AR EIST S BOOKS: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook A Special Digested Edition Issued by Joan Lyons in an edition of 200 copies Visual Studies Workshop Press Rochester, New York 1985MUSEUM OF MODERN ART LIBRARY Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthogy and Sourcebook, A Special Digested Edition, com- tains the texts which orginally appeared in Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology a Sourcebook copublished by The Visual Studies Workshop Press and Gibbs M. Smith Inc., Peregrine Smith Books, in 1985. Grateful acknowledgement is made to that publication, to the authors whose texts appear here (with uncorrected typos), and to the publications in which several of the essays originally appeared, Thanks to Janet Zweig for the cover design, to Susan Cerzol for keyboarding the original manuscript (on a Merganthaler CRTronic), and to Tacs Sullivan for the presswork. Copyright © Visual Studies Workshop 1985. All rights reserved. Printed at the Visual Studies Workshop 31 Prince Street, Rochester, New York 14607. *5./62 BUpon completion of the trade version of this book some- thing felt, still, incomplete. With a couple of years of intensive labor, and some misgivings, I had midwifed an unquestionably useful but peculiar hybrid—a trade book about artists’ books. This special digested edition was made in the spirit of giving back the subject to its object. It also provided me with an irresistible opportunity to play out a digital typesetting game I’ve been thinking about for some time. Joan LyonsIntroduction OVER THE LAST twenty years visual artists, increas- ingly concerned with time-based media, have redisco- vered the book, investigating and transforming every aspect of that venerable container of the writen word. They have manipulated page, format, and content— sometimes subtly, sometimes turning the book into a reflexive discussion of its own tradition. They have il- lustrated real time in simple flip books or collaged real time with fictive time into complex layers. They have disguised artists’ books as traditional books and made others that are scarcely recognizable. The best of the bookworks are multi-notational. Within them, words, images, colors, marks, and silences become plastic or- ganisms that play across the pages in variable linear se- quence. Their importance lies in the formulation of a new perceptual literature whose content alters the con- cept of authorship and challeges the reader to a new discourse with the printed page. Artists’ books began to proliferate in the sixties and early seventies in the prevailing climate of social and political activism. Inexpensive disposable editions were ilEES rr One manifestation of the dematerialization of the art ob- ject and the new emphasis on art process, Ephemeral Conceptual artists concerned with “systems” recog- nized the book as a teadymade one, while others went further and made books that tesonated with a reflexive investigation of the book itself, and pieces into a fabric. Perhaps a pattern will emerge; if So, it will be a Crazy-quilt, that quirky kind of piecework, which defies design but achieves harmony through in- finite variety. though a series of highly successful conferences have helped to identify key issues and potential authors, most of the writing on artists’ books to date has been lim. 8ited to brief surveys, essays in exhibition catalogues, and book reviews. This anthology then, is the first attempt at an in depth look at the territory. Involved as we are in the terrain, we have probably missed an island or two or wrote a mountain too large. In some charted areas suita- ble material was not forthcoming. What is here is our best shot—a wealth of information about an exciting new medium, including texts about the current state of the art and its historical precedents by long-time partici- pants in and observers of the field. At the back of the book you will find a listing of artists’ book collections and the most complete bibliography of secondary sources published to date. It is our hope that in addition to providing a much- needed resource for artists, teachers, librarians, and stu- dents, this book will form a bridge between book artists and their audience. In the words of a recent promotional lapel pin in my possession “learn to read art.” A Preface by Dick Higgins THERE IS A MYRIAD of possiblilities concerning what the artists’ book can be: the danger is that we will think of it as just this and not that. A firm definition will, by its na- ture, serve only to exclude many artists’ books which one would want to include Given that caveat, let’s try for a grey definition. I'd suggest: book done for its own sale and not for the infor- mation it contains. That is: it doesn’t contain a lot of works, like a book of poems. It is a work . Its design and format reflect its content—they intermerge, interpenet- 9tate. It might be any art: an artist’s book could be music, Photography, gtaphics, intermedial literature. The ex- the artist stresses in making it. = The illusion is that it is something new. Not so. Blake’s Most visual books are obviously early artists’ books. But India, who worked in the early seventeenth century. His language was Latin and he used it as a part of his flow, not for the sake of making powerful works but for the sharing of joy, as artists are So apt to. Most of his books were made in miniscule editions and most copies are lost. Perhaps they should be reprinted, starting with the Panegyricus braite Urbeveter; in maiori basilica anno 1629...