JF Ptak Science Books Post 1110
Following this week’s posts Occupational Alphabet and Touch of Evil action Alphabet is this constructed alphabet of Dada-like images, non-sequiturs taken out of context and which–once placed on a their own stage and on their own easel in the strong Borges tradition of the reader making the book–strongly remind me of the Marcel Duchamp readymades. The source is Kantner’s Illustrated Book of Objects and Self-Educator in German and English, a self-teaching book for German vocabulary, published in Pennsylvania in 1879. The woodcut images used to illustrate each word are fantastic, and occasionally stunning, sometimes unexpected illustrations of forgotten objects and actions. I’ve selected the images that have selected themselves, mostly-solitary images infested with that uncommon, simple quality that illuminates them as Dadaist.
The alphabet is sadly not complete–j, x,y and z were lacking images.
