East Hampton, NY: Barry McCallion, 2020. Hardcover. Signed and dated by the book artist on the colophon. This is a striking unique work by noted book artist Barry McCallion. Mr. McCallion has had a lengthy career in the book arts following his graduation from Columbia and move to the west coast for a period of time. His work can be found in many institutional and private collections. His career has been documented in a fine article by Mark Segal in the East Hampton Star in 2013: “A Springs Artist’s Creative Odyssey." In the article, Segal also writes extensively about Mr. McCallion’s "astonishingly beautiful and utterly unique books," saying "they use an impressive range of materials and techniques. … It’s difficult to do justice to the variety and complexity of the books in words or in photographs. They are ideally experienced by hefting and opening the boxes and exploring the contents in what becomes a very personal exploration of an artwork.”

In this complex artist's book, Mr. McCallion explores and illustrates this famous poem by William Butler Yeats. "Byzantium" is Irish poet Yeats's meditation on the relationship between mortality and immortality, the physical world and the spiritual world, and humanity and art. The artist writes in his colophon: "Opposites fascinated Yeats - all things antithetical: material, immaterial, changing and changeless, profane and sacred. Byzantium offers the reader Yeats's vision of the complex workings of the flesh and the spirit. In the poem, the great cathedral gong presides, tolling midnight over two worlds: the disdained world of everyday, messy with 'complexities of mire or blood,' and the gold-glittering city of Byzantium, where souls come to be purged."

Each page of the book has a line of the poem. Mr. McCallion says that in an attempt to better integrate words and pictures, he cut the words apart and arranged them irregularly on the page. The book is made on Richard de Bas cream wove paper. Brushed India ink colors provide a platform for the work's various drawings, collages, and acrylic paintings. Page edges are untrimmed. The book was bound by Joelle Webber of Mermaid Bindery in dark red cloth with a black image of a dolphin affixed to the cover. Housed in a beige cloth covered clamshell box with a large title label to spine. In fine condition. Book measures 6.75 x 10.25 inches; box measures 7.5- x 11 inches. 40 pages. ARTB/012523. Fine.

Item #36312

Price: $4,000.00