Hi Mark

I agree.

Bob often used the same machines to both make and reproduce his work.
Because of that, it has been suggested that an original and a copy of
Cobbing are the same.

To some extent, that's an attitude Bob encouraged, often making multiple
copies before showing the work.

With the photocopier work, the image degrades to some extent with each
generation; but nowadays that tends to be very slight. With the duplicator,
the stencil itself degrades; and one can see the result in publications
which had run to many editions - he tended to be more careful / cautious
with his own images than with some of the publications

And also he quite revelled in the variations resulting from the limitations
of the media

As a related aside, WF just published the semantic text of Sumner's
AUGUSTINE. In the later versions of that, he had started to overprint the
text with graphics. He did that by putting the paper through the computer
printer twice; and there is a world of difference beteen the copy that was
layered in that way and the copy made by photocopying or scanning the
layered page

In the "original" there is a depth to the image and a dynamic between the
layers which is lost in the copy

In that way, it can ruin Cobbing material to abstract it from its original
materials. Except, perhaps, in his last years, Cobbing was very careful with
his choice of materials. He was flexible and easy going with it, but *would
reject some materials; and that applied not just to papers, but also, and
perhaps more, to scale and proportion of papers. (I think he grew into the
standard paper sizes, so that often the choice was between them rather than
ad hoc paper sizes)

Mind you, he was into the idea of the image abstracted (e.g. KYOTO TO TOKYO
where he proposed a slightly meandering line (the journey between the
cities) as the basic poem); but it seems to me those were - I was going to
say "digressions", and I'd stand by that, but more so they were explorations
and challenges to others.

As it is always best to stick to what an artist did, rather than speculating
about what she might have done, I favour, where possible, Cobbing's
originals and prints

And for that reason, I am aiming to separate the layers of Sumner's images -
I'm working on it! - so that they can be over-printed - and perhaps to add
layered pages to future exhibitions of his graphical work


L



----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: under erasure - typestrokes


> when a choice is made to create multiple versions of such a text-bearing
> surface the details of layering or of overwriting will be themselves to
> some extent erased;
>
> all the best
>
> Mark L
>
>