In describing himself, he says: "People like me, who care about printing -- the architecture of the page -- constitute tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation."
But to those who appreciate the art of fine printing, Leonard Baskin is anything but a lunatic. Mr. Baskin, founder of the Gehenna Press, is helping to keep alive a tradition that dates to the 15th century.
"Caprices, Grotesques & Homages: Leonard Baskin and the Gehenna Press" is an exhibition that "shows people that the Rare Book Division collects finely printed contemporary books as well as early books," said Peter VanWingen, specialist for the book arts in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
"There are important books printed today," he continued, "that are worth preserving in as close to their original condition as possible, for the same reasons that we preserve fine old books." Such books are superb examples of the printers' art and craft.
Leonard Baskin, a renowned sculptor and graphic artist who is currently working on monumental bas reliefs for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, began the Gehenna Press in 1942 while he was a student at the Yale University School of Fine Arts. The name is a pun on a line in Paradise Lost: "And black Gehenna call'd, the type of Hell."
Of his decision to start a press, Mr. Baskin has written, "My entire ignorance of printing history & my woeful innocence of all printing practice & procedure did not prevent me from leaping into that messy, soul-satisfying cauldron."
According to Mr. VanWingen, the Library decided to focus an exhibition on the output of this single press because "LC has the best collection of Gehenna Press books in public hands. Over the past couple of decades, we have become increasingly interested American fine printing, and by focusing on a few principal presses we can collect their publications comprehensively.
"The Rare Book Division is not simply a repository only of old works," he added.
The division's specialized collection of 20th century American fine printing also includes the work of typographers Bruce Rogers, Claire Van Vliet of the Janus Press and Frederic W. Goudy.
Mr. Baskin gave Bruce Rogers a copy of "A Poem Called the Tunning of Elynour Rummynge" (1953) on his 80th birthday, "who at this point was the dean of American typographers," said Mr. VanWingen. "Baskin loves to quote Rogers, whose response to the gift was, 'I like to see an occasional bit of primitive printing.' "
The exhibition is divided into four sections representing Mr. Baskin's principal interests in printing. In the first section, "Adventures of Private Printing," exhibition visitors can see the press's first publication, "On a Pyre of Withered Roses: Poems" by Leonard Baskin. This unillustrated book is a masterwork of simplicity with its red and black type.
The 1942 volume was the result of the influence of the poet, artist and mystic William Blake, whose illustrated books Baskin discovered at Yale University. Its press run, like that of almost all Gehenna books, was very small: 40 copies.
"Baskin only publishes only those works that he thinks are important. He is not ruled by commercial considerations, which is the great glory of private printing," said Mr. VanWingen. Finely detailed yet idiosyncratic birth announcements for his children Hosea and Lucretia are prime examples of the personal side of private printing.
This first section also contains a forthcoming work, "Presumptions of Death and Cantatas" by Anthony Hecht, a close friend and collaborator of Baskin since 1958. Mr. Hecht was Consultant in Poetry to the Library in 1982-84. Mr. Baskin's illustrations for the book include a haunting woodcut of death as a motion picture cameraman.
In "Natural and Grotesque Imagery: Baskin's Bestiaries," images such as a horned beetle, flies, a scorpion and an armadillo are painstakingly rendered to the minutest detail. Since the early 1950s, Mr. Baskin's naturalistic illustrations have become increasingly sophisticated.
This section includes the second work from of the press, _A Little Book of Natural History_ (1951), limited to 50 copies and containing 30 illustrations but no text. Said Mr. Baskin of the work: "It is odd that the press's first book was entirely free of images and that its second had no words. Was it prophetic of an insight I later had into Blake, that when his poetry is at its greatest, the art is at its weakest [witness 'The Tyger'] and the opposite [see 'Jerusalem']."
Mr. Baskin's collaborations with British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes have also reflected their shared taste for naturalistic and grotesque imagery. One of their joint efforts is "Capriccio" (1990), featuring Mr. Baskin's engraving of a fantastically coiffed man on the title page. The Library has Hughes's original handwritten manuscript of one of the poems.
In the "Homages" section Leonard Baskin pays tribute to some of the artists he has come to admire. For example, there is a portrait of the painter Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), with whom Mr. Baskin has an affinity. Eakins was underappreciated during his lifetime, and Mr. Baskin has, at times, felt likewise. "No it is not the paintings," Mr. Baskin has written, "despite the Rembrandtesque grandeur of their realism, that lifts Eakins apart; it is rather the perceptible actuality of his indomitable spirit, as he moved through his inhospitable world."
The final section, "Literary and Political Collaboratons," includes many of the books Mr. Baskin collaborated on with his longtime friend Sidney Kaplan. Their liberal politics and love of obscure texts drove their choices: "As a matter of public policy, we always endeavor to make a textual contribution which, as much as style (or even more than style), is the raison d'etre of the press," Mr. Baskin has written.
The section also includes what Mr. VanWingen calls "one of the great failures of the press": a series called the Gehenna Shakespeare. Mr. Baskin intended to print all of Shakespeare's plays in a large format with his own etchings and engravings. "Titus Andronicus" (1973) was the first, followed by "Othello," both printed on exquisite handmade paper in a size so large that each line of the poetry could be printed across the page without any breaks.
Mr. Baskin's own assessment of these works is harsh: "At this point the press dropped into the pit labeled 'hubris typographicus.' We were seized with the idiotic idea that we should print a folio-sized, illustrated, complete Shakespeare," Mr. Baskin has said. "Such a desire once installed is so consumptive of reason that the editor fell in with this august and harebrained scheme."
Even though the Shakespeare project was a financial disaster, it led to a collaboration between the press and writer James Baldwin (1924-1987). "Baldwin saw the illustrations for 'Othello' and was quite taken with them," said Mr. VanWingen. "A deep friendship developed with Baskin, and out of this came a small book called "Gypsy & Other Poems," which contains a Baskin portrait of Baldwin. Unfortunately, Baldwin died before he ever saw the book in print.
This section on literary collaborations shows a work by someone who figures prominently in LC's history: Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress in 1939-1944. MacLeish was a neighbor of Mr. Baskin in Massachusetts. Mr. Baskin made an engraving for MacLeish's "An Evening's Journey to Conway, Massachusetts: An Outdoor Play", written for the town's bicentennial.
The "Homages" section features what some critics have called the press's masterwork: "Icones Librorum Artifices: Being Actual, Putative, Fugative & Fantastical Portraits of Engravers, Illustrators & Binders"(1988). The book was the first that Mr. Baskin printed after returning from Devon, England, where he had lived since 1974. Only 40 copies of this brilliantly colored and conceived volume were printed. Mr. Baskin has called it "a flowering and a fulfilling resolution of elements but tentatively used in precedent books."
Scholar, teacher, writer and printer Leonard Baskin is himself a collector of others' books and prints. He has called printing "a secondary passion."
Perhaps so, but the work he has done and continues to do at the Gehenna Press is a first-rate achievement.
