Leanne Shapton, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)«Auction catalogs can tell you a lot about a person—their passions and vanities, peccadilloes and aesthetics; their flush years and lean. Think of the collections of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Truman Capote, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. In Leanne Shapton’s marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who aren’t real people, but might as well be). Through photographs of the couple’s personal effects—the usual auction items (jewelry, fine art, and rare furniture) and the seemingly worthless (pajamas, Post-it notes, worn paperbacks)—the story of a failed love affair vividly (and cleverly) emerges. From first meeting to final separation, the progress and rituals of intimacy are revealed through the couple’s accumulated relics and memorabilia. And a love story, in all its tenderness and struggle, emerges from the evidence that has been left behind, laid out for us to appraise and appreciate.»
«The full title would take up half a column, for this innovative and intriguing novel in captioned photographs marches under the wordy banner of Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry. It takes the form of a mock-auction catalogue from a Manhattan sales house, and purports to offer a miscellany of lots with explanatory notes – flower petals to claret bottles, knickers to sunglasses, books to menus, postcards to photos. All in some way mark the beginning, flourishing and fall of a New York romance from 2002 to 2006. It's a cute idea – Annie Hall (a sporadic allusion) meets confessional conceptual art – and Leanne Shapton brings it off in style.
Like the heroine, Shapton works on the New York Times. Her Leonore is a cookery writer with a flair for baking, who picks up a column - "Cakewalk" – of her own. "I just couldn't believe you said you were fucking sick of cake," sulks Lot 1216: a scribbled note on a recipe card. For her often-absent lover is an upscale commercial photographer with swanky corporate clients, endless overseas assignments and cutting-edge personal taste in images, books and sounds. We see the playlists of the CDs he burns for her, which at Christmas means Aimee Mann and the Cocteau Twins as well as Peggy Lee. His profession adds verisimiltude by punctuating the catalogue with informal snaps of the pair together.
Across many genres, effective modern art often works by ellipsis. Here the reader fills in the gaps that the objects never quite explain - from the early bliss of a surprise affinity between a globe-trotting avant-garde snapper and a kooky postmodern homebody, to mid-affair spats and separations, down to the ominous signs – the number of a couples therapist, "12 late/ preg. poss" scawled on a Smythson's diary page, an $800 phone bill from Bangalore – that hint at the onset of drama and doom. "Show, don't tell," advised Henry James (whom the lovers read). Shapton's photo-story format takes pure showing about as far as it can go.
Clued-up critics might reel off a list of artistic kin for this love-story via object and image. They might cite the literary games of the Oulipo group (one, Raymond Queneau, appears here); the self-dramatisations of Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin or Cindy Sherman (the latter two feature); enigmatic photos in novels, as deployed by WG Sebald; and, of course, the boom in graphic fiction.
But poets and novelists knew how to load trivia and kitsch with the residue of passion long before the vogue for everyday semiotics. From the pressed flower to the gift CD soaked in an old flame's emotional DNA, the letters of love still haunt us as its spirit departs. Shapton has found a smartly contemporary way to reinvent the oldest, and the saddest, story ever told.» - Boyd Tonkin
«The story is an old one: boy and girl meet, fall in love, break up, and then get back together, only to ultimately decide that it won’t work. Or, perhaps, it’s not old so much as overdone, much like a bowl of macaroni and cheese turns stale and dry after multiple sessions in the microwave. We have read this already in books, seen it in movies, and heard it in countless pop and country songs. But despite its staleness, this story remains one all too familiar in our modern world, one we can relate to as either a participant in or observer of such a relationship. So how does one go about refreshing this tired story?
Leanne Shapton was particularly suited to take on such a project. As co-founder of J&L Books, an art book press, and author and illustrator of Was She Pretty?, Shapton is skilled in the weaving of word and image to “write” a story. For example, a line drawing of a sloppily dressed girl is accompanied by the inscription:
Noah’s ex-girlfriend Clara was exceptionally beautiful but refused to acknowledge it.
Though neither the written sections nor the images in Was She Pretty? say much on their own, together they create an innovative way of investigating the effect of jealousy within a relationship.
Important Artifacts... treads similar emotional territory and employs the same use of visual and written elements in collaboration. For her second book, however, Shapton put down her artist’s brush and picked up a camera, gathering a collection of “relationship artifacts” in order to tell the story of her protagonists, Lenore and Harold. Organized like an auction catalog, the book tells its story, not through traditional narrative, but through pictures of auction items and their corresponding descriptions. For instance, a photo of the book 7 Types of Ambiguity by William Empson, which appears early on in the book, is accompanied by the following:
Written in ballpoint pen on flyleaf in Morris’s script is “H. Morris” and lyrics to the song “Bandit” by Neil Young, reading in part: “Try to get closer but not too close / Try to get through but not be through.”
