Author: Diane Kraal
Published in Melbourne, Australia, 2007
ISBN: 978 0 646 473543
Format: Softcover 220mm x 185mm
Images: 20 black and white photographs
Number of pages: 102
Limited Edition of 30 copies (individually numbered)
Can be signed by author upon request.
Sydney-based P. Neville Barnett (1881-1953) wrote and published twenty-four limited-edition books in his lifetime. Barnett, in his role as a dealer, author and book designer, was part of the Sydney milieu of print art enthusiasts in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Barnett was acquainted with the likes of Lionel Lindsay, Hardy Wilson, Jim Tyrrell and Sydney Ure Smith and nurtured an early interest in the print art of bookplates that extended to books on Japanese woodblock prints, his other great passion.
Barnett published his Japanese art books from the Depression years of the 1930s, through the Pacific War years and on to the 1950s. The Japanese Government acknowledged Barnett’s work and arranged assistance for him. They also invited him to Japan, just months before the cataclysmic events of Pearl Harbor. A low point in Barnett’s life was his surveillance by Australian authorities.
Barnett is portrayed as an artist-intellectual who experienced an inner or metaphorical, state of exile from a society that lacked full appreciation about his rigorous engagement in artistic endeavours. Barnett’s early feelings of cultural alienation paved the way to his prodigious production of quality print books. This timely narrative of the life and work of Barnett may help us understand both the private and public artistic engagement of an individual from an earlier generation.
From Chatswood to Edo: the life and books of P. Neville Barnett
Price $35
Add postage and packaging $6.00
Total cost by mail $41
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Dr Diane Kraal
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Email: d.kraal@latrobe.edu.au