n°53 — Photobook: The New Face of Photophilia. Author: Clément Chéroux + book selection with Théophile Calot
April 2025
n°53 — Photobook: The New Face of Photophilia. Author: Clément Chéroux + book selection with Théophile Calot
April 2025
n°25 — Exhibition views? Jonathan Monk. Author: Remi Parcollet
Author: Remi Parcollet
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
24th October 2020
ISBN: 979-10-95991-17-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Author: Remi Parcollet
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
24th October 2020
ISBN: 979-10-95991-17-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Photographs of works of art in an exhibition or studio setting, enlarged to the size of the wall, have become an essential and increasingly systematic element of contemporary museography. The institutional curator accompanied by his or her set designer, and the independent curator, both use them as much to recontextualize works as for their aesthetic qualities as documentary images that have become immersive and reflexive.
The obviously richer relationship that artists have with these unique images reveals in various ways what is currently at stake in the act of exhibiting.
To create a kind of retrospective of his work, in 2016 Johnathan Monk debuted a series of exhibitions entitled Exhibit Model*, which consisted of covering the walls of the exhibition space with archive photographs that documented his work in different contexts over the last 20 years. Marie J. Jean considers these staged exhibition views as a form of augmented reality: “This manner of considering the exhibition, in other words, of exhibiting the work along with the context of its appearance, reminds us that the work of art “is a place”, “establishes a place”, is “a has taken place**”.
However for Johnathan Monk, who often uses the work of other artists, isn’t it simply a way in which to appropriate his own work?”
Jonathan Monk, «Exhibit Model Four», 2019 Kindl, Berlin. Photographie: Jens Ziehe. A1 format poster printed in CMYK on blue back paper
n°18 — A studio visit: Ines Cox. Authors: Manon Bruet and Julia Andréone
Author: Manon Bruet
Photos: Julia Andréone
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK+1PMS
17 December 2019
ISBN: 979-10-95991-15-1
ISSN: 2558-2062
Author: Manon Bruet
Photos: Julia Andréone
20 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK+1PMS
17 December 2019
ISBN: 979-10-95991-15-1
ISSN: 2558-2062
Three women walk into a bar. The first lives in a large apartment in Anvers, Belgium. The second is an independent Graphic Designer who founded her own studio. The third is an avatar—you might even know her—with a certain interest in creative processes, their interfaces, and their vocabularies. Together, they eat some pistachio nuts, order vodka, and are not at all sure about getting up the next day to teach at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. But together, more than anything else, they form the troubling multiple personality of Ines Cox, a Belgian Graphic Designer who met Julia Andréone and Manon Bruet in her studio in June 2019. An opportunity to develop a narrative driven by three voices and to trace the outline of a path, a practice, and a figure.
n°23 — Jan Tschichold: The Master approving of his own work. Author: Žiga Testen
Author: Žiga Testen
24 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
9 September 2020
ISBN: 979-10-95991-17-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Author: Žiga Testen
24 pages, 21 × 29,7 cm, CMYK
9 September 2020
ISBN: 979-10-95991-17-5
ISSN: 2558-2062
Design history as an independent discipline and field of study appears to be in trouble. Design historians complain about its diminishing influence within universities due to the ongoing instrumentalisation of higher education. The Eurocentric canon built upon values and methods adopted from art and architecture history has been contested by decolonial theories. And finally, it appears that the trust in the institution of ‘history’ itself and its meta-narratives has eroded.
A discipline that was once considered to provide reflection on what came before and guidance on what could come to be—under the auspice of a grand narrative of continuous progress—has been replaced by modest narratives, social anthropologies, and claims of the ‘end of history’.
In this article, I rummage through the ruins of design history and try to unpack what it was that we once considered design history and our design history canon, how we wrote about it and to what end. In particular, I focus on this one image: a portrait photograph of a well-known historical figure, the designer and typographer Jan Tschichold. How is it used? And what stories do we tell about it?