The exclusive hand-made book edited in 50 copies contains 16 poems by Joseph Brodsky accompanied by 16 woodcut illustrations by Vladimir Nasedkin executed with the application of xylography, a unique wood engraving technique quite rare for our days.
Each double-page spread of the book is displayed on a wooden stand placed in the center of the exhibition hall and along the walls. Each artwork and poem are engraved on wooden boards using a technique that dates back to Venice of the
15th century.
All the double-page spreads are also collected in one block-book and contain an annotation in English. The poems are in the Russian language.
My illustrations to Brodsky’s poems are called illustrations mostly for convenience, as they are rather gravures dedicated to the subject of the Master’s poetry as a whole, and I hope they embody the quintessence of the Poet’s creative spirit willing to comprehend the mystery of the eternity by guesswork rather than by logic.
I apply the principle of understatement, implication, aesthetic allusion, so as to
involve the viewer’s imagination and to individualize the perception process and make it as unique as the process of creation itself.
The seashore, the wave, the lagoon, the landscape – everything is subject to
motion and light, and the silvery background is not only a surface, it is the Space. The Space with its own laws, stress fields, accents and periphery, where hollow spaces and pauses bear the main rhythmical and emotional load.
Each woodcut is numbered and signed by the artist. Number of books issued: 50.
Book No. of 50
Moscow 2011
20 November