new approaches to south asian art || susan e. king's i spent the summer in paris

Susan E. King's I Spent the Summer in ParisAuthor(s): Buzz SpectorSource: Art Journal, Vol. 49, No. 4, New Approaches to South Asian Art (Winter, 1990), pp.348-355Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777135 .

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Artists' Writings

King's I Spent the Summer in Paris

Books and art have always been con- nected, of course, although the book

as art is of a rather more recent genesis. The contemporary incarnation of the artists' book dates back to the 1960s, when artists influenced by Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual art began using the book as a place to experiment with issues of time, space, seriality, and process. For others, the book represented an alternative to the commercialism of galleries, as well as an inexpensive means to disseminate information, polemics, or documentation of ephemeral events. Joan Lyons, a book art- ist of considerable stature, as well as foun- der and coordinator of the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) Press, edited a 1985 an- thology of writings about artists' books that she introduced with a vivid descrip- tion of the form:

The best of the bookworks are multi- notational. Within them, words, images, colors, marks, and silences be- come plastic organisms that play across the page in variable linear se- quence. Their importance lies in the formulation of a new perceptual lit- erature whose content alters the con- cept of authorship and challenges the reader to a new discourse with the printed page.

The VSW Press itself has published some memorable artists' books, among which Susan E. King's I Spent the Summer in Paris: A View of Life in Paris, France, and

Paris, Kentucky must surely be included. Every aspect of King's books contributes to an extraordinarily rich viewing/reading experience. Typography, images, paper stock, and binding are chosen to relate to, and through, each other the particular nar- rative of the volume. In an article on artists' books in the October 1990 Atlantic, Pam- ela Petro described King as "among the most literary of American book artists," and praised I Spent the Summer in Paris as conveying "with an exquisite virtuosity of craftsmanship, how our travel can distill a long-distant and yet familiar past from the foreign scenery before our eyes."

The original press run for I Spent the Summer in Paris, now out of print, was 150 copies, using folded, Japanese style, pages of translucent vellum, printed in several colors in offset, letterpress, and Xerogra- phy, to create its layering of words and images. The version appearing here in- cludes the complete text of the original, without its translucency. Still, the book's complex interweaving of verbal-visual im- agery conveys the impressions and memo- ries that are the force of our experience of travel. It's not a quick, but a resonant, read.

Susan E. King lives and works in Los An- geles, where she publishes artists' books as Paradise Press. This version of I Spent the Summer in Paris appeared, in slightly dif- ferent form, in Emigre magazine in 1986.

Art Journal

Susan E. By Buzz Spector

348



All young people wish to try the world and

to find out adventures, but the young of Ken-

tucky do not seem to look upon their region

as a place from which to escape. A pride in

the place where they were born stays with

And so life in Paris began them when they go, if they must go, and

and as all roads lead to Paris, often they return.... Kentucky has form and

all of us are now there, design and outline both in time and space, in

and I can begin history and geography. Perhaps the strongly

to tell what happened marked natural bounds which make it a

when I was of it. country within itself, are the real cause which

GERTRUDE STEIN, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

give it history and a pride in something

which might be named personality.

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at an early age, the ability to adjust to each new place, and

I spent the entire third grade drawing girls By the time I reached Paris everyone was rav-

in strapless evening gowns. The boys were ing about the Manet exhibit and the line was

drawing battleships with anti-aircraft guns halfway around the block. The world had

aimed high in the sky, shooting down planes discovered Manet and my worsefears were

at the edge of the paper. In high school I confirmed when Ifound myself among a

took Art I and made a painting of a girl throng of art lovers, bored with Manet, bored

standing on a balcony in a european type vil- with most of the art I was seeing. I sailed

lage. I started looking for photos in through the gallery of early paintings and

magazines to paint from and found myself glimpsed the painting of Berthe Morisot on

drawn to foreign life. I was learning about the balcony. Then escaped through the gift

art. My art teacher polished her fingernails shop where hundreds of tiny Manets waited

and we spent a week making candy cups for to be purchased, past the guards barring us

the crippled children's hospital. My mother from the regular exhibit which cost more

told me about Toulouse Lautrec and I read francs, and walked despondently out into the

about cafe society in Paris. My art teacher beautiful morning light. I should have done

became engaged and announced she was this at seventeen, I thought, before I became

quitting her job. I looked at Gauguin's paint- so jaded.

ing in the Cincinatti Art Museum. At least we

didn't have to make party favors any more.



learn its systems quickly. He left little to happenstance,

The only hard bread you can get in Kentucky Our acclimation to French life was gauged by

is a package of beaten biscuits to eat with our daily success at the boulangerie. At first

country ham. And it is more of a rarity these we were tentative, obvious neophites, not

days than ever: a sort of symbol of the past knowing which of the crispy loaves leaning in

glories of life in the South, something to be the tall racks to choose. But finally we estab-

savored with mint juleps in your family's lished a routine, and in the late afternoon

mint julep cups on Derby Day. All the rest we'd walk down Rue Rambuteau and stop in

of the bread is soft. The corn sticks, the many of the shops to buy bits of dinner:

spoonbread, country biscuits, fried mush, calamari salad, stuffed grape leaves, a bottle

store bought white bread goes with soft talk- of wine. Our choice of breadfor the day was

ing, with manners, with the tempo of south- a question of great domestic debate. Our

ern life. You'll have to go over the state line quality of life in Europe symbolized by

to find anything more aggressive. simple exchange.



