Tabula rasa – from the blank page to the catalogue - LUDWIGGALERIE Schloss Oberhausen

Tabula rasa – from the blank sheet to the catalogue

August 28, 2020

By curator Linda Schmitz-Kleinreesink

"The
Printer machine must beep so loudly on a regular basis, that has something to do with security
to do. Imagine someone falls in between, you don’t hear him when he
screams!”, explains Thilo Kaiser, owner of the printing company Basis-Druck in
Duisburg one of the many sounds that
the gigantic machine. We are faced with a multi-part and
meter-long printing machine and are, as on this day several times, once again
deeply impressed by the complex processes that can take place purely mechanically.
From a thick stack, the paper is pulled down and runs over several
Rolls of red, blue, yellow and black ink. They call it “CMYK”,
But more on that later. At the end is the printer (this is
the job title for a human being and not a machine!) and draws
one of the large printed sheets. “Aah, here we need to remove a shade of yellow,
but only a nuance! Do you see that?“ Karo and I look at each other. Despite
trained eye I admit: “No, we don’t really see…” The printer
puts the comparison image next to it “Look, if you look at the bright spot
there, then you can see it!” AAH! Now we see it too.

Color matching with the so-called "proofs", 2020 © LUDWIGGALERIE

Linda and Thilo Kaiser check whether the prints match the proofs, 2020 © LUDWIGGALERIE

Bis
It was a long way before we could stand in front of this finished printed sheet.
white sheet of paper, to the printed catalogue. I have already seen the first
Lines under the heading I just thought of, typed and
I have taken the first step. A new text is being created, a new project
takes shape outside my head. It is the same with the
catalogue texts. You research, you read, you think, you research
again, finds artists, looks for lenders and at some point all
Loans for an exhibition – then the appropriate text must be
For “Otfried Preußler” it quickly became clear: I need a
Essay that covers Preußler’s entire work and focuses on the
illustrators and thus on the images that accompany his stories.
At least I was able to use the Corona lockdown for this: without any distraction
write with focus.

Illustrations by FJ Tripp, Mathias Weber, Herbert Holzing, Winnie Gebhardt (VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020) for Otfried Preußler © Thienemann in the Thienemann-Esslinger Verlag GmbH, Stuttgart

Dabei
I discover a dissertation on FJ Tripp, from whose pen the succinct
The character of the robber Hotzenplotz comes from. Mirijam Steinhauser has studied extensively
him, so I contacted her without further ado and fortunately
as an author for our catalogue. An expert on Herbert
Holzing, who created the woodcut-like ink drawings for the famous youth novel
“Krabat” can be found in the Picture Book Museum of the city of Troisdorf,
where the artist's estate is also located. Dr. Pauline Liesen is immediately
enthusiastic about a cooperation between our two houses and writes
an enlightening article about Holzing, which will also appear in our catalogue
In addition, a concentrated selection of the exhibition will be shown afterwards in the
Picture Book Museum. After our director Dr. Christine Vogt
finds that the Preußler illustrators almost never
scientifically processed, she decides to create a
to write a detailed article about Winnie Gebhardt. In doing so, she
an important contribution to the research of the image creator of the little
Aquarius and the little witch.

Illustration by Winnie Gebhardt from Otfried Preußler, The Little Witch © by Thienemann in the Thienemann-Esslinger Verlag GmbH, Stuttgart, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020

When
All texts are written, we start the time-consuming editing process, which
many very meticulous and tireless colleagues are involved. They
discover errors in content, improve formulations, shorten endless sentences and
find even strange typos or double spaces. For this
I am always particularly grateful for this step, because in your own text you can see
after a certain period of time nothing at all!

After
we send all texts to our designer Uwe Eichholz, whom we have in the
In the meantime, we will continue to provide you with printable image data. Because where there is a lot
Text, we also need a lot of pictures! Uwe Eichholz uses these many
Text pages with several illustrations in a meaningful and also very colorful
We email back and forth for days: “Can you do that again
over it?" “The picture should be on
the left side and the other to the right.”, “Oh, there is another mistake
crept in.", "Oh, just put another little picture over there.",
“Oh, make another suggestion.”

Then
Uwe creates the proof sheets. For this he places all the images that are in the catalogue
be printed in a document and sends it to the printer. This
then bring the printed sheets to us so that we can print all the pictures
and check for color accuracy. We are on the
satisfied at first glance “Well, that looks very good,” judges
our director “although, these edges here have to go.” A colleague asks:
“Wasn’t this picture brighter in the original?” Some images must therefore
need to be improved, others are already perfect and ready for printing.
Thilo Kaiser also notes one important thing: “You must always remember
This is not standard light!” He holds a small card under our lamp, which
should actually show the same shade of green throughout. In our case it shimmers
alternating light and dark. “No problem, we check that anyway in our
the printing house."

And this is exactly where the second part of the blog article continues…