Jasper Johns, Samuel Beckett, and others
Foirades/Fizzles
1976
Scroll
- Artist: Jasper Johns
- Author: Samuel Beckett
- Publisher: Petersburg Press
- Printer (prints): Aldo Crommelynck
- Printer (letterpress): Fequet et Baudier
Foirades/Fizzles
1976
Physical Qualities
Bound volume with etchings (with softground etching, aquatint, liftground aquatint, and/or drypoint) and letterpress, case with color lithograph, Book: 332 x 254 x 38 mm. (13 1/16 x 10 x 1 1/2 in.)
Sheet (page): 330 x 254 mm. (13 x 10 in.)
Credit Line
The Ryda Hecht Levi Collection of Illustrated Books, Bequest of Ryda H. Levi, Baltimore
Object Number
2009.29
To call "Foirades/Fizzles" a collaboration is somewhat of a misnomer. While artist and author did converse about the project in advance, the text and images were conceived of independently from one another. For Jasper Johns the book medium lent itself to his exploration of the circular nature of memory. When reading a book, one must always remember what has come on the pages before in order to make sense of what one is reading at present. Johns, who was given complete control of the book’s design, used the layout and sequencing of his etchings and Samuel Beckett’s “fizzles” or essays—this one beginning “I gave up before birth”—to underscore this circularity. In this spread, we see how Johns has revisited his four-paneled painting of cross-hatching, flagstones, and casts in four different arrangements; the pattern used here is a circular one in which the first panel in one arrangement becomes the fourth in the following arrangement.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by bequest, 2009; Ryda H. Levi, Lutherville, MD
Rena Hoisington, BMA, "Off the Shelf: Modern and Contemporary Artists' Books," May Gallery, March 12 - June 25, 2017.
Inscribed: page preceding colophon, center stamped "132/250", and in graphite: "Samuel Beckett / Jasper Johns"
Markings: WM: initials of JJ and SB
