ERIK HEYWOOD

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5 / 5 / 5


LEANNE SHAPTON


I couldn't post about Leanne's wooden books (see next post down) without asking her to play 5's. Seeing her shelves (above) make me wish I'd asked her to also share the 10th book, then 20th, etc., etc...

The rules are simple. I ask someone brilliant to go to their bookshelves, count 5 shelves up from the floor, 5 books in from the left, and then answer 5 questions. Artist and writer Leanne Shapton plays along.




1. What's the book?

la PROSTITUTION


2. What's it about?

It is a french paperback-- a report on prostitution published in1959. My french is not perfect but it is part of a collection  that "...Addresses the complex problems of the modern world facing mankind
in 20th century France." Other books in this collection are titled "LeCatholicisme", "La Scienece Nucléaire" and "La Pèche", (but I think that means sin, not peaches.) The author appears to have
been a high-ranking judge with plenty of experience in "la pègre" (the underworld).


3. What memories do you associate with it?

This takes me right back to my old apartment in Toronto, 158 Argyle Street. I bought this book for it's cover, and for the crude photo-collages illustrating the chapters inside. At the time I was art-directing Saturday Night magazine, and Jason Fulford and I had just started J&L Books, so I was collecting any and every piece of text and image that caught my eye. I loved the use of pink, the cutout
composition, and the black and white photograph, of a perfectly groomed woman's legs, a man, smoking, headed for her corner. Other free-associated memories accompanying this cover: A green medicine ball, lattes from Faema on my drive to Don Mills, and the blue-grey gloss enamel paint halfway up the wall and on the banister in the hallway of that apartment.


4. Where did you get it?

Most likely from a used bookstore on Queen Street near
Euclid that is no longer there.


5. What kind of shelves does it rest on?

Now the book sits in a wooden built-in bookshelf in my studio. I
had the shelves made and painted (F&B Hardwick White) when I could not
find the ping pong table under all of the books, paper and art supplies.