Mondrian’s flowers. Alan Loney, Max Gimblett. Granary Books. 2002.
Mondrian’s flowers. Alan Loney, Max Gimblett. Granary Books. 2002.
Mondrian’s flowers. Alan Loney, Max Gimblett. Granary Books. 2002.
Mondrian’s flowers. Alan Loney, Max Gimblett. Granary Books. 2002.
Mondrian’s flowers. Alan Loney, Max Gimblett. Granary Books. 2002.

Mondrian’s flowers.

Granary Books, 2002. Item #GB_110

10 x 14 in., 60 pp., paper over boards, slipcase. 

“I am committed to the Buddhist idea of the ‘not self’ and in that sense, I try to suspend judgment, and ‘float.’”
–Max Gimblett

This project, which takes inspiration from Piet Mondrian’s early, somewhat figurative work, unfolds around Max Gimblett’s blazing kaleidoscopic watercolor spreads. The images in Mondrian’s flowers bear a powerful relationship to Loney’s poems; they are decidedly non-narrative but reveal a subtle family resemblance to the writing. Alan Loney, who notes that “Nothing is so sacred and despicable that it cannot, at some time, be uttered as poetry” has composed a text which is a lyrical and lucid counter meditation to the detonating images. Mondrian’s flowers is paradoxically restrained and untamed, figurative and abstract, energized, almost electric, but simultaneously governed by refined language, careful reflection, and balanced Zen-like composition, demonstrating a true exploration of aesthetic relations.

The book includes three long poems and five page-spread images, four of which are exceptional monoprints made by Ruth Lingen in New York City. The fifth and final image in the book is an original page-spread watercolor drawing by Gimblett, each one unique. The typographic design was initiated by Loney, an accomplished and highly respected designer and printer in his own right, and refined in cooperation with Inge Bruggeman who made plates and printed the text on Hahnemule Copperplate paper by hand at Textura Letterpress in Portland, Oregon.

Mondrian’s flowers is bound in printed red Barcelona paper over boards with bright blue Barcelona endpapers and features an exposed binding which incorporates yellow, red, white, black and blue papers in a nod to Piet Mondrian’s abstract work. The bindings were made by Judith Ivry in New York. The book is housed in a stamped black cloth-covered slipcase. This is from an edition of 41 copies, of which 16 are hors commerce and 25 are for sale; each signed by author and artist. Out-of-print. This is letter O. Fine.




ABOUT ALAN LONEY


Pictured: cover and four page spreads.

Out of Stock