Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Interview on Red Transmissions Podcast
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Time for an update
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
“Large Typewriters" sets a record
The William Kentridge artwork that I posted about recently went for well over the estimate of £350,000 - £550,000. It sold for £682,750 ($935,000)—a record for Kentridge's work. Here's the story. The photo gives us a sense of the dimensions of the aptly titled Large Typewriters (misspelled as Large Typerwriters in the story). The story also says that the piece was created using charcoal and pastel. Sounds fragile!
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Friday, March 12, 2021
From my correspondents
My co-editors and I were very glad to read the following kind praise from a reader in British Columbia for last year's volume in the Cold Hard Type series. (We are currently reviewing submissions for this year's volume, Dead Keys.)
Finally, I thank this correspondent (also from Southern California) for sharing a great quotation that I hadn't seen before.
I welcome more correspondence (see the "Write me a letter" link at the top of this blog).
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
$500,000 for a picture of two typewriters?
I like South African artist William Kentridge's depictions of typewriters. I even got permission to reproduce his piece "Undo Unsay Unremember"in my book (p. 259). So I don't mean to run him down. Still, I can't help looking askance at an auction that's coming up in two weeks.
Bonhams estimates the value of Kentridge's Large Typewriters at £350,000 - £550,000.I like the piece, it shows Kentridge's love of typewriters, but ... really?
Bonhams describes the artwork as
a dual image combining both the banal and the absurd, the real and the imagined. ...
First of all, what's absurd about it? And what is imagined? The typewriters may look fantastic and bizarre to the layman, but those who know typewriter history know that we are looking at pretty realistic depictions of a real (though not banal) Jewett no. 2 and Blick 90.The double quasi-identical image – differentiated only by the level of detail – is discreet in its symbolism; on one hand speaking to wider themes in the artist's work, while on the other referencing its own physicality. The typewriter is an object that turns words into something tangible on paper, and so it is perhaps no small wonder that it's an object that has such a special significance to a multi-disciplinary artist like Kentridge, whose work is imbued with a real sense of history."
Monday, February 15, 2021
The continuing saga of the “Govrland"
Cool T-shirt, huh? Yes ... except that the typewriter looks so darn weird. What is that huge structure in front of the platen?
I know the answer, of course. This is yet another representation of a fake typewriter made in China, originally designed as a crude imitation of a Gourland. This silly thing has taken many forms over the years, even appearing as a tattoo on the skin of some hapless person who has obviously never used a real typewriter.
I'll take it as yet another sign of the enduring appeal of typewriters ... but I do wish artists would bother to do a little more research before they create yet another iteration of a phony.
PS: "Sincerily"?
Monday, February 8, 2021
1939
Two neat typewriters from 1939 just dropped in my lap.
This Remington was donated to WordPlay Cincy by a local woman. It had been in her brother-in-law's family for generations. She was glad to drop it off on my porch (social distancing!) and I promised her it would go to a good cause.
As for my other recent acquisition, it turned on eBay a couple of days ago (with the typo "PortableTypewriter" in the title). It was a Buy It Now for under $100 (a pretty small fraction of its market value). It was in Ohio, so it got to me quickly. It came with a user's manual like this one, with the original owner's name typed on it. (An obituary tells me that he served in the South Pacific in WWII and lived to the age of 94.)