Booksmith is thrilled to host a conversation between Dean Rader (Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly) and Paula J. Birnbaum (Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff between Paris and Tel Aviv), both celebrating new books. Please join us for what promises to be a stimulating evening!

Please note: advance sales have ended, but we will have space available at the door – this will go on a first come, first serve basis, with no guarantee of admission for walk-ups. If you need tickets, we recommend you arrive no later than 7pm.

About Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly

In 2018, just a few weeks after his father’s death, Dean Rader made a pilgrimage to the Gagosian Gallery in New York to see a retrospective of Cy Twombly’s work, In Beauty It is Finished: Drawings 1951-2008. The exhibit led to a poem that would become the genesis of this book — from loss and fear to regret and beauty, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly reaches for the embodiment of emotion and the aesthetics of possibility. 

Through a range of experimental forms, including a series of octets, Rader writes to magnify/decode/complicate/question the gestures and energies of 50 Cy Twombly drawings and paintings. He reaches past observation and admiration to create a game of echolocation, reflecting Twombly’s infinite scrawls as “saddle stitch, spaghetti curl, white whirl.” Even as Rader searches for proximity, examining the gaps between symbols and what they signify, the collection remains unmistakably autobiographical. From the wheatfields of his Western Oklahoma upbringing to questions of loss—first his father and then his mother, who passed only weeks after Rader finished the manuscript for this book—the poems in Before the Borderless are both elegy and prayer, for Rader’s parents, for his children, for the world.

Dean Rader has authored or co-authored twelve books. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His 2014 collection Landscape Portrait Figure Form was named by The Barnes & Noble Review as a Best Poetry Book. Other titles include his poetry collection Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and the anthologies Native Voices: Contemporary Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations and Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Rader writes and reviews regularly for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, BOMB, and Ploughshares. In 2020, he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award. His new book, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, features Rader’s poems alongside corresponding images by the artist Cy Twombly. Rader’s writing has been supported by fellowships from Princeton University, Harvard University, the MacDowell Foundation, Art Omi, The Headlands Center for the Arts, and the John R. Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, where he was a 2019 Fellow in Poetry. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco.

About Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff between Paris and Tel Aviv

In Sculpting a Life, the first book-length biography of sculptor Chana Orloff (1888-1968), author Paula Birnbaum tells the story of a fiercely determined and ambitious woman who fled antisemitism in Ukraine, emigrated to Palestine with her family, then travelled to Paris to work in haute couture before becoming an internationally recognized artist. Against the backdrop of revolution, world wars, a global pandemic and forced migrations, her sculptures embody themes of gender, displacement, exile, and belonging. A major figure in the School of Paris, Orloff contributed to the canon of modern art alongside Picasso, Modigliani and Chagall.

Stories from her unpublished memoir enrich this life story of courage, perseverance, and extraordinary artistic accomplishments that take us through the aftermath of the Holocaust when Orloff lived between Paris and Tel Aviv. This biography brings new perspectives and understandings to Orloff’s multiple identities as a cosmopolitan émigré, woman, and Jew, and is a much-needed intervention into the narrative of modern art.

Paula J. Birnbaum is the academic director of the Museum Studies Master of Arts Program and professor of art history and museum studies at the University of San Francisco. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art. Paula is a former Fulbright Scholar and fellow at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University. She is the author of, among other works, Women Artists in Interwar France (Routledge, 2011; 2016) and the co-edited anthology Essays on Women’s Artistic and Cultural Contributions 1919-1939 (Edwin Mellen, 2009). Recent essays appear in the Burlington Art Journal, Museum Magazine, Artl@s Bulletin, Modern Jewish Studies and Art Journal, among others. Paula is a regular contributor to museum exhibition catalogs exploring the role of women in modernism, including most recently Suzanne Valadon: un monde à soi (Centre Pompidou – Metz, 2023); Pionnières, artistes femmes des années folles (Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2022); Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde (London: Prestel, 2019). She is presently collaborating with the Musée Zadkine in Paris on an exhibition of Chana Orloff’s work, opening in November 2023.

Please note:

• Masks will be required throughout the duration of the event and capacity will be limited to allow indoor distancing. Protocols subject to change.
• Because we’re limiting capacity, we can't guarantee we'll have space for walk-ins. The best way to ensure you’ll get a seat is to order the Book + Seat ticket through this link; you can also RSVP for a free seat right here while supplies last.
• We are happy to offer *signed copies* of Before the Borderless and Sculpting a Life: order a Book + Seat ticket bundle if you'd like to pick up a signed copy at the event, or if you just want a signed copy: order here for Before the Borderless and order here for Sculpting a Life.
• If we feel it is not safe to gather, as the event gets closer, we will pivot to a virtual event and your registration will remain valid.
• Questions? Write [email protected].