'Indian Ink: Francesco Clemente, Allen Ginsberg and the Kalakshetra Press'
Maber, Peter (2015) 'Indian Ink: Francesco Clemente, Allen Ginsberg and the Kalakshetra Press'. In: Spaces of the Book: Materials and Agents of the Text/Image Creation. Peter Lang, Bern, pp. 105-116. ISBN 9783034319034
Abstract
Francesco Clemente’s life and art have been governed by movement and change, but also by processes of exchange. His geographical crossings – principally from Italy to New York and India – are reflected in the scope of his art, which makes reference to an exceptionally diverse range of cultures and traditions, continually reinventing itself by drawing on thought and vision both ancient and modern. It is an art that refuses to exist in isolation, and nowhere is this clearer than in the vital role that collaboration – with other artists, writers, craftspeople, editors and publishers – has played in many of his projects. Clemente’s book collaborations are a defining aspect of his artwork in that they illuminate his intellectual processes. What he contributes is never merely illustration to accompany words on a page; rather, he engages in a dialogue between word and image, with both sides forming an inextricable part of the aesthetic experience of the book as a whole. Focussing on books printed in India, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which Clemente has rethought the space of the book from conception through to production, as both artist and editor. It firstly considers *White Shroud* (1984), Clemente’s collaboration with Allen Ginsberg, for which Clemente created a series of watercolours around a handwritten copy of Ginsberg’s poem. Attention is given to Clemente’s forms of representation, and their relations both to Ginsberg’s words and to their Indian context; whilst the material form of the book (1111 copies in differing hand-coloured cloths) is read as playing an integral part in its meaning. *White Shroud* marked Clemente’s first collaboration with the Kalakshetra Press in Madras, and the chapter moves on to consider the artist’s role, together with Raymond Foye, as editor and publisher of Hanuman Books, which were again printed by Kalakshetra. The press specialised in printing Hindu prayer books, and the Hanuman Books were inspired by this format, echoing the miniature size, hand-setting, and use of local Indian materials, including cotton paper and vegetable dyes. The appearance correlates with the independent spirit and often mystical subject matter of the 50 Hanuman titles printed between 1986 and 1993. These include artists’ writings, contemporary poetry, philosophy (including a translation of René Guénon’s *Oriental Metaphysics*), as well as many of the countercultural literary authors for whom the East represented a new source of creativity in the post-War period (there is even a pirated edition of Jack Kerouac’s *Manhattan Sketches*). Whereas *White Shroud* was published with the affluent consumer in mind (reflected in its high price and gallery distribution), the Hanuman editors anticipated an altogether more bohemian readership, and the books were distributed from the Chelsea Hotel in New York, with launches sometimes tying in with avant-garde poetry readings. The dynamics of these movements, collaborations, and exchanges, and above all the resultant multidimensional spaces of the books themselves, are held up for scrutiny.
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