(Urbe Vet- eri: ex typographia Rainuldo Ruuli, 1629...) —A Panegyric without words in praie of Philip Nerii, spoken in his cele- bration at Urbe Veteri in the big cathedral in the year 1629...” One would like to know just what was spoken— sound poetry? Something like sound poetry was in vogue at the time, as was Pattern poetry, the visual poetry which our learned professors have been hiding from us all these years because it confuses their neat Pictures, but that’s another story, Anyway, the impostance tous of knowing of our brothers and sisters doing artists’ books and such-like a perfectly natural human expression. It gives us con- tinuity with other times and cultures, Of course, looking towards modern times, the “books” (sometimes called “non-books too) of Dietre Roth and Bern Porter in the 1950s are also artists’ books as anyone knows who visited Porter’s show at Franklin Furnace in 10New York City ca. 1981, or the various big shows of Roth’s books in London, Amsterdam, and elsewhere in the 1970s. So, what we have is a form which is not, per se, new,but whose “time has come.” And what this means is a matter of audience mote than of artist. Not that artists’ books are being done in production runs of 10,000 copies, but the genre is now defined in some way. There are stores and outlets for the books and, as a result, the perception of the artist’s book has changed from its being an eccentricity to its being an integral part—sometimes central, to an artist’s work—the main medium of expression, and sometimes an important venture for an artist whose main concern lies elsewhere. We see an artists’ non-book work, and we say, “Gee, wouldn’t it be interesting if so-and-so would do a book.” And maybe so-and-so does. Perhaps the hardest thing to do in connection with the artist’s book is to find the right language for discussing it. Most of our criticism in art is based on the concept of a work with separable meaning, content, and style—‘this is what it says” and “here is how it says what it says:” But the language of normative criticism is not geared towards the discussion of an experience, which is the main focus of most artists’ books. Perhaps this is why there is so little good criticism of the genre. Besides, where would it be published? Traditional art magazines are too busy servicing their gallery advertizers, and the focus on the book expeti- ence is not what the critics are used to doing anyway. “ hat am I expeiencing when I turn these pages?” That is what the critic of an artists’ book must ask, and for most critics it is an uncomfortable question. This is a problem that must be adressed if the audience for artists’ books is to continue to grow, if they are to reach a larger audience. But it will happen. The making of artists’ books is not a movement. It has no progrm which, when accomplished, crests and dies away into the past. It is a genre, open to many kinds of artists with many different styles and pur- poses, and so its likely future is that it simply will be ab- sorbed into the mainstream and will be something which llartists do as a matter of course, each in his or her own way. To that we can look forward with delight. Book Art by Richard Kostelanetz “the book” might become. Whereas the hack writes prose that “reads easily” or designs Pages that resenble each other and do not call attention to themselve, the book artist tran- scends those conventions, The book hack is a housepainter, So to speak, filling the available walls in a familiar uniform fashion; the other is an artist, imagining unprecidented possibilities for bookish materials. The first aspires to coverage and acceptability; the second to invention and quality. Common books look familiar; uncommon books do not, Book art is not Synonymous with book design or literary art; it is something else. ree innate characteristics of the book are the cover, which both protects the contents and gives certain clues to its nature; the Page, which is the discrete unit, and a struc- ture of sequence: but pethaps neither cover nor Page nor se- quence is a genuine Prerequisite to a final definition of a book. and distribute, that it is customarily portable and easily Stores, that its contents are conveniently accessible, that it can be experienced by oneself at one’s own speed without a playback machine (unlike theatre, video, audio, or movies), 12and that it is more spatially economical (mewasured by ex- trinsic experience over intrinsic volume) than other non- electric media. A book also allows its reader random access, in contrast to audiotape and videotape, whose programmed sequences permit only linear access; with a book you can go from one page to another, both forewards and backwards, as quickly as you can go from one page to the next. Because a book’s text is infinitely replicable, the number of copies that can be printed is theoretically limitless. By con- trast, atraitional art object is unique