“The book-maker’s art should be distinguished from the art-maker’s book.” Philip Smith “The Whatness of Bookness, or What is a book?” Web.
ART BOOK: Book of which art or an artist is the subject.
LIVRE D’ARTISTE: Book in which the artwork and text are of equal value. Often illustrated by a famous artist.
ARTIST’S BOOK: Book with an experimental consciousness
BOOK ART: Art that employs the book form
BOOK OBJECT: Art object that alludes to the form of a book
BOOKWORK: Artwork dependent upon the structure of a book.
The book
“[All] books are intrinsically visual and sculptural objects, no matter how much those qualities are obscured by convention and familiarity” (Benton 507)
The book is an “historically embedded object: embodiment of learning, symbol of wealth, icon of class, and evocation of culture” (Klima 66)
“The book is an assemblage, an assemblage of extremely disparate components, material and ideal, whose existence lies in the act of reading–in the object itself unfolding slowly and deliberately in the hands of the reader (Jury & Kosh 24)
“The book more than any other object produced by humans requires for its operation the complete interaction and participation of the ‘end user’; it appeals to the hand, to the eye, to the mind, and to the heart” (Klima 69)
The artists’ books
“The compelling quality of artists’ books is the way in which they call attention to the specific character of a book’s identity while they embody the expressive complexity of the book as a communicative form” (Drucker in Klima 62).
“There are as many definitions of an artist’s book as there are innovative extensions of its flexible form […] This mercurial condition ‘defines the nature of the artist’s book’ (Klima 21).
They are “experimenting continuously, reshaping and expanding the form. . . an affordable, portable, mailable, durable democratic art” (Klima 38)
“Artists’ books take every possible form, participate in every possible convention of book making, every possible ‘ism’ of main stream art and literature, every possible mode of production, every shape, every degree of ephemerality or archival durability” (Klim 40)
“Uselessness has become accepted as a defining quality of the art object, a distinction and a dividing line between the mere object and the work of art” (Jury & Kosh 25)
“Today, following Mallarmé, many will agree that the art-object no longer requires an audience, it no longer embodies a meaning, it need not refer to anything outside itself… it exists and that is enough! That it exists is its meaning, its justification. Its being is satisfied by its existence” (Jury & Kosh 25)
The book and its Parts
Book exterior: cover, binding, clasps
Cover: visible (combines usefulness & refinement, social statement)
Binding and clasps: visible (both useful and decorative, social statement)
Refinement: fore-edge painting: visible or invisible: single, double, triple or panoramic. Often done by binders.
Book interior: text and imagery
Landmarks of book illustration
12th C. B.C. earliest-known hand-illustrated text (Ramesseum Papyrus, Egypt, 1980 B.C., a ceremonial play; drawings so simple that they are little more than enlarged hieroglyphs)
8th C. woodcuts in Japan (ornamentation)
14th C. and 15th C. refined woodcut printing in Europe (fine example Hyperotomachia Polphili, 1499, Italy, Aldus Manutius, Companion 497)
16th C. metal engraving: finer yet, but could not be printed at the same time as the text.
18th C. wood-engraving (See Thomas Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds 1790).
18th C. colour printing replaces hand-colouring
19th C. photographic illustration
(Mary E. Brown. History of Books and Printing. Online)
Great contributors to the book as art
Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) Italian grammarian, humanist, typographer and editor
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) German painter, printmaker, mathematician, theorist
William Blake (1757–1827) Romantic English visionary artist and poetWilliam Morris (1834-96) Revivalist (Medieval), artist, founder of Kelmscott Press (Arts and Crafts Movement)
Contemporary fine presses
In the manner of Arts & Craft principles: The Folio Society (UK, 1947-); Oak Knoll Press (USA, 1976-)
In the manner of livres de luxe: Enitharmon Press, Gwasg Gregynog, Incline Press, the Old Stile Press, Alembic Press and the Old School Press (UK); Kat Ran Press, Dieu Donne and the Perishable Press, Arion Press (US)
Bibliography
Bodman, Sarah. Creating Artists’ Books. 2005.
Bury, Stephen. Artists Books. 1995.
Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists’ Books. [1994] 2004.
Drucker, Johanna. The Dual Muse: The Writer as Artist. The Artist as Writer. 1997.
Kelly, Jerry, Riva Castleman, and Anne H. Hoy. The Best of Both Worlds: Finely Printed Livres d’artistes, 1910-2010. 2011.
Klima, Stefan. Artists Books: A Critical Survey of the Literature. 1998.
Jury, David and Peter Rutledge Koch. Book Art Object 2: Second Catalogue of the Codex Foundation biennial international book exhibition and symposium, Berkeley, 2011.