The Book and the Image - Lunch Talk Martin Schmidl

Today, Martin Schmidl, who teaches drawing at the summer academy for the second year now, talked about his work with publications. important to mention here that we are hearing about artist books, a.k.a. books written by artists, as opposed to art books written about an artist. After studying drawing and painting, he realised it might not be his preferred medium, and began using his knowledge in graphic design to  get into the  more down to earth world of books. They don't have to be art, but can be about everything. This has opened the door  to many other fields for me he says.

After this initial introduction, he presented some examples, like a book about LA he compiled with a colleague during a one-year stay in the city in the mid-nineties. Interestingly, what they saw as conceptual art, others later perceived as artistic research. In the end, it was published as an alternative city guide. They imported the concept to Germany, where they did a book about the history of two  eastern German villages, told by their inhabitants. Another project studied the nature and makeup of holocaust exhibitions in Dachau, which led him to the peculiar problem of having to pay thousands of Euros of copyright fees for the images he was going to use in the book. Unwilling to do so, he gained copyright over the images by making acute copies drawn by hand. Another book series connected to this one started as he began attending lectures to get a deeper historical, sociological and cultural knowledge while he was working on the Dachau book.

Faced with lectures whose boring nature became apparent 5 minutes in, he began drawing portraits of the speakers surrounded by text capturing their key talking points. Asked if he also does drawings for arts sake, Martin Schmidl says there is absolutely no difference between drawing for the wall or drawing for a book. The image goes in to the book and comes out again, expanded by all kinds of possibilities. Once the formal part of the talk was over, students and teachers  alike followed the invitation to take closer look at the books presented and ask more questions.