Lesson 4: Leporello

Leporello

Start the lesson and re-establish contact with the students.

Explain: today you’re going to make a very special thing inspired by The Harvest. It’s called an accordion book, or concertina book, or (the fancy name) a ‘leporello’. It’s a long, stretched out artwork in a very unusual form. I’ll tell you more about it in a moment. First, I want to show you the final painting Vincent made. Like the accordion book you’re going to make, it too is very long. Vincent cut this canvas himself, to get the unusual shape and size.

Explain: This is Vincent’s final painting. What does it show? It might be a little less clear than his other paintings. What do you see?

Ask the students to say what they see. They might not see tree roots at all, but something entirely different: blue people, a woman lying down, a blue foot, flames, a stag, a forest fire etc. All of these have been suggested by visitors on guided tours at the Van Gogh Museum. If the students immediately see tree roots, encourage them to look again and see if they can see anything else.

Explain: this painting is almost abstract. It’s difficult to see what the subject is. It was actually hung upside down at the museum for a while, because even the experts were unsure what Vincent intended. Try to imagine it upside down.

You might even think that Vincent was not trying to paint anything real here. But he was.

This photo from 2012 shows what Vincent was painting: trees growing against a steep rock face.

Explain: in 2020 this place in Auvers-sur-Oise, a village near Paris, was spotted in an old photo of trees growing on a slope. Their roots stick out of the soil, just like in the photo. This is the place that Vincent painted. You can just see a little bit of sky in the top left, and a line that shows that the slope goes upwards.

Assignment:

Make a group portrait inspired by Tree Roots. Imagine that together, you are all these roots and tree trunks. Ask one student to take charge as the photographer, perhaps with another as their assistant. First, interview the photographer about how they see Tree Roots:

- Overlap: where do they see overlapping things?

- Cropping: where do they notice that things are cropped (cut off)?

- Composition: where are the tree trunks most dense (close together)? Where is there space between them?

Ask the other students to add their ideas.

Then ask the photographer to arrange the group for the photograph.

Have them take a few practice shots first.

Then ask the students what feeling they think the painting expresses. How could you get the same feeling, or enhance this feeling, in the photo?

(e.g.: ‘confusion’ > everyone messes up their hair)

Artist Etel Adnan

Title Journey to Mount Tamalpais (Rihla ilâ Jabal Tamalpais)

Date 2008

Material Leporello, watercolour and Indian ink on Japanse paper, 54 pages, open 30 × 567 cm, closed 30 × 10.5 cm

Collection The Estate of Etel Adnan. Museé de l’Institut du monde arabe, Paris (donation of Claude and France Lemand)

Explain: these are leporellos, more commonly known as accordion books or concertina books. They are stretched-out artworks that are folded in a special way. You can display them either flat or standing them up. They are like paintings and books or letters at the same time. One of these accordion books were made by artist Etel Adnan. She lived from 1925 to 2021, so much later than Vincent. She was already 87 by the time she finally achieved success as an artist! But she was known as a writer before that. Etel Adnan’s accordion books often combine text (Arabic) with areas of colour, sketched lines or abstract forms.
Point these things out in the examples. 

Artist Etel Adnan

Title Untitled

Year 2014

Material acryl on canvas, 38 x 46 cm

Collection Collection Jean Frémon. © The Estate of Etel Adnan. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris/New York

Etel Adnan also made colourful landscapes, just like Vincent, but hers are made up of flat areas of colour. So Vincent and Etel both loved to paint landscapes in bright colours.

Letter 615
From Vincent van Gogh
To Theo van Gogh
Date Arles, Monday, 28 May 1888

Vincent wrote in a letter that he found accordion books very inspiring. He planned to make some, but it never happened. So today we’re going to make an accordion book inspired by The Harvest. It’s going to be a combination of colours, text and drawings, just like the ones by Etel Adnan.

Hand out the blank accordion books.    
Explain: We’re going to build the book up in layers. For the first layer, made using watercolour, we’re going to look for flat areas of colour in The Harvest. Make a square with your hands, as a frame that you can look through. Come and look at The Harvest in groups. Screw up your eyes a bit so that you only see the colours, not the details, and decide which combinations of colours and shapes you like.
Use watercolours to paint a number of areas of colour in your accordion book. Don’t use too much water, so that it will dry quickly
You don’t need to paint anything particular; it doesn’t have to represent anything.
Don’t bother about the folds in the book. You actually get a more interesting if you just ignore them when you’re painting. 

Now draw two squares anywhere you like in your book, and a larger square or rectangle somewhere else. Just a thin outline will be enough. Again, don’t worry about the folds, or the colours you painted before.
We’re going to make small drawing or sketches in these boxes in a moment.

Assignment: Take out the poem you wrote in lesson 1. Now write it in your accordion book. You can repeat, change or add phrases if you want. You can also look up and write out words in another language or alphabet. Vincent was very inspired by Japanese characters, and sometimes added them to his paintings. Etel had her poems for her accordion books translated into Arabic for political reasons. So both of them were inspired by other alphabets.
Just write over the colours, but avoid the boxes you drew.

Artist Vincent van Gogh

Title The Harvest

Date June 1888

Material Watercolour

Collection private collection

Vincent also made a pen and ink drawing of The Harvest. In this version you can see that he used lots of dots and lines to draw all the different little fields and crops. Make a square with your hands again and come up to the smartboard. Choose two bits of the drawing and try to draw what you see in the two squares in your accordion book.

You’ve now just got the big rectangle left. Look back at all the sketches you’ve made during these lessons. The farmers in different poses, the sketch that goes with the soundscape, the object from different perspectives. Which one do you think deserves to be improved on in the big box? Do that now.

What does your accordion book need now to bring it all together? Decide for yourself, and add the finishing touches. For inspiration you can look at the work you’ve already done, or add some more patterns with dots and lines.  

Reflection

Gather all the accordion books together and discuss them. You could use the following questions:

• Are there any leporello's where you can easily tell who made it?
• Which leporello's have interesting colours or details? 
• Did you enjoy making the leporello?

Explain: Vincent always sent his paintings to his brother Theo. He took the canvas off the stretcher and rolled it up so that he could post it. Theo would then try to sell the painting. An accordion book is much easier to send. Is there someone you would like to send yours to? Maybe someone who doesn’t live close by, but means a lot to you?    Or someone close by who you want to give something special to. 

You’ve now made all your art for the exhibition, which we are going to put together in the next lesson.

After the lesson, discuss with the school/institution which space and materials you can use for the exhibition. Can the photos be printed or shown in digital form? Is there perhaps a bluetooth box you can use to play the soundscapes or a recording of the poems? Are there tables, cork boards, etc.?