Description
By the late 1950s, Kenneth Patchen had moved beyond the printed word and into a deeply personal, visual form of poetry. Confined to bed by worsening spinal injuries, Patchen began painting directly onto books — wild, joyful, and deeply strange expressions that fused image and verse into a kind of illuminated manuscript for the atomic age. These painted books became his most intimate works: not mass produced, not repeatable, not replicable. With every stroke and figure, Patchen rejected commercialism, embraced the handmade, and elevated his artists’ books into a medium of protest, prayer, and play. His collaboration with publisher Jonathan Williams — a fellow iconoclast, Black Mountain alum and founder of the Jargon Society — gave us Poemscapes, a raw, unguarded volume of short poetic meditations as vivid as the artwork that would eventually accompany them.
This is one of only 75 hand-painted copies of Poemscapes, each uniquely prepared, painted and signed by Patchen. The covers and endpapers have been transformed into a riot of color: swirling figures, surreal beasts, abstracted eyes, and bursts of shape that seem both childlike and cosmic — as well as Patchen’s hand-painted colophon: this copy being number 68. The binding and tops/bottoms of the painted boards show expected wear from its handmade origins, but the boards remain bold, textured, and vibrant. Very few of these painted Patchen books surface on the market, and each is one-of-a-kind. A true convergence of outsider art, poetry, and the book as an object of art.
And here’s where it gets interesting: the book’s inscription on the FFEP by ‘Margaret’ (note previous owner’s name “M. Hollenbach”) to ‘John & Chigiy’, with the heartfelt note: ‘knowing that the best of it was written for them.’ The context suggests a meaningful association within the circle of Patchen or his collectors. It’s worth noting that Patchen’s hand-painted books were often sold directly to collectors, friends, or patrons.
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