Géricault's Severed Limbs Paintings
Jason Dewinetz
¶ A long poem based on the French Romantic artist Theodore Géricault and the figural studies leading to his famous painting "The Raft of the Medusa" of the early 19th century. Blending and drifting between biographical and historical research on the painter and the present day narrator's own exploration of the artist's disturbing process, Dewinetz writes an examination of intimacy and obsession, working towards an understanding of the conflict between desire and possession, both of beauty and of knowledge.
¶ This new edition includes a variety of extracts from art history texts to provide context for the poem, as well as two line-illustrations printed from polymer, and two full colour reproductions of the paintings produced with an archival Epson printer.
“Dewinetz is a scholar as well as an artist, and the intellectual power of his long poem is as evident and as demanding as its expression is deceptively simple. He is concerned here to demonstrate how critical ideas can help shape and support creative insights, as well as being vivified by them. This extended anecdote of the creative process is a knowledgeable exploration of the sources and shape of knowledge itself.”
—Allan Brown
Jason Dewinetz is a writer, editor, publisher and typographer originally from, and now living back in, the Okanagan Valley. With an academic background in English Literature (BA. UVic, MA, U of Alberta), he is the author of The Gift of a Good Knife (Outlaw Editions), Moving to the Clear (NeWest Press), Clench (Gaspereau Press), Friends & Family, and co-author of A Bibliography of the Black Sparrow Press (University of Alberta Press). He is the founding editor, publisher and designer of Greenboathouse Press, and his design and production for Greenboathouse has brought in more than a dozen national book design awards. Jason is a current board member and past-North American Chair of the Fine Press Book Association, and is an instructor in the Writing and Publishing program at Okanagan College.
2011
6.5" × 10.5", 40pp. 50 copies.
$150
ISBN: 978-1-894744-31-7
Out of Print
Colophon:
Historical front matter (pages i–xvi) set in LTC Garamont Text and printed from polymer, all other pages hand-set in Frederic Goudy's Garamont (cast by Jim Rimmer in New Westminster, BC) and printed on a Vandercook 15-21 at the Greenboathouse Press in Vernon, BC.
Pages [i–viii] printed on Zerkall Book Wove, the rest on Arches Johannot. The endsheets are handmade from India, and the wrapper is St Armand from Montréal. French-sewn into a concertina and wrapped in a stiff paper cover, the binding is by Alanna Simenson.
The edition is limited to 50 copies, all signed by the author.