Italian Lessons by Erica Van Horn (box with 3 title labels to lid and containing 22 items). Coracle Press, 1989–2010

Rare boxed set of artist’s books and projects created by American artist and writer Erica Van Horn, focusing on the experience of being a foreigner and learning a new language. The boxed set rarely found outside institutional collections.

“Living for extended periods in France and Italy, Van Horn has explored the languages of these places in text and image, narrative and abstraction, exposing much about their culture, landscape, and character. The Italian Lessons series includes works in a wide variety of printed formats, from small books to postcards to a commercially printed eraser. The series explores the process of language learning, the experience of living in a foreign country, and the relationship of lexicon to place. In addition to using a variety of formats and materials, Van Horn’s series of lessons makes use of narrative, humour, nostalgia, image, and rhetoric to demonstrate a small fraction of the ways one encounters and experiences a foreign language. The Lessons also serve to document something of Van Horn’s time spent in Italy; they record not only the artist’s attempts to learn a new language but also something of her daily experiences.” – Nancy Kuhl, Curator of Poetry, Yale Collection of American Literature.

In 2010, The Beinecke Library at Yale displayed seventy-five pieces of Van Horn's work as part of the exhibit, The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horne.

Contents:

Italian Lesson No.1, 1989 (Postcard - Erica on roof)
Italian Lesson No.2, 1990 (Disposable Bag)
Italian Lesson No.3, 1990 (Disposable Bag)
Italian Lesson No.4, 1990 (Tiny notebook - from the edition of 66)
Italian Lesson No.5, 1999 (Postcard, La Pelle Rosa - from the edition of 99)
Italian Lesson No.6, 1991 (Argo, from the edition of 200)
Italian Lesson No.7, 1992 (Envelope with James Joyce card)
Italian Lesson No.8, 1992 (from the edition of 250) (Menus & Companions)
Italian Lesson No.9, 1992 (from the edition of 250) (Menus & Companions)
Italian Lesson No.10, 1992 (from the edition of 250) (Menus & Companions)
Italian Lesson No.11, 1993 (Postcard, 11 Words)
Italian Lesson No.12, 1993 (Folding card in envelope, Venetian Blinds)
Italian Lesson No.13, n.d (Identificazione)
Italian Lesson No.14, 1995 (Postcard - Bueno)
Italian Lesson No.15, 1996 (Postcard - Quindici)
Italian Lesson No.16, 1996 (Eraser)
Italian Lesson No.17, 1999 (Postcard - husband)
Packed by Erica

Also the books:
Erica Van Horn, échafaudage, 2012
Erica Van Horn, Scraps of an aborted collaboration, 1994
Nancy Kuhl, The Book Remembers Everything: The Work Of Erica Van Horn, 2010