In Lesson One we barely skimmed the surface of the trove of ideas that were presented at the Logan Book Symposium. It’s time we got back round to it, sparked by the keynote presentation by Susan Tallman who remarked: “Books have a reputation as showcases of authority; artists have a reputation for challenging authority; and artists’ books have a reputation for being by turns cryptic and accessible, ornery and seductive, mute and verbose. From Albrecht Dürer to Tauba Auerbach, artists have used the book to show us that nothing is ever as simple as it seems.”

We think of Dürer as a visionary/ master printer/painter but he was also a master entrepreneur. He knew his audience and he knew what would sell. And the invention of the printing press made it possible.

Dürer’s Apocalypse with Pictures a cycle of woodcuts, created at the end of 15^th century, when Germany was shaken by peasant movements, religious quarrels and a plague made them especially topical during the periods of wars, epidemics and bad harvests.

The prints were intended for all strata of the society, from learned humanists to simple townsfolk.  Visual language in the hands of a master is easy to understand and the images are close to life. The Apocalypse has lots of vague hints at the end of the world but in Dürer’s depiction everything carries the idea of fight and confrontation between the good and the evil, the light and the dark.

And who doesn’t like a little fright ala Grimm’s Fairy Tales or a good horror movie. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02298/full Something about the stir of adrenaline along with a great sigh of relief with survival. My favorite childhood thrill was the sensational 1959 The Tingler.

These days signs of the Apocalypse are everyday news. With the roaring fires in Australia, images as urgent reminders of how much life we stand to lose, take on new significance in these time of ecological crisis and climate catastrophe.

In contradistinction to the mayhem, for a timely read, there is Tauba Auerbach’s RGB Colorspace Atlas with 3632 pages. A picture book so rich with color it offers a turn-the- page pallative for anything that ails you.