Books and Maps and Getting Lost: Doug Beube at The Argosy Bookstore

Contributed by Rebecca Chace / There are two places you can still get lost if you choose to: the streets of New York City and the pages of a book. You love art and books, isn’t that why you moved here in the first place? But you may have forgotten how to get lost.

Step One: Go to the clock at Grand Central station and turn off your phone. I know, it’s scary. Now, look up at the ceiling. When did you last do this? Have you ever really done it? Keep looking until you’ve looked at every single constellation. If one of them is yours, say hello. If yours isn’t there, don’t worry, they got all the constellations backwards anyway (long story). If you’re feeling a little scared and hungry now that you’ve turned off your phone, grab a bowl of oyster stew at the counter of the Oyster Bar. Ask someone who doesn’t look like a tourist where it is. If it’s too hard to tell because we’re all tourists and locals in this town, the clock is an information booth with actual humans inside. When you get to the Oyster Bar, make sure to sit at the counter to the right of the entrance where the guys are filling bowls from hinged vats of oyster stew with more panache than Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling of Grand Central. I personally prefer the pan roast. But if you don’t have time for the Oyster Bar, you can start this journey at the clock under the stars.

Step Two: Walk north through the building to Park Avenue. This is easier than it sounds. If you can’t figure out how to walk through the building, you can walk around. If you don’t know which way is north, stand at the clock with the Apple store on your right and Cipriani Restaurant on your left. Now you’re facing north. There are many ways to get to Park Avenue from Grand Central Station. I believe in you.

Step Three: Walk north on Park Avenue, making sure to turn around and see the beautiful building spanning the avenue behind you. Try not to notice the gold letters branding this mouth of Hades. But of course, you do, just like Orpheus. Does anyone remember Leona Helmsley? She was known in the 70s as “The Queen of Mean.” You turn away, leaving the stars and tunnels and ghosts of billionaires behind you. Art and books, you sing quietly to yourself and keep walking north.

Step Four: Turn right on 59^th Street. Isn’t Bloomingdales around here somewhere? Does anyone still go to Bloomingdale’s? This is why people say Manhattan is dead in late November, 2023. But people have always said New York is dead, maybe that’s what keeps it alive. Keep walking until the sleek desert of plate glass windows opens into a courtyard on your right. There is a waist high bin of second-hand books, wood-framed glass cabinets, and a soft greenish light illuminating a hand-painted sign: the Argosy Book Store.  You move closer, and inside one of the cabinets facing the courtyard is a photo of a man without a head. Or rather, his head has been replaced by a spiral of paper. This is the artist, Doug Beube, who makes books into sculptures which goad our ideas about the printed word into something that feels both forgotten and dreamlike. Walk through the door into the oldest independent bookstore in New York City, which is family owned and run by the three Cohen sisters, whose father, Louis Cohen, started the business in 1927 and bought this building in 1933. The bookstore is squeezed between two enormous high rises and no, they’re not interested in selling. The sisters could tell you that the constellations on the ceiling of Grand Central Station are based upon the Uranometria, a scientifically accurate star atlas published in 1603. They might even be able to find you a copy. That copy would likely be found on the second floor map and print room, where something extraordinary is happening at the Argosy—a show of contemporary art curated by the queen of the maps and prints department, Laura Ten Eyck and artist Ken Buhler.

Buhler’s work caught Laura’s eye when she saw his recent “Faithful Compass” series, which uses elements of antique maps and handmade marble paper. She decided to try out something new for the Argosy, a solo show of Buhler’s work in the map and print space upstairs. This exhibition opened the door to their collaboration on a series of solo shows by contemporary artists whose work resonates with cartography and the printed word in startling new ways.

Currently on view is Doug Beube’s “A Survey of Zoom +/-” There is perhaps no artist whose work is more relevant to the Argosy. Beube’s book art is embedded with contemporary considerations of borders, migration, war, and the power of words. To encounter his work at the Argosy is to discover an atlas with its cover and pages sliced into minute layers with thick threads of foam and cardboard made from the material of the book itself. The world has its guts spilling out. Fallen Borders is accompanied by a three-minute stop action video that can be easily scanned and watched on your phone. As someone who prefers to skip past anything explanatory while in the act of viewing, I was surprised by this short video which reveals the intricate alterations of every single page within the atlas.

Fallen Borders from Doug Beube on Vimeo.

Armed to Strike Anywhere from Doug Beube on Vimeo.

Near a small display of smaller globes on permanent display in the map and print room is a larger, lit-up globe spiked with wooden matches. This conception is both more less and more obvious than it seems. Be sure to watch the stop-action animation accompanying this piece: Armed to Strike Anywhere. All of Beube’s videos are as exquisitely created as the objects they accompany.

On top of a wide bookshelf storing antique maps pored over by collectors, you will find an old New York Yellow Pages curled quietly upon itself like a small animal. What is this analog object but a cartography of names?

 The gold-framed Red Hat with Veil is a reproduction of Antonello da Messina’s 1475 painting, Portrait of a Man with the face is replaced by layers of finely cut text from Robert Woodward’s “Veil: The Secret Wars of the C.I.A.” This clandestine portrait peers back at visitors in the company of unsuspecting botanical prints, also framed in gold. 

In this building filled with reverence for the written word, Beube’s work simultaneously explodes and expands how we interact with this most delicate and dangerous object: a book. As I write this, there is a newly emboldened movement on the political right to ban books in the United States. Online media and the advent of A.I. Large Language Models threatens the fundamental rights of authors as powerful software engines scrape the internet for words as mulch rather than meaning.

What does it mean to consider books as objects in a place like the Argosy Bookstore? This is a question being asked by this exhibit, and this series of shows has found its place in one of the last, best homes for books in the city. You are invited get lost here, flip through the prints and wander downstairs where the three sisters guard the gate by keeping the door open to all.

STEP FIVE: Stay here as long as you can.

“Doug Beube: A Survey of Zoom +/-“ curated by Laura Ten Eyck and Ken Buhler. Argosy Book Store, 116 East 59th Street, second floor, New York, NY. Through January 6, 2024.

About the author: Rebecca Chace has published four books, Leaving Rock Harbor; Capture the Flag; Chautauqua Summer; June Sparrow and The Million Dollar Penny. Her novel, Talking to the Wolf, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. She is also the author of plays, screenplays, and literary essays. She has written for The New York Times, LA Review of Books, The Yale Review, Guernica, Lit Hub, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other publications. Fellowships include Civitella Ranieri, MacDowell, Yaddo, American Academy in Rome (visiting artist), Dora Maar House, VCCA, and many others. She is Program Manager at the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College.

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