There’s no argument at the center of this blog post, at least that I’m aware of right now. I don’t have trouble thinking of “arguments” – that’s from my academic background – but these days, whenever I do, I immediately think of how partial it is, how limited, how beside the point. So here, rather than arguing, I’m simply ruminating.
When Lily Yey's and my book on the Rwanda genocide, which we’d self-printed, was picked up by New Village Press, the title was changed and the phrase “an Artist Book” was added. I mentioned that to Clif Meador when walking down Broad St. – he was in Philadelphia working on a book at the Borowsky Center – and he groaned. I remember thinking and maybe saying something to defend the publisher’s addition. It prepared the reader to understand that the content would be communicated as much by the images and design as by the text, a different approach than that to the scholarly books they usually published. Why is Ben Lerner’s recent book titled “Transcription, A Novel”? That “A Novel” oriented me to approach what I would be reading as having the depth in time and space and complexity of a novel (a long novel), in spite of it being only 129 pages, and it being fiction, in spite of, or along with, the neutral accuracy associated with the word “transcription.” Terms such as “artist book” and “novel” can be useful.
That leads me into a maze of interconnecting, overlapping trains of thought. One is to the issue of audience. How important is the audience in the creation of a book or a work of art. I’m not referring to the arguments of literary critics such as Stanley Fish that the reader is the essential creator or to Roland Barthes’ “death of the author.” Rather I am thinking of the audience from the artist’s perspective. For whom are we making our book? I would argue that consciously or unconsciously we are thinking of a particular audience. And isn’t that significant in defining what we do?
That takes me back to the phrase “artist book.” I’m most comfortable with Levi Sherman’s term “book thinking.” (See his blog post with that title.) For me that captures what I feel is essential about “artist books” without the danger of being too limited or too expansive that can accompany that phrase. “Book thinking,” however, approaches the field from an angle that doesn’t provide me with the language to talk about the specific works I want to talk about. I interpret Richard Minsky’s discussion in his post “Why Bother with Wikipedia?” as supporting the usefulness of the usual terminology. So, at least for the moment, I am back to the phrase “artist book.”
Which leads me into another line of thought, which I’ll take up in the next blog post. What do the exhibitions of artist books reveal about our thinking of them?
To start with the first issue, that of audience, there was objection, early in this blog, to including a post on the Eric Carle Museum since he is a creator of picture books, not artist books. In Carle’s books, text, image, design, structure are fused – form is content – something I consider the lodestar for artist books. His books are, of course, commercially packaged/published, which for many is a strike against them as “artist books”; it wouldn’t make sense to buy hugely expensive books for children. But I also sense that the fact that the audience is children contributed to the objection. Artist books are for adults! Initiated adults at that. The creators of artist books in the early tradition of “fine press” books were/are consciously, it seems to me, thinking of a particular elite adult audience – like minded artists, and, for selling, collectors and Special Collections, which of course usually allow access, but limited to a specialized and primed population. The audience they create for, it seems to me, is not so much interested in what is being expressed, but in how elegantly, impressively, it is rendered, a rendering that, of course, honors a particular text or subject.
Moving to another category of book artists, the maker of zines has different goals and creates for quite a different audience, one with different aesthetic values and who has no interest in paying much money, but still not for children. Their reason for making the zine is to communicate something in a way that will have impact on their audience. One reason for the limited scope of the audience for individual works is simply that are just so many zines out there!
Then there’s another rather undefined grouping of artist books – tactile, visual, often textual (overlapping the subcategory of fine press books), and in various ways, sculptural. Not only are these books very expensive, as are those called “fine press,” but many need to be handled in order to be fully experienced, for the viewer to grasp what’s essential to, the reason for, the work. The creators of those books must be aware, or, if not, they are repressing the thought, that they are creating for a very circumscribe audience. If you say you are a book artist, or that you make artist books, people generally have absolutely no idea what you mean, unless, of course, you’re talking to one of your kind.
But what’s wrong with creating work for a very limited audience? Publishers require prospective writers to know and define their audience. CBAA and, of course, the Center for the Book in New York as well as other book art centers are committed to furthering the knowledge and impact of artist books and increasing the inclusivity of the field. But for some kinds of artist books, the very qualities that can make them such impactful works of art create a barrier keeping potential audience out. But, of course, that doesn’t necessarily have to matter. It didn’t matter that those extraordinarily illuminated Books of Hours in the Middle Ages were created for just one person. However, as a creator of artist books, that bothers me. I create books to communicate something I am thinking, feeling, seeing, that can’t be expressed in any other way. If I can’t reach my audience, creating an artist book feels rather meaningless.
To be continued.
Susan Viguers began her career as a scholar and teacher of literature and writing at the University of the Arts. Mid-career she transitioned from Liberal Arts into the College of Art and Design, began making artist books, and eventually, for nine years, directed the MFA Book Arts/Printmaking Program.