In the fifth grade our teacher told us how The streets of Paris vibrated life. When we

rude it was to eat in public, on the streets. It just couldn't manage to walk any farther, we

showed a lack of proper upbringing. No one rested in cafes on the edge of the Seine. I sat

at the Paris Dairy Queen knew this. There and watched the light of the late afternoon.

was always an abundance of double dipped It's all you need to notice to know about art

cones and corndogs in evidence when we at the end of the century. We saw everything

drove by. Pat used the habitues of the Dairy on the streets from youth gangs to workers in

Queen to illustrate her points about the ef- wooden clogs. I resisted buying arm loads of

fects of years of inbreeding on intelligence in fresh flowers, and looked insteadfor tourist

central Kentucky. But that didn't stop us postcards of Sunday painters in Montmartre.

from ordering hot fudge sundaes for our- It took us a week to figure out that the Pom-

selves. Nor did it stop the row of tobacco pidou hadn't been closed by student protest,

chewing farmers in overalls from gathering but by janitors.

in front of the county courthouse and com-

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read history in advance of his arrival, and came prepared with

menting on the world from their favorite

vantage point.



The trip to the river was a journey into the Frances said I'dfind the perfect salad. And we

psyche of the place. We always seemed to be did, at the neighborhood restaurant, as far as

driving there on warm spring evenings, just we could wander that second night in Paris.

as it promised to get cool. After miles of Purple duck on the green and red lettuce

twisting roads through the forest primeval leaves, seasoned with walnuts and strawberry

we came to two choices. Either the uptown vinegar. Only minutes before we'd been hud-

restaurant, looking presentable enough for dled on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant

our mothers not to be worried, or the dive, window, Menu-Master in hand, trying to

the roadhouse, which burned to the ground decipher the menu that just couldn't

periodically, where someone had been be translated.

killed, where you had to walk through the

bar to get to the back porch that hung over

the river like all the sexual desire of the sum-

mer to come. Someone once told me that the

two restaurants had been owned by two

brothers, which made the choice of where to

eat even more complicated. We always chose

fried banana peppers, a pitcher of beer, two

steaks for $5, and the roadhouse.

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an envelope of the right currency. He made sure they had tickets

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social order

in advance of every event, and that they arrived at the day's

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As a child, my mother had been forbidden Fat arms in Kentucky spent their days work-

to see certain movies. She went anyway. In ing. Always busy doing something. Mostly in

the mid 1950's, my grandmother criticized the kitchen making an endless array of pies,

my mother for taking us to see Gigi. It was cakes, preserves. Print sleeves rolled up,

the only time I saw them disagree. After we covered with flour sack aprons. Working. Al-

saw the movie, I thought my grandmother ways. Not sitting on the Champs Elysee in

could only be upset by the scene with a girl some smart cafe, drinking cognac, having

singing in a bathtub. I was shocked to learn witty conversations. French arms, no matter

years later how upset she'd been about how old, covered by black crepe sleeves, in the

Gigi's dilemma: whether to lead a wild and flattering french fashion. Never out of style.

exciting life as Louis Jourdan's mistress, to

wear elegant dresses, and drink champagne

every night at Maxim's. Or a more proper,

decent calling. Either motherhood or

spinsterhood. At age nine, I was too dazzled

by early Technicolor and the big screen. I

hadn't gotten that part.



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attraction rested, and well fed, and able to enjoy it.

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Kentucky is always the same, somehow. I It was Michael's idea to go to Paris in the first

moved to Susan's farm in Paris after a few place. He was very organized about the whole

days in town. Once there we did the usual thing as he always is. He studied French all

things: have breakfast late, plan a house winter in anticipation and fretted over what

party, and talk about the crops and garden we would do in the evenings since he knew

that year. The day I went looking for old we couldn't go to thefrench theater and un-

photographs at the Bourbon County Li- derstand anything. I barely made it out the

brary, it was so hot all we could do was rush door with my suitcase packed and didn't

home and make cool drinks. It gets that way, worry at all about what we would do. I hadn't

sometimes. Susan says lots of times and has studied French since high school in Kentucky.

theories about the weather's affect on ev- I prepared by writing a grant to make a book

eryone there. I always agree although I've about Paris and hopedfor the best on all

usually forgotten. So this is an attempt at counts. In Paris I caught up on my sleep, spent

remembering. Remembering everything, hours taking slides of lettering on buildings,

and making it into a book in yet another and enjoyed the view.

peculiar place, Rochester New York, during

May of 1984, at Visual Studies Workshop.

fin _

a



new approaches to south asian art || susan e. king's i spent the summer in paris

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