Alex Zivkovic is a Ph.D. candidate studying modern art at Columbia University. His dissertation examines the role of greenhouses, aquariums, and gardens in French art and mass culture (c.1860-1940). He has written about Joan Jonas in Afterimage and has a forthcoming animal horror essay in the New Review of Film and Television Studies.
Twitter: @AlexZivkovicArt
Website: https://aleksazivkovic.com/
"Objet trouvé par Leonor Fini. Couverture d’un livre ayant séjourné dans la mer.” Like all object labels, this label tells a story. The first sentence is true. The second, a seductive fiction.
The artist Leonor Fini did find this object, but not on a beach. Though seemingly encrusted with mud and marine matter, it has never spent time in a sea. Instead, it is a German-language novelty item created by Carl Maria Seyppel circa 1890, entitled Christoph Columbus Logbuch. An antique discarded object by the time it came into Fini’s hands, Seyppel originally had made the book to look as if it were water-damaged. Though the caption encourages us to imagine Fini having the tides deposit it at her feet, the real moment of encounter would have been far more quotidian: Fini came across it as at a flea market or bookstore.