works sited
"LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL STOP PLEASE ALLOW FEATURES ASSUME EXPRESSION
INDICATIVE OF AMUSEMENT JOY PLEASURE BENEVOLENCE ETCETERA BY
DRAWING UP CORNERS OF MOUTH AND GENERALLY RELAXING FACIAL MUSCLES
STOP LOVE FOR ALL STEFAN STOP
or KURT SCHWITTERS ON A TIME CHART STOP."
Angie Keefer & Robert Snowden
January 28 - March 10, 2012
Stefan (1910–1988) and Franciszka (1907–1988) Themerson were artists who made films, images, texts and books. In 1948, they founded the Gaberbocchus Press, which published over sixty titles between 1948 and 1979, with the purported aim of producing “best lookers rather than best sellers.” The Gaberbocchus stable included Alfred Jarry, Raymond Queneau, Kurt Schwitters, Bertrand Russell, Barbara Wright, and the Themersons themselves. In the late 1950s, the basement of the press became Common Room, a weekly meeting place where the likes of these convened for talks, recitals, screenings and performances. The Themersons’ work wears a complex anticategorical truth. It is mostly lacking in that requisite dose of the-world-as-represented-by- anybody-else.
Kurt Schwitters on a Time Chart is based on a lecture Stefan gave at the Society of Arts in Cambridge on February 17th, 1961. Its first published appearance was in Typographica, later the same year. The chart is re-produced here by Robert Snowden and Angie Keefer for Works Sited as part of a series of exhibitions and events commemorating the Themersons'.
