Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus

This is the first artist’s book by Andrea Mastrovito, an internationally renowned author who, in his research, has repeatedly shown a particular attraction for paper and its many expressive forms.

Drawing from his collection of original language editions, from the 1950s to the present day, of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein di Mary Shelley, the artist performs the same gesture with which Dr Frankenstein gave life to his creature. The pages of the seventy different editions are reassembled and alternated from 1 to 225 to generate a “new book”, in which the inconsistencies, excesses or lacks in the unfolding of the narrative flow declare the birth of an original “monstrosity”.

In the realization of the book, the format of the pages of the original editions has been preserved, while on the cover an embossed stamp presents the title.

The editorial art project was born in the context of the exhibition The Modern Prometheus in which the author reflects on the utopia of the “modern Prometheus”, or Dr Frankenstein, relating it to the figure of the artist who, in the same way, part of inert matter tries to breathe life into it.