Grammar in Rhyme

A primer by Walter Crane.
To see the entire book online, click here.

Flare

a new artists’ book by Thomas Nozkowski and Cole Swensen
co-published by Yale University Art Gallery &
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The Beinecke Library is pleased to announce the publication of Flare, the culminating project of the 2007–2008 collaborative Artist and Poet in Residence Program sponsored by the Yale University Art Gallery & Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

The book includes new poems by Cole Swensen and new prints by Thomas Nozkowski. The poet and illustrator visited Yale together on several occasions to work on this project, influencing one another’s artistic process and the completed work; the book reflects the makers’ creative conversation and collaboration. Original prints from Flare are currently  on view in the exhibition Continuous Present at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Flare can be ordered from Yale University Press: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300162400.

Thomas Nozkowski currently lives and works in New York. Cole Swensen is the author of over ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French.

Ripe

Fruits and vegetables from the Beinecke garden.

Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
Photographs by Carl Van Vechten are used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust; permission of the Trust is required to publish Van Vechten photographs in any format. To learn more, contact the Curator, Yale Collection of American Literature.

Tender Buttons

The new issue of ESOPUS Magazine features an article by Beinecke Library Catalog Librarian Ellen Ellickson about a collection of buttons kept by Marjorie Wynne, who served as Rare Book Librarian at Yale for over 40 years. Ellen writes movingly about memories of Marjorie and the reasons why the  packages of buttons are so well-organized. Accompanying the essay are beautifully composed photographs of a selection of buttons. Two shots below have been provided by Tod Lippy, publisher of ESOPUS, described on its website as “. . . a twice-yearly arts magazine featuring fresh, unmediated perspectives on contemporary culture from a wide range of creative professionals. “

A memorial reception celebrating the life and work of Miss Wynne will be held at the Beinecke Library on Friday, October 30th, from 5:30 – 7:00. A copy of ESOPUS with the article by Ellen Ellickson will be on display.

Bonnie and Semoura and Co.

Images from the Bonnie and Semoura Clark Black Vaudeville Collection (Call Number: JWJ MSS 15); for related images see “Ruckus! American Entertainments at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”

Bonnie & Semoura Clark

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Southern Pastimes

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Blaine & Brown

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a chorus line

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The Kentucky Trio

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Mack & Mack

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Gus Stevens

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Icteric

The first issue of Icteric, an arts magazine published in 1967-68 by David and Stuart Wise, who would go on to form the King Mob.

Eyes on the Half Shell

Two covers and an interior page from The Blindman,
the Dada magazine published by Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and Henri Pierre Roche.

Shoot your own shadow

A Woman’s Wealth is her Constant Beauty

Display placards promoting fashions and hairstyles for African American women.  (JWJ MSS 47)

Display placards that promote fashions and hairstyles for African American women created for the grand opening of the Negro Industrial Fair at the headquarters of the Greater New York Coordinating Committee for Employment at 132 West 125th Street, Harlem, New York, June 24, 1939, which coincided with the New York World’s Fair. The placards include hand-painted lettering and halftone photographs of African American women, as well as human hair samples that demonstrate hair coloring tints produced by the Clairol Company. (MM)

Subscribers to the Book of Job

The original notebook kept by William Blake recording patrons for his
major work of prints finished in 1826.

Click here for the complete set of images.

Air travel etiquette

Two photographs from the papers of Bettina Bergery, always in fashion.

A Proper Education & the Death of Isadora.

A postcard sent from Monroe Wheeler to George Platt Lynes,  April 16, 1927,
suggesting important books to read.

 

And another, posted September 16, 1927, noting the death of Isadora Duncan.

Telephone Girls, the Algonquin Hotel

A Carl Van Vechten portrait from July 9, 1937.

Photographs by Carl Van Vechten are used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust; permission of the Trust is required to publish Van Vechten photographs in any format. To learn more, contact the Curator, Yale Collection of American Literature.

Fountains

Washington, DC

 

Macon, Georgia

 

Brussels, Belgium

 

Sevilla, Spain

 

Rome, Italy

 

New York, NY

Paradise Now!

Photograph from the Living Theatre’s now legendary 1968 performance of Paradise Now at Yale Repertory Theatre; ten performers and audience members were arrested for public indecency.

Co‐founder and Artistic Director Judith Malina will be in residency at Yale School of Drama, September 14‐15.  Free public screenings of Signals Through the Flames and Resist!, documentaries about the work of the Living Theatre, will be held at Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street, at York Street) on September 14 and 15 respectively at 7:30PM.

The Beinecke Library acquired the Living Theatre Archive in 2008. Among the largest archives ever acquired by the Yale Collection of American Literature, the Living Theatre archive includes some 300 boxes of records, correspondence, scripts, photographs, journals, diaries, audio-visual materials, personal papers, and publicity materials documenting the influential theater company and its founders and principal figures, Julian Beck and Judith Malina. The archive documents in detail the Living Theatre’s development of imaginative alternatives to the commercial theater, including pioneering the unconventional staging of poetic drama, including works by Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams among many others, and various experiments in public and political theater and collective arts. This will be a premier archive for the study of 20th century American theater.

More information about the Living Theatre at the Yale School of Drama is available online: The Living Theatre at the Yale; a description of the archive can be found here: Living Theatre Records.

ca. 1909

An Ezra Pound notebook.

A photograph of F. T. Marinetti.

A Western scene by Charles Russell.

A score by Jules Massenet.

Oriental Limited – Observation car by Walter McClintock

A log cabin, with Joseph Hopkins Twichell and his mother.

A letter from W. H. Davies to Edward Thomas.

Daily Bul

Pages from two runs of Daily Bul, a magazine produced by the sculptor, Pol Bury, from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s.

Fuli, Kimbo, Saby, and Marqu

Pen-and-Ink drawings of the so-called Amistad prisoners, Africans, who,  after being abducted from their homeland, revolted and took control of the slave ship transporting them, killing many crew members. The drawings were made by New Haven resident William H. Townsend, while the captives were awaiting trial. More information and images of the complete collection can be found in the Beinecke’s Digital Library: Drawings of Amistad Prisoners

Fuli

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Kimbo

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Saby

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Marqu

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Town Tarrydiddles

An amateur newspaper, done in manuscript, from 1882. The authors, Guy and Thomas Berry Cusack-Smith, recount the social and sporting goings-on in their neighborhoods in Eccleston Square, London, and in West Sussex.
Included are drawings, puzzles, and rhymes. Sir Thomas Cusack-Smith was later Consul General for Samoa.

Mess kit

An artist’s book/kit/agit-prop piece against the Vietnam War.
Mess kit by William Ogue Mustill (San Francisco : Nova Broadcast) 1971.