Painting the Stage: Jan Fabre

The book as theater: four astounding luxury editions of Painting the Stage, each housed in a wooden sculpture by archistar Mario Botta, with prints by William Kentridge, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, and Jan FabreFor this extraordinary tour de force of bookmaking, the acclaimed Swiss architect Mario Botta has designed a wooden sculpture that houses a luxurious clothbound edition of Denise Wendel-Poray's Painting the Stage�a pioneering history of the relationship between opera and art�with a signed, numbered print by an artist featured in the book: Jan Fabre, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, and William Kentridge.The publication comes in four versions, each made in an edition of 60 copies. The print by Belgian artist Jan Fabre reproduces a prepatory drawing for his 2004 staging of Wagner's Tannh�user in watercolor and pencil; the Kabakovs' print is from The Flies: A Musical Phantasmagoria; William Kentridge's edition is divided into two editions of 30 each, both featuring sugarlift aquatint portraits inspired by Alban Berg's Lulu.Each edition features a different wood: durmast (Fabre), walnut (Kabakovs) and ash (Kentridge).