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(Shirley Sharoff) The Great Wall. Artist’s book by Shirley Sharoff. [Paris. 1991.] 10” x 5.375” closed. One continuous strip with the top edge red. The Great Wall unrolls to a length of 7 meters but can be stood up to make a Wall of paper. Eight etchings and the students’ comments alternate with the text in English, French and Chinese. Hand-set in Athenaeum type by Francois Da Ros on Arches paper ‘prepared’ to look like a tablet whose text had been worn away. Folded like a snail, the book is presented in an Althuglas clip inserted into a slipcase. One in an edition of 65 signed copies. Fine.

Sharoff writes: “In 1988 when I returned to Paris after a year’s stay in Beijing, China, teaching English, I knew that I would have to assimilate this profound experience in some way. A very strong impression concerned the bittersweet nature of Chinese life where objects, landscapes, people and living conditions could be sublimely beautiful, but balanced in other situations by everything that could be harsh, difficult, tiresome and complicated. How to find a text which could express this yin/yang situation. Finally, I found it in a text by LuXun, China’s most famous 20th century author, written in 1926. Hoping to see a new and modern China, he writes of the contradictions inherent in this great human construction: its monumentality and the loss of life caused by its building. ‘A curse on this wonderful Great Wall’ he writes.“As an English teacher, I assigned my students short compositions so they could practice writing English, but for me it was a way into the lives of young Chinese. I put extracts from these writings into my book to act as a counterpoint to the solidity of the Great Wall and as a background. “… Looked at from the top, the book reminds me of the labyrinth found in the Old Summer Palace outside of Beijing.”

Related items: Artists' Books, Structure, Shirley Sharoff