O livro [The Book], 2014
Klaus Shcerubel
Technique: offset printing and styrofoam block
Dimensions: 24 x 16 x 3,5 cm
Edition of 150
“Everything in the world exists in order to end up in a book.” Mallarme
For the last thirty years of his life, the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1889) devoted himself to a “wonderful work”, which he simply called The Book (O Livro).
He envisioned the book as a textual-cosmic architecture: an extremely flexible framework that would reveal nothing less than “all the relationships existing between everything.” This “Great Work”, totally freed from the subjectivity of its author and containing the sum of all books, was, for Mallarmé, the essence of all literature and at the same time a “very common” book.
The realization of this “pure” work which he planned to publish in a bestselling edition never progressed beyond its conception and a detailed analysis of the structural and material issues related to the publication of the work.
In Mallarmé, The Book, artist Klaus Scherübel acts as an editor and preserver of Mallarmé’s forgotten masterpiece. In a gesture that highlights the contradictory status of the book, impossible to realize (as a book) and fully realized (as a conceptual work), Scherübel produced a “cover” for The Book in the dimensions specified by Mallarmé over a hundred years ago.
Currently, the following titles are available:
– Das Buch, 2001 – Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König (Cologne)
– The Book, 2004 – Printed Matter Inc. (New York)
– Le Livre, 2005 – Optica / Fondation Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Montréal / Luxembourg)
– Het Boek, 2009 – mfc–michèle didier (Brussels)
– O Livro, 2014 – Edições Tijuana (São Paulo)