Poetry of Sappho [with extra suite]

San Francisco: The Arion Press, 2011. Hardcover. New. Julie Mehretu. The format is 14-1/2 x 9-3/4 inches, 112 pages. The introduction was set in 12-point Garamont Monotype. The English translations were handset in 18-point Garamont. Garamont is a type by the prolific American designer Frederic W. Goudy, based on the sixteenth-century Garamond rendered in the later style of Jannon and more recent French versions. The Greek was composed on computer in digital Adobe Garamond Greek type, printed from polymer plates. The book contains 20 double-page Mehretu prints in black and white printed from polymer plates. On the title page, introduction, and colophon are 23 wood engravings cut by Anita Cowles Rearden in the 1880s, intended as illustrations for a book on Sappho and Alcaeus by her husband Judge Timothy Rearden, now printed for the first time (at the time the book went unpublished due to the author’s unexpected death). All printing is by letterpress. The paper is Revere, an Italian mould-made sheet. The sections are handsewn with linen thread over vellum tapes, that are laced through the joints of the spine, which is also of vellum, stamped in gold with the poet’s name. The boards are covered with a fine binding cloth manufactured in Germany, of a light green color, imprinted with a portion of an image from the extra suite of prints in darker green. The book is presented in a cloth and paper covered slipcase with spine stamping similar to the book’s. The edition is limited to 400 numbered copies for sale. All copies are signed by the artist.

In addition to the prints in the book, Julie Mehretu has made four additional prints, images not in the book, that are offered as an extra suite in a portfolio. Three of the four have been hand colored. The suite of prints by Julie Mehretu is entitled Sapphic Strophes. The individual prints are titled Sapphic Strophe 1 through 4, in a printed statement of limitation on the back of each print. The prints are relief, printed by letterpress from polymer plates, all four from negatives scratched by the artist with an etching needle, two with overlay plates made from negatives of scans of ink drawings on Mylar. The paper is Italian mould-made Revere, 15 x 20 inches. The prints are signed by the artist and numbered 1/40 through 40/40 for sale. In "Poetry of Sappho" painter Julie Mehretu has created prints for her first artist book, one of Arion’s most beautiful and ambitious publications. Twenty prints by Mehretu alternate with pages of poetry in Greek and in English. Four additional prints with hand coloring are presented in portfolio.

The new English translations were commissioned for this edition from poet John Daley and classicist Page duBois. Sappho is the supreme lyric poet of antiquity. Celebrated by Plato as the "Tenth Muse", she left a literary monument comparable to the other precious ruins of the ancient world. As with its time scarred architecture, mutilated statues, and partial inscriptions, what remains of her poems are fragments of a vanished whole, and all the more resonant for being so. The only woman whose poetry has come down to us from antiquity, Sappho wrote more than two and a half millennia ago, a century after Homer, but before the great age of Greek drama and philosophy. Her subject is not war and the state, but individual emotion and the enjoyment of beauty, expressed in unforgettable images.

The theme of lost civilizations implicit in Sappho made the ancient Greek poet a fruitful subject for Mehretu. Julie Mehretu is one of the most admired artists working today. An Ethiopian-American painter known for her densely-layered abstract images, she lives in New York City and works there and in Berlin. She received the 2005 MacArthur Fellowship. Julie Mehretu has made twenty double-page prints for the book, to be viewed between the facing pages of Greek texts and English translations, alternating throughout. The printmaking process began with the artist scratching the emulsion side of negative film with an etching needle. Light passing through the lines allowed the negative to serve as the direct matrix for a polymer platemaker. The plate, of thin steel, with raised plastic areas for the image, was then mounted on a magnetic base, making the printing surface the same height as type for letterpress printing. The linear effect is that of an etching, though the print is relief, not intaglio. The artist used different gauges of etching needles so that the line width varies and a layering effect is created. For some images, Mehretu drew with pen and ink on mylar over proofs of the images created with the scratched negatives to add yet another layer with a different linear quality, drawn rather than scratched. These elements are heavier yet and seem to rise above the surface of the etching-like imagery.

Please note that, while the prints in the suite are new and in fine condition, the portfolio which contains them has a few spots of light wear.

___POSTAGE: Please note that additional postage may apply as the book with the extra suite is unusually heavy; please inquire for details.

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