The combination of the two speaks to Morris’s own ambiguity about his burgeoning relationship with Doolan, and hints at its eventual dissolution. In response to this foreshadowing, a picture of a broken mug appears later in the book, accompanied by this description:
Included in lot is a note handwritten by Doolan. Reads: “H I’m so sorry, I know this was your favorite. Will get it fixed, I promise.”
Of course, the symbolism is apparent; the relationship by this time has been broken, both by Harold’s disconnection and ambiguity as well as Lenore’s frustration and subsequent anger.
In addition to acting as markers for the status of the relationship, these artifacts reveal much about Lenore and Harold as individuals. We learn that Lenore, aka Buttertart, is a homebody who writes a food column for the New York Times, loves striped clothing, and shares a close relationship with her sister. Harold, or Hal, is a professional photographer with a fear of commitment, a passive-aggressive English mother, and a collection of hotel keycards to accompany his many and long absences. Though we hope that love will conquer in the end, we are all too aware that these two are just not suited for each other, either on paper, or in real life. The fact that, as audience members, we are able to pick up on these things which are never overtly told to us is as thrilling as piecing a puzzle together or discovering the culprit in a mystery.
Adding to that thrill is Shapton’s skillful use of omission. Several lots have been removed from the auction, and we are left wondering what they were and why they were removed. Were these items so important that someone decided to keep them? Were they too revealing, too invasive into that private world that each relationship must necessarily create in order to survive? Shapton herself gives us a clue in this interview with the Boston Phoenix:
I really like the idea of objects being haunted and holding more history than they appear to. I also wanted to talk about how we keep these things. What do you take from one relationship and bring into a new one? What can you not throw away? I was interested in the life and the romance of things, of objects that didn’t have any value but sentimental value.
The missing pieces might just be those things that Lenore and Harold, for various reasons, cannot throw away. This causes the reader to ask herself (or himself), “What am I unable to get rid of?” We, therefore, fill in the blank according to our own experiences. A sexy photo, a love letter, a favorite movie or piece of clothing—the missing item could be any of these. In fact, we see the artifacts of past relationships surface in the relationship between Doolan and Morris. Lenore wears her ex-boyfriend’s t-shirt after lovemaking. Harold gives her a pair of his ex’s sunglasses as a gift. The inclusion of these items hints at, but refrains from delving into, the past loves of these two lovers. We must again guess at the significance of such items, both in past relationships and the current one. But, rather than detract from the experience, the combination of visuals and writing and the use of omission allow the reader to participate in the telling of the story. In effect, the story of Lenore and Harold becomes my story too.
This explains why, while reading, I became so emotionally invested in these doomed lovers. For example, when I came across a collection of take-out menus all from the same restaurant with the description:
Circled in all are Sauteed Mustard Greens, General Zao’s Chicken, Scallion Pancake, Health Special Baby Bok Choy, and Brown Rice.
I thought to myself, “They’re falling into a rut, the excitement of new love is gone.” Similarly, when a lot for Doolan’s day planner included a note for an appointment with a couples therapist, I feared that it was too late, and the damage done to their relationship was irreparable. And when Lenore began to purchase vintage children’s clothing, I felt a sinking in my stomach, knowing that Harold would never be able to settle down and have a family. Was I projecting onto these objects the emotions from my own doomed loves? Of course. But that is where the success of this book lies. After all, we secretly identify with Romeo and Juliet, or Bogey and Bergman. We know the feeling of unrequited or unworkable love. By reawakening the reader’s emotional past and allowing him or her to project it onto the artifacts within these pages, Shapton ensures that her story will be as effective emotionally as it is innovative in form.
The failed relationship is, as I said before, an old story, but no less affecting for its age. We are each Lenore, each Harold, and we understand instinctually the emotional charge that objects can carry. An inscription in a book, a pair of high heels, a postcard, a lock of hair—any of these can hold a hidden history, a hidden love. Shapton’s book allows us to participate in the story of Harold and Lenore, and I celebrate this new, inclusive, and moving approach to storytelling.» - Katie Cappello
«Although I do not think of myself as an especially materialistic person, my meagre possessions, like those of most people, maintain a somewhat tenacious hold over me. As I write, here in my office, a dozen carefully curated objets peer down at me from the edges of my bookshelves and up at me from a small table. Some of these things I find beautiful: a postcard of a painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw, a tiny elephant carved from bone, a turquoise vase. But most I do not think attractive at all. Their value is only sentimental: a row of corks from bottles drunk on significant occasions; a Peruvian doll given to me by a beloved uncle; a Snoopy owned since I was nine.
