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Bootlegger: Five Thousand Quotations for All Occasions

"History isn’t written; it’s rewritten, burned, and reconstructed into fragile puzzles for the living to grapple with." — Schaefer 1998

 

The base for this work is a book first published January 1, 1945. 'Five Thousand Quotations for All Occasions' arranged and edited by Lewis C. Henry, it is an extensive selection of popular quotations, arranged alphabetically by subjects.


This altered book, rooted in Five Thousand Quotations for All Occasions, dismantles the fabric of historical permanence and reconstructs it as a tactile artifact of decay. Through fire, thread, glue, and destruction, the original text is transformed into a narrative that interrogates the lives, myths, and machinations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the legacy of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

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At its core, the work is an autopsy of power: the whiskey bottle and bullets laid bare within the opened leather binding reveal the inheritance of violence and corruption at the heart of the Kennedy mythos. Chapters burned and reconstituted into fragile folios—each representing a facet of this fractured history—echo the fragile truths of the Vietnam era, the spectacle of Oswald and Ruby, and the ultimate unraveling of Nixon.

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The piece invites viewers to interact, dismantling its narrative one folio at a time, only to leave behind more charred remains. In its impermanence, it defies archival preservation, mirroring the distortion of memory and history over time. The empty matchbook in the concluding folio is both a poignant silence and an open question—what remains after the flames of ambition and manipulation have burned themselves out?

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By destroying the permanence of a book that once sought to provide definitive quotations, this work rejects the notion of history as static or conclusive. It challenges viewers to grapple with the fragments, the contradictions, and the detritus of an era shaped by hubris, violence, and unfulfilled designs.​

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Bootlegger: Five Thousand Quotations for All Occasions

Original book altered with paper, vellum, photographs, reproductions, ink, acrylic, tissue paper, string, fabric, tape, metal, coins, bullets, and whiskey bottle

6 x 9 x 5 in / 15.2 x 22.9 x 12.7 cm

1998

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Turning Over a New Leaf — ExLibris Gallery - Savannah, GA - 1998

© 1977-2025 Copyright | Thomas Arthur Schaefer | All Rights Reserved

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