Deadpan
Limited edition. Hardback and hand set letterpress on mould-made paper with
tipped-in colour plates.
The first book in what was to be the Rowley Trilogy.
‘Andrew Lanyon’s absorbing book examines - in
a poetically oblique way - the massive contribution of photography and the cinema
to our insatiable appetite for images. Following a central thread of time, motion
and direction, he examines the consequences of mass production by the photographic
media in the ever-increasing multiplicity of artistic styles. More and more
the artist, never to be undone, abandons the real and tangible world and turns
inward, bent on a species of psychical exploration which, like Science and its
hunt for neutrons, protons and quarks, finds ultimately in the infinitely small,
a world of great voids and little substance.
The book is an enchanting work of art. a montage of gently posited but provocative
philosophical assertions brought into relief by the wit and irony of Lanyon’s
intriguing illustrations. But who, really, is the mysterious iconoclast, Walter
Rowley whose presence in this book is so palpable?’ Dr. Aaron
Scharf
‘Our gratitude to Mr. Lanyon for seeing through the press a cornerstone of Cornish, not to say Western, aesthetics’. William Feaver.
‘If I ever am to re-edit my book the “Cult of Art”
I would make long quotations from what Rowley wrote. He and I shared a considerable
knowledge of the world of art and artists. . .’ Jean Gimpel
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