Mostly, stuff survives only because we want it to; we hoard our belongings, like treasure, for private reasons. Taken in their entirety, you could say that they tell our story. This, at least, is the thinking behind Leanne Shapton's new book, a work that is certainly fiction but not quite, perhaps, a full-blown novel. It is called Important Artifacts... – not, I grant you, a title that trips off the tongue, and in paeans of praise to friends, I have been calling it "The Auction Book", for the simple reason that, as its title more than hints, it takes the form of a sale catalogue.
Yes, Important Artifacts is nothing more, or less, than a series of black-and- white photographs of 331 staged auction lots, with accompanying captions (eg "LOT 1135 A menu. A paper menu from the Oyster Bar restaurant, folded into a fortune teller game. $15-20"). And yet it's one of the best things I've read this year.
The miracle of it is that, pored over in chronological order, Leanne Shapton's slyly chosen and carefully staged lots successfully tell the story of the four-year relationship between the Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris of her title. They tell it with amazing originality, a genuinely startling succinctness and a dagger-sharp accuracy; plus, as a bonus, the reader has the enjoyably illicit feeling that he or she is rifling through someone else's cupboards and drawers behind their back.
In an interview in the New York Times, where she also works as the designer of the op-ed page, Shapton revealed that it came to her that such a narrative trick was possible when she read the catalogue of a 2006 sale of Truman Capote's personal effects; it was, she said, like reading an autobiography, albeit an elliptical one. Important Artifacts is undoubtedly elliptical, but it's easy, and unexpectedly satisfying, to fill in the gaps yourself. I mean, what kind of man gives his girlfriend a book of Cindy Sherman photographs and inscribes it with the words: "She reminds me of you"? What kind of woman carries a Frette travel pillow with her when she flies? And honestly, what kind of couple signals their readiness for sex by putting on a "Property of McGill Athletics" T-shirt? (The book, the pillow, and the T-shirt are all included in the sale.)
At the start of their relationship, Lenore Doolan is 26. She is a Canadian who writes a fey column about baking, "Cakewalk", for the New York Times (we know it's fey because the occasional clipping is included in the sale). Harold Morris is 39, British, and a photographer with, we quickly glean, a shrink, commitment issues and, possibly, a somewhat inflated opinion of his own work as compared to that of his girlfriend (Lot 1216, a handwritten note from Lenore to Harold, begins: "I just couldn't believe you said you were f***ing sick of cake"). Both live in Manhattan where, in 2002, they meet at a Halloween party, Lenore dressed as Lizzie Borden and Harold dressed as Harry Houdini. (A photograph of the couple at said party is Lot 1005.)
As they fall in love, we discover, via Shapton's ruthless cataloguing of their mutual gifts and private detritus, all sorts of things about them, from how they wooed one another (Scrabble, postcards and a trip to Venice) to what makes them fight (the bones of an argument will occasionally be scribbled in the margin of a theatre programme: at Abigail's Party, they were rowing about Harold's reading of Lenore's private emails). We learn that she likes MFK Fisher and Virginia Woolf, and he John Updike and Ford Madox Ford; that they both love to wear vintage; and that their favourite takeaway dish is General Sao's chicken from Wah-Sing. They are, it is fair to say, kind of pretentious, but lovable too.
I won't tell you precisely what happens to Lenore and Hal's relationship; suffice to say that its trajectory will be familiar to the reader, even if some of the Manhattan eateries that form its backdrop are not. You begin with baby names ("Buttertart!") and you end with snippy emails. But what I can tell you is that the whole thing is pitch perfect: intimate and piercingly true. Also, that the form of Important Artifacts, which could, in the wrong hands, have been so trying and tricksy, enables Shapton to muse on many things besides love and sex: class, money, ambition, gender, branding.
It's unbelievably good: a beautiful object in its own right, one just as lovely as many of those you can gaze upon within its pages (with the possible exception of Lenore's Elsa Schiaparelli astrakhan coat, which Harold found for her in Athens and was reputed to have been owned by Maria Callas). And this is the final irony. Shapton has made it her work to reveal the folly and pathos inherent in our possessions. But pick up her book in a shop and you will find that you need to own it right now.» - Rachel Cooke
"In a 1979 New York Review of Books essay on Woody Allen, Joan Didion singles out a scene at the end of the film Manhattan in which Allen's character devises a list of "reasons to stay alive": It includes the second movement of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, Groucho Marx and A Sentimental Education. Didion calls the list the "ultimate consumer report" and says that the 'extent to which it has been quoted approvingly suggests a new class in America, a subworld of people rigid with apprehension that they will die wearing the wrong sneaker, naming the wrong symphony, preferring Madame Bovary.'
Thirty years on, the tastemaker class flourishes, their passions slightly altered: The linen "cut by Calvin Klein to wrinkle" that Didion identifies as de rigueur in "the large coastal cities of the United States this summer" is now high-end denim with subtle variations in stitching and pocket placement; the "perfect vegetable terrine" now the perfectly engineered organic latte.