while a multiple print ap- pears in an edition whose number is intentionally limited at the pointo of production. It is possible to make a unique book, such as a handwritten journal or sketchbook, or to make an edition of books limited by number and autograph; but as a communications vehicle, the first is really a “book as art object,” while the econd is, so to speak, a “book as print” (that is destined less for exhibition than for specialized collec- tions). The economic difference between a standard book object and an art object is that the latter needs only a single purch- aset, while the former needs many buyers to be financially feasible. Therefore, the art dealer is a retailer, in personal con- tact with his potential customers, while the book publisher isa wholesaler, distributing largely to retailers, rather than to the ultimate customers. The practical predicament of commercial publishers in the eighties is that they will not publish an “adult trade” book un- less their salesmen can securely predict at least several thousand hardback purchasers or twice as many paperback purchasers within a few months. Since any proposed book that is unconventional in format could never be approved by edito- rial-industrial salesmen, commercial publishers are interested only in book hacks (and in “artists” posing as book hacks, such as Andy Warhol). What is most necessary now, simply for the development of the book as an imginative form, are publishers who can survive economically with less numerous editions at reasonable prices. There is a crucial difference between presenting an artist’s work in book form—a retrospective collection of reproduc- 13tions—and an artist making a book. The first is the honorific, art book. “Book art” should be saved for books that are works of art, as well as books, The book artist usually controls not just what will fill the pages but how they will be designed and produced and then search library for the essential book. One trouble with the current term “artists’ books” is that it who did them; and it is differences among them, rather than in The squarest thing “an artist” can do nowadays is necessarily compress an imaginative idea into a rectangular format bound long its longest side. Some sequential ideas work best that way; others do not. In theory, there are no limits upon the kinds of materials that can be put between two covers, or how those materials can be arranged, This essential distinction Separates imaginative books from conventional books. In the latter, syntactically familiar sen- tences are set in rectangular blocks of uniform type (resembling soldiers on parade), and these are then “designed” into pages 14that look like each other (and like pages we have previously seen). An imaginative book, by definition, attempts to realize something else with syntax, with format, with pages, with cov- ers, with size, with shapes, with sequence, with structure, with binding—with any or all of these elements, the decisions in- forming each of them ideally reflecting the needs and sugges- tions of the materials peculiar to this book. Most books ae primarily about something outside them- selves; most book art books are primarily about themselves. Most books are read for information, either expository or dramatized; book art books ae made to communicate imagina- tive phenomena and thus create a different kind of “reading* experience. An inovative book is likely to strike the common reviewer as a “non-book” or “anti-book.” The appearance of such termsin a review is, in practice, a sure measure of the book’s originality. The novelist Flannery O’Connor once declared, ‘If it looks funny on the page, I won’t read it.” Joyce Carol Oates once reit- erated this sentiment in a review of O'Connor. No, a “funny” appearance is really initial evidence of serious book artistry. Imaginative books usually depend as much on visual literacy as on verbal literacy; many “readers” literate in the second re- spect are illiterate in the first. One purpose for the present is to see what aalternative forms and materials “the book” can take: can it be a pack of shufflable cards? Can it be a long folded accordion strip? Can it have two frnt covers and be “read” in both directions? Can it be a single chart? An audiotape? A videotape? A film? Is it “a book’ if its maker says it is? With these possibilities in mind, we can recognize and make a future for the book. This essay originally appeared in Exhaustive Parallel Intervals, Future Press, 1979. 