READING, SEEING, CONCEIVING IN THE BALTIC, OR DON’T JUDGE A MODERNIST BOOK BY ITS COVER

In the Baltic, the beginning of the 20th century ushered in a dramatic increase in book production, as decade-old restraints on freedom of artistic creation lost much of their efficacy. Much more than text was transformed. Artists contributed to transforming book covers and setting them aside as an open space for experimentation and inquiry. They explored how handwriting could encapsulate the various moods of the era and its moments of upheaval, experimented with notions of ephemerality and, subsequently, with the encounter with the beholder.