TASCHEN - MorningCalm MARCH 2018

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From its start as a comic book store in 1980, Taschen has grown into a publisher of brazen, inimitable books that push the boundaries of art. It’s no wonder that its catalog has entered the 21st-century canon.

And Gutenberg said, “Let there be a metal movable-type printing press!” And there was a metal movable-type printing press. Less than a hundred years later, William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament became one of the first mass-printed English books to be banned and burned. In a different time or place, the books of German publishing house Taschen might have been immolated too. Today it’s known as a publisher of art books — often ones that are incendiary, featuring provocative, defiant figures like Ai Weiwei and Muhammad Ali.

Taschen has always been drawn to boldness that leaps off the page. Founder Benedikt Taschen began selling comics as part of a mail-order business when he was just 12 years old and opened Taschen as a comic book store in 1980. The success of his business was a revelation that he wasn’t alone in his passion for rare comic books or, as he would soon realize, unconventional art.

The saying goes that there’s nothing new under the sun. But the job of people like Julius Wiedemann, editor-in-charge at Taschen, is to prove otherwise. Wiedemann recently edited The History of Graphic Design, Vol 1: 1890- 1959, which, beyond exploring the scope evident in its title, is also a history of the 20th century explained through its most iconic visual markers — a lesson probably more engaging than the typical history lecture. “Our task in the world, as publishers of the arts,” Wiedemann says, “is to expand the meaning of art.”

Artists also trust Taschen to help tell the story of their own work. The idea for a recent monograph on artist and Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett came about when Hewlett approached Wiedemann during his exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. They worked closely to edit a book that would do justice to the multi-genre punky-surreal style of Hewlett’s art. Each chapter is prefaced by Hewlett’s own words, providing an unprecedented look behind the curtain of an enigmatic artist. The book’s first edition sold out in about two weeks. The second edition’s new cover is a vivid candy-apple red.

Taschen’s books should be judged by their covers. Part of expanding the meaning of art, for Taschen, has been making books themselves into objects of startling beauty. Wiedemann describes himself as a “collector of visual experiences,” and this identity aligns with the history of Taschen design. In 1999, Taschen released Helmut Newton’s Sumo, a retrospective on the fashion photographer’s groundbreaking, often controversial work. The book measured 50cm by 70cm and weighed about 30kg, form echoing title, which in turn echoed the size of Newton’s legacy. Its dimensions meant that producing it required religious dedication — the book was bound with the help of the Vatican’s Bible binder.

Sumo has since become a series of larger-than-life book editions for larger-than-life icons like Muhammad Ali, whose Taschen tome is titled GOAT and which German newsmagazine Der Spiegel called the “most radiant thing ever printed.” Taschen’s divine presentation gives its subjects their due glory — as if the books are modern-day equivalents of medieval illuminated manuscripts. When Leonardo DiCaprio met Pope Francis in 2016, the actor presented His Holiness with Taschen’s Hieronymus Bosch, filled with the Dutch artist’s fever-dream illustrations of Biblical settings.

Even Taschen’s smaller books offer tactile and aesthetic pleasures, whether with gold-embossed covers, archival-quality paper that gives the book’s beauty real endurance, or text printed with the antique letterpress printing method. About 12 to 18 months are dedicated to designing and editing one book.

The Taschen experience ultimately heralds a devotion to curiosity. Wiedemann would like to edit a poetry book one day, and lately has been thinking a lot about how a Taschen book would approach the looming horizon of artificial intelligence. “There’s not really a formula,” he says. “You can do market research, but what you’ll be really doing then is copying. And at Taschen, we don’t like the idea of copying very much.”

Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that the medium is the message says we should listen to what form itself can convey, and Taschen has taken this to heart. If the digital medium allows information to be absorbed more quickly, in sharp little doses, print can use its form to offer the other end of the spectrum: something savored, luxuriated over, felt as an all-consuming experience. Doomsayers maintain that e-books will deliver the deathblow to the print book industry, but Taschen continues to flourish. During his 16 years with the company, Wiedemann has edited almost 80 books. The history of print stretches long, but Taschen doesn’t dwell on the past. “The best book is always the next one,” Wiedemann says.