5The New Art of M aking Books Ulises Carri6n WHAT A BOOK IS Abook is a sequence of spaces. Each of these Spaces is perceived at a different moment—a book is also a sequence of moments, A book is not a case of words, nora bag of words, nora bearer of words, A writer, contrary to the popular opinion, does not write books. A writer writes texts, The fact, that a text is contained in a book, comes only from the dimensions of such a text; or, in the case of a series of short texts (poems, for instance), from their number, Literary (prose) text contained in a book ignores the fact that the book is an autonomous Space-time sequence. A series of more or less short texts (poems or other) distributed through a book following any particular ordering reveals the se- quential nature of the book. It reveals it, perhaps uses it; but it does not incorporate it or as- similate it. Written language is a sequence of signs expanding within the space; the reading of which occurs in the time. 16Abook is a space-time sequence. Books existed originally as containers of literary texts. But books, seen as autonomous realities, can contain any (writ- ten) language, not only literary language, or even any other sys- tem of signs. Among languages, literary language (prose and poetry) is not the best fitted to the nature of books. A book may be the accidental container of a text, the structure of which is irrelevant to the book: these are the books of bookshops and libraries. A book can also exist as an autonomous and self-sufficient form, including perhaps a text that emphasises that form, a text that is an organic part of that form: here begins the new art of making books. In the old art the writer judges himself as being not responsible for the real book. He writes the text. The rest is done by the ser- vants, the artisans, the workers, the others. In the new art writing a text is only the first link in the chain going from the writer to the reader. In the new art the writer assumes the responsibility for the whole process. In the old art the writer writes texts. In the new art the writer makes books. 7To make a book is to actualize its ideal space-time sequence by means of the creation of a parallel sequence of signs, be it verbal or other. PROSE AND POETRY In an old book all the pages are the same. When writing the text, the writer followed only the sequential laws of language, which are not the sequential laws of books. Words might be different on every page; but every page is, as such, identical with the preceding ones and with those that fol- low. In the new art every page is different; every page is an indi- vidualized element of a structure (the book) wherein it has a par- ticular function to fulfill. In spoken and written language pronouns substitute for nouns, so to avoid tiresome, superfluous repetitions. In the book, composed of various elements, of signs, such as lan- guage, what is it that plays the role of pronouns, so to avoid tire- some, superfluous repetitions? This is a problem for the new art; the old does not even suspect its existence. A book of 500 pages, or of 100 pages, or even of twenty five, wherein all the pages are similar, is a boring book considered as a book, no matter how thrilling the content of the words of the text printed on the pages might be. 18A novel, by a writer of genius or by a third-rate author, is a book where nothing happens. There are still, and always will be, people who like reading novels. There will also always be people who like playing chess, gossiping, dancing the mambo, or eating strawberries with cream. In comparison with novels, where nothing happens, in poetry books something happens sometimes, although very little. A novel with no capital letters, or with different letter types, or with chemical formulae interspersed here and there, etc., is still a novel, that is to say, a boring book pretending not to be such. ‘A book of poems contains as many words as, or more than, a novel, but it uses ultimately the real, physical space whereon these words appear, in a more intentional, more evident, deeper way. This is so because in order to transcribe poetical language onto paper it is necessary to translate typographically the conventions proper to poetic language. The transcription of prose needs few things: punctuation, capi- tals, various margins, etc. xtremely beautiful dis- All these conventions are original and e re because we use them coveries, but we don’t notice them any mo! daily. Transcription of poetry, a more elaborate language, uses less com- mon signs. The mere need to create the signs fitting the transcrip- tion of poetic language, calls our attention to this very simple fact: 19to write a poem on paper is a different action from writing it on our mind. Poems are songs, the poets repeat. But they don’t sing them. They write them. Poetry is to be said aloud, they repeat. But they don’t say it aloud. They publish it. The fact is, that poetry, as it occurs normally, is written and printed, not sung or spoken, poetry. And with this, poetry has lost nothing. On the contrary, poetry has gained something: a spatial reality that the so loudly lamented sung and spoken poetries lacked. THE SPACE For years, many years, poets have intensively and efficiently explo- ited the spatial possibilities of poetry. But only the so-called concrete or, later, visual poetry, has openly declared this. Verses ending halfway on the page, verses having a wider or nar- rower margin, verses being separated from the following one by a bigger or smaller space—all this is exploitation of space. This is not to say that a text is poetry because it uses space in this or that way, but that using space is a characteristic of written poetry. The space is the music of the unsung poetry. 