Jean-Pierre Kaiser. Météores et phénomènes. L’oeuvre gravé /Jean-Pierre Kaiser. Himmlische Phänomene. Das druckgrafische Werk
Bilingual Symmetry
The monograph on the prints of Lausanne artist Jean-Pierre Kaiser (1915–2001) employs some unconventional design ideas that are executed with control and can be well understood. Text is either black or printed in a tasteful light beige, and after a while the light beige begins to bleed across the pages of text like a barely visible spectral manifestation. The essays in German and French are placed side by side, each in a justified column, and two techniques are used to ensure that they remain parallel despite their differing lengths: first, the footnotes are inserted into the columns of text at the end of each paragraph so as to be at the same level (and symmetrical to each other toward the middle of the page); second, the reference images are positioned in the shorter column of text (though slightly offset), with the monolingual explanations next to them. The light beige reappears in the table section as a background, and in the appendix (again in two languages) the images are positioned centrally so that they extend symmetrically into the two columns. The end product is a self-contained and lavish museum publication.