Leanne Shapton's new novel takes the form of an auction catalog filled with the personal effects of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, members of the latest breed of New York sophisticates. They meet at a Halloween party in 2002 and quickly fall for each other. Their romance ends four years later, and the auction is held, presumably, because they no longer want the objects associated with the relationship. A descriptive blurb accompanies each item. One reads: "A theater playbill for 'Dinner at Eight' at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Handwriting in margins alternates between Doolan and Morris: 'Are you crying? / No, allergies. / Crying!' " Another: "A fortune-cookie fortune, kept by Morris in his wallet, reading: 'In life, it's good not to get too comfortable.' " Their story is obliquely told through these captions.
Didion writes that Allen's characters are like adolescents "acting out a yearbook fantasy of adult life." The same could be said of Doolan and Morris. Doolan, who's 26, writes a column for the New York Times' food section on baking. Morris, almost 40, is a globe-trotting photographer with a taste for luxury hotels. (He's hoping to publish a book of photographs of hotel ceilings.) He lives in Brooklyn, and she in the West Village - for fun, they stay uptown at the St. Regis. When Doolan is sick, Morris ships her from London a box of Yorkshire tea, a cashmere scarf by Paul Smith and a silver choker from Agent Provocateur. Doolan's pale-green travel pillow is a Frette.
As a work of literature, Important Artifacts... is empty. Viewed as a lifestyle catalog, it is convincing. The lots are photographed in black and white, in a plain style reminiscent of the photos in "The Official Preppy Handbook" from 1980.
Like that book, Important Artifacts... is a vade mecum for the ascendant class of the day, twenty- and thirtysomething urban hipsters. On the block are a framed photograph of Monica Vitti, Yves Saint Laurent tortoiseshell sunglasses and an Olivetti typewriter. Four Smythson agendas (one for each year), a copy of William Empson's The 7 Types of Ambiguity and a Hermes beach towel.
Important Artifacts... reduces the definition of character to a series of consumer choices. It's no wonder we don't care about its protagonists.» - Tayt Harlin
"In recent years, a number of artists have transformed the sum of their life’s humble possessions into works of art. Some have done so by simply creating some kind of inventory or archive. Other artists, following a long tradition of artistic self-abnegation, have gone so far as to dispose of everything they own, either by giving it all away or selling everything they own on eBay. An underlying motivation for art actions like this is often to suggest or challenge the belief that a complete inventory of one’s material goods says something about the life of the owner.
As readers of Vertigo know, because of my interest in the works of W. G. Sebald I often write about novels with embedded photographs. I think Leanne Shapton’s new book is perhaps the most unusual I have encountered that manages to fit into this category.
...Shapton’s auction catalog mimicry is pitch perfect; her lot descriptions satirize the dead-pan verbiage of the high-brow auction house. And, in fact, Shapton’s “auction catalog” appears to have fooled the Library of Congress, which catalogs the volume not as fiction but in the CT class, or Auxiliary Sciences of History: Biography. Shapton must have had a blast collecting or faking the items to be included in the 332 lots: fake snapshots, tourist postcards, lingerie, clogs, 18 bras for “Lenore” and 18 tee-shirts for Harold, cheesy paperbacks, vintage sunglasses, stuffed squirrels…
On the other hand, Important Artifacts and Personal Property is less successful in giving much depth to the relationship between the two characters. Auction catalog language is deliberately wiped free of emotion and subjectivity, so Shapton often resorts to personal notes, letters, and annotations by Lenore and Harold themselves, buried in the descriptions of the various lots, as a vehicle for depicting the status of their changing relationship. For example, here is Lot 1253:
An unusual chair and a handwritten note
A vintage 1930s leather and oak chair. Good condition, some marking to leather. A note on the back of a receipt for groceries reads: “You said you’d be back at 8, you could have called. Have gone to the movies. here’s your present – Happy Birthday. L 9:45”
24 in. wide x 30 in. high x 18 in. deep
$700-900
The problem, of course, is that most of our personal possessions don’t really say much about us in isolation. (The fact that I have a Hello Kitty mug of Badtz-Maru in my office won’t tell you anything about me unless I tell you the story behind it.) When items in Shapton’s book do point to biographical traits of their owners, the message often seems forced. Yes, it’s clearly meaningful when the couple start reading sad novels and self-help books about relationships, but those clues are so watered down they don’t really reveal anything. This is definitely not Anna Karenina. Shapton really has two overlapping projects here – one about a relationship and one that pokes fun at the auction world. Enjoy the book for the latter, ignore the former, and you’ll have much more fun.» - sebald.wordpress.com/category/leanne-shapton
