Adrian Woodhouse

Here we have the book not just as didact or entertainer, but the book itself as art. The object itself becoming more important than the content. How to review. Hmmm. The biographical text is a bit on the museum side of things, plenty of information delivered in a very dry tone. A lecture on Egan. But this is the least important part of this book, at most a backstory to the backstory of the production of this object. The glorious plates, colour, and monotone, extracting the most from the lithographic printing process are the heart of this. Most "art" books are printed with a gravure process which means the engraving and printing of little dots of colour. Nowadays the dots are usually little bits of digitally jetted ink as opposed to the old plate processes. This book couldn't have been nearly as much of an object without the lithographic production process itself, a high speed mechanical way of printing that comes closest to the block print used, for instance, so much in Japanese art. Anti-gravure.

I'm a sucker for deco art; Beardsley, Rops, Erte. It always reminds me of the Decadents. Egans work's are full of hidden flowing figures. Figure and ground interchange as the eye moves. One always has the feeling of half the image being off the edge of the pages.

The originals are mostly ink and water colour with a little oil but are marvelously reproduced and become their own frameable objects in these pages, not just reproductions.

Coffee table sized, you would never put on your coffee table, numbered edition of 700, beautifully bound with gilt lettering and cover art. The usual Tartarus cream coloured paper and jacket.… (altro)