Allan Appel Photo
Verses from the Song of Songs — or Shir Hashirim in Hebrew, or the Song of Solomon or Canticles in the Christian Bible — have been such a popular subject for artists and fine printers over the decades that some have called the phenomenon “Song of Solomonitis.”
That fact emerges, along with 14 examples of that beautiful, aesthetic condition in “How Right They Are to Adore You: ‘The Song of Songs Interpreted Through Fine Printing. That’s the current exhibition at Yale University’s Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, located in the Loria Center for the History of Art building, where it is on view through Feb. 19.
It might take a bit of effort to locate the show. You enter the doorway on the York Street side of the architecture school building. Then you go down the steps to the William H. Wright Special Collections Exhibition Area in the basement. You even have to turn on the lights yourself; they’re off, of course, to protect the books. (Click here for directions and a precis of the show.)
But what you behold in the 14 vitrines — each contains a finely printed or artist’s book celebrating the Song of Songs and ranging from the 1920s up to today — makes the trip more than worthwhile.
You begin with examples of early 20th-century books, like this one inspired by William Morris’s arts and craft movement in England. The idea of the movement was to be in a sense anti-modernist: to use old-fashioned woodcuts, venerable typography, leather bindings in some instances, and even to print some of the books in folios — that is, unbound sheets that you’d take to your very own binder — as it was done in Shakespeare’s time.
They were using “conventions from historic printing, which takes its conventions from illuminated manuscripts,” said Associate Director for Library Operations and Public Programs Jae Rossman, who organized the exhibition.
“He [William Morris] emulated the the aesthetics as well as the methodology of the Renaissance, as if to say, let’s get away from the Industrial Revolution, and fine printing has carried that tradition forward,” she added.
The exhibit has a few examples from that period, including a more popularly priced version of such books created for groups such as the Heritage Book Club in Southern California (the photo at the top of the story; I remember such volumes on my wealthier friends’ parents’ shelves in Los Angeles). It also features examples of artists’ books, several, of course, with Hebrew calligraphy.
One of the most colorful is contemporary German artist Robert Schwarz’s book (pictured). Its typography floats above multicolored and leafy images inspired by 18th-century writer and — who knew — naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s book on color theory.
Of course, for those of us who sneaked looks at Song of Songs when we were in Hebrew school, it didn’t matter that the rabbis told us its eight chapters were an allegory of God’s love for Israel. Or that later, taking their cue from the rabbis, the Christian editors termed the book an allegory of Jesus’s love of the church.
We all know what the Song of Songs is, and the artists do too. It’s a bit of a miracle that this book, essentially an erotic love poem with the voices of a male and female lover alternating in quite candid expressions of ardor, even made it into the canon.
Rossman, with materials from artist Robin Price’s work in progress.
That’s one of the points that comes through in the helpful, contextualizing labels written by Rossman (pictured) along with Nanette Stahl, Yale University Library’s librarian for Judaic studies.
The exhibition ends with Middletown-based artist Robin Price’s work in progress, an elaborate series of eight scrolls, each dedicated to a chapter of the Song of Songs. The pre-codex, or pre-book scroll, was the original form in which the book was written, and Price’s returning to that form sees William Morris’s challenge and ups the ante.
It was Price who told Rossman that the book artists’ world is suffering from a happy case of Song of Solomonitis.
Artist Izzy Pludwinski produced digital Hebrew letters with a curving sensuality to echo the rhythms of the text.
Rossman said she wanted to include Price even though her work is not yet complete. The various feathers, papers, and typography samples on display engage viewers and particularly students with the processes of a living artist. That’s an important point to get across to people who might think a library these days is only a repository, Rossman said.
Book artists, whose love for their work is somehow always evident in a way it may not be in flat graphic work, need to engage with a text that is important to them, Rossman said. That’s one of the reason why Song of Songs is so popular.
The fact that the ancient book has a strong female voice was also important to Price, she said. Price has been working on her book for at least a decade and for years Rossman said she too knew she was going to be doing this exhibition.
Both are clearly suffering from Song of Solomonitis, and we are the beneficiaries.
