Sunday, March 15, 2015

Illustrated Love Letters

More than Words: The Illustrated Love Letters, Thank-You Notes, and Travelogues of Great Artists, from Kahlo to Calder to Saint-Exupéry

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“Letter writing is probably the most beautiful manifestation in human relations, in fact, it is its finest residue.”
Virginia Woolf aptly called letter writing“the humane art.” But what amplifies the humanity and immediacy of words is the addition of art itself — how instantly aliveVan Gogh’s illustrated letters feel, to say nothing of Edward Gorey’s envelope drawings.
That magical marriage of epistolary text and image is what Liza Kirwin explores in More than Words: Illustrated Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art(public library) — a wonderful selection of love letters, thank-you notes, travel missives, visual instructions, picture-puzzles and plays on words from the world’s largest repository of artists’ papers, featuring missives from creative titans like Marcel DuchampFrida Kahlo,Andy WarholAndrew WyethAlexander Calder, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry./.../

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