“Keeping a secret was never really my thing,” Adèle Jancovici writes in the beginning of Maripola X, the first edition from Le Livre Art Publishing. As publisher, Jancovici collaborates with artists to produce editions in various forms, be it books, prints, and other media that offer a public space for the private thought.
Jancovici likens herself to a movie producer working in the 1940s, envisioning the finished work as the space of collaboration between herself and her artists. Like any great producer, Jancovici understands that art is a vehicle from which a voice and a spirit emanates and has the ability to influence all those who come into contact with it.
“People should look up to artists with reverence for being so vulnerable and for being so secure with their intent. Women pour out their guts while men hold it inside. Men are outside, women are inside, a yin yang of complementary energies, just like vulnerability and strength. Though I see myself as in the middle, I feel much more masculine in my work. As publisher I am there to protect my artists, to make the Le Livre Art Publishing a safe space for them,” Jancovici reveals.
The daughter of a publisher and a painter, Jancovici has spent her entire life around art and artists, seeing both the creative and commercial sides of this world. Having firsthand knowledge and experience has greatly helped shape her understanding of her role. Jancovici explains, “I have a voice and I have something to say through this work. But despite that, both the artists and the public see things differently than I do.
“With Maripola X, which has just been released as a signed and numbered edition of six hundred, I wanted to explore sex through an emotional lens. We’re used to the body, to skin, pornography, and sex in a primal, physical way. We do not look at is as an expression of emotion, of love, of feelings. People are not comfortable with that. This book is not about the eroticism of sex and bodies, but about emotions and colors. That’s why it has a super clean feeling to the design. I wanted to focus on the story about a woman who loves and hates and gets betrayed. She is submerged by her emotions. That is the feeling I wanted to recreate.”
In contrast to Maripol’s work stands a new project by Paolo Canevari, set for release in Summer 2014. The project is a series of 22 monotypes at 30 x 42 inches in size. The monotypes, which are abstract black, reflect Jancovici’s love of the form. “I have one obsession: black monochromes. Ad Reinhardt is a God to me,” she notes.
“I feel so grateful that they trust me to create their work. In a way that fits my vision for Le Livre Art Publishing. I don’t want to show what is comfortable, what is known,” Jancovici reveals. Indeed, it is her curiosity, her affection, and the pleasure she takes in producing art that marks Le Livre Art Publishing as the company to watch.
