Kozłowski, Jarosław.

[POLISH NEO-AVANT-GARDE – CONCEPTUAL BOOK OBJECT] Grammar (Gramatyka).

Poznań: Akumulatory, 1973. Octavo (23.5 × 17 cm). Original staple-stitched tan card wrappers; 38, [2] pp. With the laid-in “glossary” leaf for the book. Very good. Item #53021

Rare artist book by Kozłowski, a master of Polish conceptualism and co-founder of the anti-institutional NET initiative. Born 1945, Kozłowski studied painting at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań. His creative output includes drawings, artist books, performances, installations, and experimental institutional structures. In 1971, defying the tight control of national borders – and of art by institutions – Kozłowski and art historian Andrzej Kostolowski (born 1940) formulated and mailed the NET manifesto to 350 international artists. It proposed the free circulation of artistic ideas, in “opposition to institutions dominated by the market in the West and bureaucratic ideology in the East.” The manifesto was a phenomenal success and Kozłowski soon began to receive artworks, manuscripts, slides, letters, handbills, books, and films from around the world. The first group of NET materials was shown in May 1972 in the artist's apartment, with art objects from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, USA, Brazil, and Israel. The exhibition was shut down that evening by the Polish secret police (Służba Bezpieczeństwa, or Security Service).

Imitating the dry design of a grammar book, this book was created while Kozłowski was a librarian at the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts. After the first NET exhibition, he was removed from his teaching post at the Academy and “demoted” to the library. The unremarkable layout was thus likely both a decoy strategy and a commentary on the standard typography and design of the era. Printed entirely in English, the book includes an inserted “glossary” leaf of grammar terms in Polish. The verb “to be” is glossed first, with the remaining “grammar” playing with the various forms of this verb, in supposedly ordered, yet apparently arbitrary sequence, likely a comment on the artist’s own situation at the time. A note suggests that the book was created for the fifth exhibition of Akumulatory 2 Gallery in Poznań, which the artist founded in a student club space in 1972.

Kozłowski’s artist books are grounded in conceptualism and in his aim to break international barriers by means of art. Piotr Rypson describes the period that led to the emergence of the Polish artist book as one of artistic optimism: “Widespread interest in the language of art; exploring the links between art and science; serious reduction of extra-conceptual elements, and fascination with new means of expression […] served to strengthen faith in art as a lingua franca in which cultural dialogue could be held” (Rypson 2000, p. 104). Rypson also identifies Kozłowski as one of the first to make artist books, a form that “broke through the state monopoly, often avoiding censorship and the official publishing machinery,” and ultimately “stretching the limits of freedom.” Moving beyond the self-published concrete poetry of artists such as Andrzej Partum, Kozłowski’s artist books play with logic and reduce language to its most basic elements.

As of March 2024, KVK, OCLC show three copies, of which two in North America.

Price: €750.00

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