Stanley Donwood
Rattus Volcanicus, 2024
Somerset velvet soft white paper, 300gsm, IKB (International Klein Blue), from Adam Colour Merchant of Paris, screen printed on 23.5 ct gold leaf
hand torn edges
hand torn edges
11.6 x 8.7 in
29.5 x 22 cm
29.5 x 22 cm
Edition of 66 plus 2 artist's proofs
Signed and numbered in pencil by the artist
SDO 0060
Copyright The Artist
Photo: Stanley Donwood
Provenance
Published by Tin Man Art. Printed by Tin Dogs.
SD: While I was working at idem in Montparnasse, Paris on linocuts and lithographs I needed some art supplies - so Martin from the workshop took me to the nearest...
SD: While I was working at idem in Montparnasse, Paris on linocuts and lithographs I needed some art supplies - so Martin from the workshop took me to the nearest shop, which is called 'Adam', on the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet.
Martin told me that Adam was originally a normal grocery, but in the 19th century when many Parisian artists moved from the increasingly expensive Montmartre to the (then) much cheaper suburb of Montparnasse the Adam family started to offer arists' supplies, along with the usual grocery stock. Eventually, the art gear took over, and the store became the specialist art supply shop which it remains.
Later on, in the 1950s, the artist Yves Klein went to Edouard Adam and asked him to formulate a paint for him, the bluest blue possible. In 1960 Klein registered the formula of the paint under the name IKB (International Klein Blue); he used the paint extensively, eventually covering canvases entirely with it - these are beautiful, seeming almost to vibrate, but also painting naked women with it and instructing them to roll around on canvases, an action which seems both dated and disappointing.
The years passed, as they do, and much later some of Klein's works required restoration, so the restorers went back to Adam and asked if some new supplies of IKB could be made. But the answer was "Non." This was because some of the ingredients in the original formulation had been discovered to be carcinogenic, which makes the use of naked models even more sad. But Adam were able to create a non-carcinogenic version of IKB, so that's what they did - and now you can go to the Adam shop in Montparnasse and buy a tub of the pigment. Which is exactly what I did.
The linocut I was working on at the time was the enormous 'A Map Of The New World', whch features (among much else) the little rats which scurry through many of my quasi-Mediaeval linocuts and also, for the first time, volcanoes. I was very pleased with these as I figured out how to carve volcanic eruptions in a quasi-Mediaeval style.This new serigraph 'Rattus Volcanicus', taken from the larger work, shows both rats and volcanoes, and is printed with International Klein Blue from Adam on 23ct gold leaf by Vaughn Williams at Tin Dogs in an edition of 66 prints.
Many thanks to Martin Giffard for telling me this brilliant story.
Martin told me that Adam was originally a normal grocery, but in the 19th century when many Parisian artists moved from the increasingly expensive Montmartre to the (then) much cheaper suburb of Montparnasse the Adam family started to offer arists' supplies, along with the usual grocery stock. Eventually, the art gear took over, and the store became the specialist art supply shop which it remains.
Later on, in the 1950s, the artist Yves Klein went to Edouard Adam and asked him to formulate a paint for him, the bluest blue possible. In 1960 Klein registered the formula of the paint under the name IKB (International Klein Blue); he used the paint extensively, eventually covering canvases entirely with it - these are beautiful, seeming almost to vibrate, but also painting naked women with it and instructing them to roll around on canvases, an action which seems both dated and disappointing.
The years passed, as they do, and much later some of Klein's works required restoration, so the restorers went back to Adam and asked if some new supplies of IKB could be made. But the answer was "Non." This was because some of the ingredients in the original formulation had been discovered to be carcinogenic, which makes the use of naked models even more sad. But Adam were able to create a non-carcinogenic version of IKB, so that's what they did - and now you can go to the Adam shop in Montparnasse and buy a tub of the pigment. Which is exactly what I did.
The linocut I was working on at the time was the enormous 'A Map Of The New World', whch features (among much else) the little rats which scurry through many of my quasi-Mediaeval linocuts and also, for the first time, volcanoes. I was very pleased with these as I figured out how to carve volcanic eruptions in a quasi-Mediaeval style.This new serigraph 'Rattus Volcanicus', taken from the larger work, shows both rats and volcanoes, and is printed with International Klein Blue from Adam on 23ct gold leaf by Vaughn Williams at Tin Dogs in an edition of 66 prints.
Many thanks to Martin Giffard for telling me this brilliant story.