20The introduction of space into poetry (or rather of poetry into ly incalculable consequences. space) is an enormous event of literal One of these consequences is concrete and/or visual poetry. Its birth is not an extravagant event in the history of literature, but the natural, unavoidable development of the spatial reality gained by language since the moment writing was invented. The poetry of the old art does use space, albeit bashfully. This poetry establishes an inter-subjective communication. Inter-subjective communication occurs in an abstract, ideal, im- palpable space. In the new art (of which concrete poetry is only an example) com- munication is still inter-subjective, but it occurs in a concrete, real, physical space—the page. A book is a volume in the space. It is the true ground of the communication that takes place through words—its here and now. Concrete poetry represents an alternative to poetry. Books, regarded as autonomous space-ti ternative to all existent literary genres. ime sequences, offer an al- Space exists outside subjectivity. Iftwo subjects communicate in the space, then space. is an element of this communication. Space modifies this communication. Space imposes its own laws on this communication. Printed words are imprisoned in the matter of the book. What is more meaningful: the book or the text it contains? What was first: the chickencor the egg? 21The old art assumes that printed words are printed on an ideal space. The new art knows that books exist as objects in an exterior reality, subject to concrete conditions of Perception, existence, exchange, consumption, use, etc. The objective manifestation of language can be experienced in an isolated moment and Space—the page; or in a sequence of spaces and moments—the ‘book.’ There is not and will not be new literature any more, There will be, petha 's, New ways to communicate that will include language or will use ‘language as a basis. As a medium of communication, literature will always be old litera- re, THE LANGUAGE Language transmits ideas, i.e., mental images. The starting point of the transmission of mental images is always an Intention: we speak to transmit a particular image. The eve: day language and the old art langauge have this in com- mon: both are intentional’ both want to fn certain mental im- ages. In the old art the meanings of the words are the bearers of the au- }0r’s intentions. Just as the ultimate meaning of words is indefinable, so the author's intention is unfathomable. Every intention Presupposes a purpose, a utility. Everyday language is intentional, that is, utilitarian; its function is to transmit ideas and feelings, to explain, to declare, to convince, to in- voke, to accuse, etc. 22Old art’s is intentional as well, ie., utilitarian. Both lan- guages differ from one another only in their form. New art’s language is radically different from ae language. It ne- glects intentions and utility, and it returns to itsel it investigates it- for forms, for series of forms that give birth to, couple " loo . . with, unfold into, space-time sequences. The words in a new book are not the bearers of the message, nor the mouthpieces of the soul, nor the currency of communication. Those were already named by Hamlet, an avid reader of books: words, words, words. The words of the new book are there not to transmit certain mental images with a certain intention. They are there to form, to; ether with other signs, a space-time se- quence that we identify vith the name ‘book.’ The words in anew book might be the author’s own words or some- one else’s words. Awriter of the new art writes very little or does not write at all. The most beautiful and perfect book in the world is a book with only blank Pages, in the same way that the most complete language is that which lies beyond all that the words of a man can say. Every ook of the new art is searching after that book of absolute whiteness, in the same way that every poem searches for silence. Intention is the mother of rhetoric. Words cannot avoid meaning something, but they can be divested of intentionality. 23A non-intentional language is an abstract language: it doesn’t refer to any concrete reality. Bees in orice pane a to manifest itself concretely, language Abstract means that words are not bound to any particular intention; that the word ‘rose’ is neither the rose that Isee nor the rose amore or less fictional character claims to see. In the abstract of the new art the word ‘rose’ is the word ‘rose’. It means all the roses and it means none of them, How to succeed in makin, ig a rose that is not my rose, nor his rose, but everybody's rose, i.e., nobody's tose? a By placing it within a sequential structure (for example a book), so that it momentarily ceases being a rose and becomes essentially an element of the structure. STRUCTURES Every word exists as an element of a structure—a phrase, a novel, a telegram. Or: every word is part of a text. Nobody or nothing exists in isolation: everything is an element of a structure. Every structure is in its turn an element of another structure. Everything that exists is a structure, To understand something, is to understand the structure of which it is a part and/or the dementetorming the structure that that something is. A book consists of various elements, one of which might bea text. A text that i bare of a book isn’t necessarily the most essential or impor- tant part of that book. 24