Applied

Ars Asiatica

Description

ARS ASIATICA - volumes 1 - 18 (COMPLETE) - Published by VICTOR GOLOUBEW.
and edited by: Chavannes & Petrucci - Rodin - Coomaraswamy - Havell - Parmentier - Coedès - Binyon - Koechlin - Krom - Hall - Odin - Lévi - Vogel - Groslier - Godard
G. van Oest and Co., Bruxelles & Paris, 1914-1935.  A complete set of this celebrated series, all in the original decorated paper covers, and vol. 2 one of 15 only on Japanese paper. All volumes were written in French except volume VI ( Asiatic Art in the British Museum by Laurence Binyon).  All in very good to excellent condition, some volumes with glassene covers, occasional foxing usually confined to edges.
Literature
Arntzen and Rainwater: R5

Commentary

Gerard Van Oest was perhaps the last genius of the heroic age of publishing which I would venture had ended by the 1960s. His books are incomparably satisfying to hold and behold: the weight and size, even when it is, as often, a large quarto, the strength and suppleness of the paper used, also for the wrappers, its sheer tactile (and visual because non-reflective) pleasure, the ease with which it opens flat in the hand, the beauty and legibility of the precise and sharp type, the rational margin sizes and layout, the peerless illustrations, their sheer generous number and intelligent placement, both the quality of the photography and the brilliance of the heliogravures * derived from it, already make of him a phenomenon, before one even discusses the pioneering nature of a lot of the material and the quality of the research and analysis. This is true above all of the books on Asian art and architecture and it is unique that three of the four early, rare and pioneering volumes he published are presented here, all in their original state, with two of them never used.

* One could say by way of illustration that Heliogravure and the variants of continuous tone printing, like collotype and photogravure in English or phototypie in French and Lichtdruck in German is to ordinary (halftone) photographic reproduction what a first impression Durer print is to, for example, a fourth, in terms of depth of contrast.