 1950s, Kenneth Patchen had stopped treating books as something simply to be read. Confined by chronic spinal injuries that left him bedridden for much of his later life, he began transforming them into original works of art, painting directly onto their covers, endpapers, and colophons. The result was something entirely new: no two copies alike, no assembly line, no reproductions. Published by Jonathan Williams and the Jargon Society in 1958, this edition of Poemscapes was issued in an edition of just 75 hand-painted and signed copies. This is copy number 68. Its painted boards burst with vivid color, surreal figures, wandering eyes, and Patchen’s unmistakable visual language, while the artwork continues onto the endpapers and concludes with his hand-painted colophon. Every surviving copy is a unique original.
Adding another layer of intrigue is the contemporary gift inscription from “Margaret” to “John & Chigiy,” reading, “knowing that the best of it was written for them.” The previous owner’s name, “M. Hollenbach,” also appears in the volume. Although I have not been able to identify the individuals with certainty, the inscription lends the book a warm and deeply personal history entirely in keeping with Patchen’s handmade creations, many of which found homes directly with friends, collectors, and admirers. Equal parts poetry, painting, and sculpture, Poemscapes remains one of the landmarks of the twentieth-century artist’s book—and one of the rare occasions when a collector has the opportunity to own not simply a signed book, but an original work of art created by the author’s own hand.
A spectacular and increasingly elusive Patchen masterpiece that belongs in the finest collections of twentieth-century literature, artists’ books, and modern American art.
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