PRINTED MATTER / DRUKWERK
Karel Martens
Karel Martens: PRINTED MATTER / DRUKWERK. London: Hyphen Press, 1996. First edition, 1997 second printing [this edition follows the exact specifications of the 1996 first edition awarded the ‘Goldene Blätter’ at the Leipzig Book Fair in March 1998, and lacks the 24 pages of extra material found in the 2001 second edition]. Octavo. Text in English and Dutch. Quarto. Printed dust jacket [attached as issued]. 145 pp. Fully illustrated in color. Elaborate graphic design throughout designed by Jaap van Triest and Karel Martens; signatures printed and bound in the Japanese fashion. Close inspection reveals a hint of wear, but a fine copy.
6.75 x 9.25 softcover book with 144 pages profusely illustrated in color, a visual survey of Martens’ work from his early career as a designer of coldly abstract book covers that shared much with Swiss School asceticism. With contributions by Robin Kinross, Koosje Sierman, Hugues C. Boekraad, Jaap van Triest & Karel Martens. When in the 1970s he became disenchanted with his role as a design technocrat, he established relations with cultural and political clients such as the Museum Boymans van Beuningen and Socialistiese Uitgeverij Nijmegen (SUN Publishers) and, later, mainstream clients such as PTT Nederland.
Produced in the summer of 1996 for the award of the Heineken Prize for Art to Karel Martens, PRINTED MATTER presents Martens graphic design oeuvre in reproductions of startling fidelity, and described in informal captions. Printed on uncoated paper and Chinese-bound, the book itself has a compelling tactile quality. The cover, a folded wrapping, is spotted with small, circular motifs overprinted as if to test colour-registration. It has the transient feel of a proof or a mock-up. This anti-monumental sensibility runs throughout, with many of Martens’ formal designs for publications and posters reproduced at a Lilliputian scale up close to the page margins, while his experiments with letterpress and rejected designs occupy full double-page spreads.
This catalog of a design career is accompanied by a series of Dutch/English essays by and on Martens, including one by Robin Kinross, a writer, publisher and designer with a longstanding interest in Modernism in the Netherlands. The Heineken Foundation Jury’s report opens the book with a kind of comment on the rights and wrongs of garlanding working designers with laurels.
Martens’ fascination in the techniques and technologies of reproduction is not that of the print fetishist, disconnecting form from content. Nevertheless, PRINTED MATTER is a well judged book-title: Martens’ work displays a strong interest in all processes that put ink on paper. Organized in phases and periods, this account of Martens’ work follows the metre of chronology, but it does not beat out a story of technical ‘advances’. In fact, Martens’ interest in the material qualities of print (in paper textures and print effects), from what was once called ‘the age of mechanical reproduction’, seems to have become greater in the ‘digital age’.
From the book: “The work of Karel Martens occupies an intriguing place in the present European art & design landscape. Martens can be placed in the tradition of Dutch modernism - in the line of figures such as Piet Zwart, H.N.Werkman and Willem Sandberg. His work is both personal and experimental; at the same time it is publicly answerable. Over the 36 years of his design practice Martens has been a prolific designer of books and he has made significant contributions in the areas of postage stamps, coins, and building signage. Intimately connected with this design work has been his practice as a free styled artist. This book looks for new ways to show and discuss the work of a designer and artist, and is offered in the same spirit of experiment and dialogue that characterizes the work that it presents.”
From the Jury notes from the Leipzig Book Fair: “To ask any designer to make a catalogue of a colleague's oeuvre is to confront him with one of the most difficult tasks of his career. This book is a perfect concord of two voices: the restrained, rational and refined tone of the 'subject' Karel Martens and the generous, almost exuberant note of his younger colleague Jaap van Triest, whereby clarity and meticulousness strike a harmonious chord. The book provides an overview of 36 working years and succeeds in emphasizing both the multiplicity and the specificity of the work. Virtually all of Martens's oeuvre is illustrated in miniature in the margin of the book - a meaningful aspect of his work - while various different projects are highlighted elsewhere on the pages. The Japanese binding method - folded double pages -makes the margin tangible. Van Triest has made rewarding use of new computer technology by personally scanning all the images. This not only avoids costly lithography but also creates a cohesive, celebratory consummation of images, which does full justice not only to the restraint of the designer but to the joviality of the man Martens - an exceptional achievement.” Amen.
Hyphen Press is a London-based publisher founded by Robin Kinross in 1980. It has produced around thirty books on a diverse range of topics, but most of its publications are devoted to typography and graphic design.