Page spread introducing the section "Imagination: The Senses," from Ken Botnick, Diderot Project (St. Louis, MO: Emdash, 2015), edition of 70. The Getty Research Institute, 2015-B2
The Diderot Project: Transparency as Metaphor
GETTY CENTER
Museum Lecture Hall
This is a past event
Eighteenth-century French philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot advocated for transparency in society with a call for less mystery and more mastery. This concept has fueled printer and publisher Ken Botnick's search for a contemporary visual metaphor expressed in design, material, and print. What began as a book about Diderot's Encyclopédie (1751–77) evolved over time into a multivoiced conversation on the nature of craft, tools, memory, and imagination, while provoking questions about authorship in artists' books.
Ken Botnick has produced books for over 35 years and his work appears in leading international collections.
This lecture complements the exhibition Artists and Their Books / Books and Their Artists, on view at the Getty Research Institute from June 26 to October 28, 2018.