Putting this edition of 15 Bytes together, I was struck by something that Hadley Rampton said in her On the Spot feature. Remarking on a Giacometti exhibit she came across in the Czech town of Cesky Krumlov, Hadley said: “Along with being a wonderfully thought-provoking exhibit, the unexpectedness of it definitely contributed to its allure.” Hadley’s observation struck me because I have been delighted recently by two unexpected book discoveries. I hadn’t known about or gone looking for either, but once I found them I was doubly delighted, both for what the books were and for having discovered them unexpectedly.

The first, Siri Hustvedt’s Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, I came across at a local bookstore. It had been left on a table by a previous customer and the cover’s cropped image of one of Goya’s late paintings caught my eye the way its relatively innocuous spine, wedged amongst several others on a shelf, would not have. One of my first barometers for the value of an unknown book is its opening line; and Hustvedt’s simple but powerfully accurate “Painting is there all at once” made me sit down. Halfway through the first essay, “The Pleasures of Bewilderment” (on Giorgione’s The Tempest), I decided to buy the book — despite my recent vow (that of a hopeless backslider) to stop buying art books.

The nine essays in Mysteries of the Rectangle are captivating in their fresh insight, ease of language and healthy appetite for things visual. I suspect this is because Hustvedt “the art writer” (she is a novelist by trade), was the unexpected discovery of Karen Wright, editor of Modern Painters, who invited Hustvedt to write for the magazine after reading the author’s first novel. It is Hustvedt’s position from outside the professional art world that makes her writing so refreshing. Hustvedt uses her eyes — rather than the received notions rumbling around in her brain– to look at paintings. This refreshing vision is brought to light in essays that examine the mysterious allure of Giorgione’s enigmatic “The Tempest;” the artistic singularity that sets Chardin apart from the genre painters of his day; and the religious quality of Vermeer’s “Annunciation.” Hustvedt’s virgin eyes are what allow her to discover a self-portrait in Goya’s “The Third of May,” something that had slipped past the sight of seasoned professionals. Her two essays on Goya, one devoted to the artist’s Los Caprichos, are particularly perceptive. Cézanne, Giorgio Morandi, Joan Mitchell and Gerhard Richter all come under the catholic sweep of her gaze in essays that demonstrate the power of writing when someone looks at art for love rather than labor.

My second happy discovery came in a padded manila envelope, slightly torn from having been stuffed through the slot in my garage door that serves as a mailbox. Inside the envelope, I found a wonderful, hard back, full-size, cloth-bound art book with an image of a painting by Lyonel Feininger on the dust jacket. I had not requested this book for review, so its title, The Busch-Reisinger Museum: Harvard University Museums, meant nothing to me. Despite having visited Harvard a couple of times, I was unaware of this museum, originally devoted to German culture but which has since become a museum of the visual arts of German-speaking countries.

What struck me about this volume was its layout, which seems backwards. Once past the forward by director Thomas W. Lentz, the first page of the actual book is a broad white sheet with two small video stills from a 2000 film by Jeanne Faust and Ulrich Kohler. This first plate is followed by over two hundred more (all in color) in as many pages, arranged in descending chronological order. For any sort of essay, you must turn to the back of the book where Joseph Leo Korner has written on the history and identity of the museum, augmented by a detailed timeline provided by editor Peter Nisbet. The text of this elegantly produced volume might appeal to a nostalgic alumnus or very specialized historian of German culture in America, but will not give delight to a broader audience. This would explain the book’s layout, with its beautiful images up front where they can dazzle.

The images in this book, a cross-section of the museum’s collection, will appeal to an art lover interested in modern and contemporary art. Close to ninety-percent of the works displayed were created after 1850 and all come from Germany or German-speaking nations. You’ll find works from the Austrian Secession, German expressionism, the Bauhaus and work from contemporary figures such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys (the museum’s collection of Joseph Beuys’ editioned artworks is the world’s most comprehensive). The allure of a book such as this is its unexpected discoveries. For although you’ll find work by famous artists over the past century and a half, they are not the works that have become deadened by over-publication in generalized art anthologies. In addition to works by masters, you’ll see art by their lesser-known though at times no less meritorious contemporaries, artists that rarely see the light of day due to the narrow pathways of canonization.

It is in this spirit of unexpected discoveries that we are organizing the first Artists of Utah Book Swap. We’re looking to bring together used art books from across the state and hoping you’ll find a happy accident as well. Here’s how it works. Find some old books or magazines that are visual arts related (including design, architecture, etc) and donate them to Artists of Utah. You can write the value of your donation off your taxes OR you can opt to use your donation as a credit for our book sale. We will give you a buy back credit of half the sale vaule of your books. We’ll be bringing the books together on Saturday May 12 at Saltgrass Printmakers in Salt Lake City (and taking it on the road if it’s successful). The proceeds will go to benefit Artists of Utah. Give us a day and we’ll have more information here. If you’re subscribed to 15 Bytes we’ll be sending you a notice.||

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Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.