 Book spread with title page | |
| Author | Alexey Parygin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Цветные звуки |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Artists' books |
| Publisher | Alexey Parygin |
| Publication date | 1989 |
| Media type | Book |
| Pages | 24 |
The Colored Sounds (Russian: Цветны́е зву́ки, romanized: Tsvetnýe zvúki. 1989) is the second book in a series of four Alexey Parygin author's editions.
The series [Pesok (The Sand. 1989), Tsvetnye zvuki (The Colored Sounds. 1989), Zelenaia kniga (The Green Book. 1989), Moia mansarda (My Attic. 1990)] was created in 1989-1990 at the Nevsky-25 squat workshop (Kazan Cathedral House, Leningrad) on the basis of the artist's own poetic texts, the free-verse poems of 1987-1989. All books have similar format, stylistic unity of design, and are of limited edition.
The Colored Sounds (Cvetnye Zvuki) consist of five short poems and a parallel conventionally-shaped pictorial series printed on stencils (blue, black, scarlet and yellow). In those years, the artist was interested in the problem of synthesis of verbal and visual material in one artwork, so the texts were typed by hand on a typewriter using colored carbon paper (green, purple, red, black and yellow), thereby accentuating the individual elements of the poems. The title page header is made with cardboard letters cut out and tinted with colored gouache. All copies are stitched by hand (except #1). The cover is hand-dyed fabric with a laconic abstract composition. The Colored Soundsis a homage to the artist's book Sounds (German: Klänge) by Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky.
A sheet of graphic ‘sounds’ alternates with a poem printed on recto (the sheets’ versos remain blank). The visual elements work as an independent ‘text’ that prompts certain analogies between colour and sound, with which the early twentieth-century avant-garde also experimented, not only in painting, but also in music. Thus, colour is not only a decorative element but it also provides the main ‘sound’ of the book and adds different layers of meaning.
Hardcover, no pagination (24 pages). Circulation—5 numbered and signed copies. Size: 209 × 152 × 15 mm (cover); 209 × 315 mm (book spread). All the work, from layout to circulation, was done by the author himself.
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