Kai Althoff Goes with Bernard Leach Hardcover – August 3, 2021

This is the best Althoff book there is, outside of "Souffleuse der isolation," and everything about it is beautiful. In spite of what the Amazon listing says, this is a paperback book. The text block is section sewn, the spine covered with fabric tape, and the flexible cardboard cover is bound to the back flyleaf but open at the front (I don't know the bookbinding term for this). The cover is covered in an iridescent colored fabric, somewhere between salmon and peach, and overprinted with photographs. There are four different kinds of paper used in the text block, of varying thickness and texture, with several pages of photos printed in silver. In one case, the photo of a single work printed on facing pages is on two different kinds of paper, showing two different mediations of the work.This book features the largest reproductions of Althoff's work I have seen. You can finally make out most of the details, even in the darker works. As usual for Althoff's exhibition catalogs, not every work in the exhibition this book documents is reproduced, but all of the reproductions of single works are given their own full pages. A big bonus here are several large intallation views of Althoff's retrospective at the MoMA. That exhibition prohibited photography, and the catalog did not show exhibition views, so I was pleased to finally see some good documentation of that unique and memorable environment. For this exhibition, there are several large exhibition views showing the displays and layout, including a few glances at the wonderful fabric Travis Meinholf wove to go inside the vitrines specially designed by Althoff to hold Leach's pottery.There are three essays (one of them fully dedicated to Leach's pottery); a "conversation" about Althoff's work, et al.; an introduction; an artist's statement (by the pseudonymous Francia Gimble-Masters); a poem, printed in both English and Japanese handwritten hiragana script; and several pages of paragraph length responses to Althoff's work by young people who visited the exhibition.I really think Althoff's work would stand up to a traditional art historical analysis, but Althoff reportedly eschews such writing. And so, the two essays dedicated to Althoff are also, of course, about the writers. Why is it people must talk about themselves when writing about art? Why confess to confessing when all writing is a confession? Here, at least, and unusually, the writers are very interesting---wonderful even---and invested, and I was happy to read about their impressions of Althoff's mesmerizing work, since many times they echoed and articulated my own impressions. The conversation about Althoff's work, between two members of an unlikely couple, is so charming I was moved to tears.I am so grateful to the artist and the writers for this book.