[Janus Press] Sky and Earth: Variable Landscape

Newark, VT: Janus Press, 1973. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. A wonderful interactive artist's book from one of the great book artists of the 20th century.

39 sheets of colored acetate and die-cut paper, in a folding cloth portfolio. 8 by 10 inches (roughly). In this wordless book (the only text is the title and publishing information, printed on the front pastedown), Van Vliet reinterprets the ideas in her landmark 1964 work, Sun, Sky, and Earth. In that book, flaps of various shapes and colors could be flipped open to create minimalist landscapes abstracted to simple shapes and colors. Some of the flaps included descriptive words. In this "book", Van Vliet has abstracted not only the elements of landscape but the book itself. The "flaps" are no longer attached to the binding, leaving the "reader" (there is no text, but what else would we call the user of a book?) free to rearrange the sheets at will. One can even conjure a science fiction landscape of many suns, rising or setting in a sky of unearthly colors.

Van Vliet's work in the 1960s and early 1970s is sometimes associated with the Fluxus Movement, and certainly this book, with its inherently random user experience, embodies some of those ideas.

One of 100 unnumbered copies (see Ruth Fine, The Janus Press). A small limitation and given that institutions hold more than half of the print run, rather uncommon in commerce. First edition (first printing). A fine, even pristine, complete copy.