The Century of Artists' Books and Writing Machines

Growing up, I often heard the phrase, "don't judge a book by its cover," but something I realized while reading the Introduction of The Century of Artists' Books, by Johanna Drucker, is that sometimes I just can't help it! It seems to be an instinct in humans to go with what looks good, what is aesthetically pleasing. As I learned earlier in Hnrs 353, form is part of a text's message. Therefore it comes as no surprise to me that Kaye, in Writing Machines, wanted to shout "Materiality is content, and content is materiality!" (pg. 75)

Despite this knowledge, at first I was unsure what an "artist's book" was when I started reading The Century of Artists' Books. The first thing I thought about when I tried to discern what exactly an "artist's book" is was a certain book featured on Seinfeld. It was a book about coffee tables that can be morphed into a coffee table itself. Chapter One of Drucker's book, however, explains that just because a book is artistic does not mean it is an artist's book. Artist's books communicate with people. They should be mutable and have "some conviction... to be a book in order to succeed" (pg 25). They are usually not for financial gain (this is one reason artist's books are separate from livres d'artists). They can be used for political activism. Generally, they are also published independently, not in publishing firms.

But most importantly, from reading Chapter Two, I think I finally understand what an "artist's book" is: "[it] should be a work by an artist self-conscious about art form, rather than a merely highly artistic book" (page 21). Additionally, in Artists' Books: The Book As a Work of Art, by Stephen Bury, an artist's book is described as "books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself." So I would classify the book about coffee tables as an artist's book. It physically embodies the content it tries to teach. It is its content. It is a work of art in my opinion. The author was certainly self-conscious about what he (Kramer) wanted his book to look like. Maybe what would have made the book even better was if all of the text formed the specific coffee tables they were describing. The coffee table book really elicits no drama and has nothing to do with political activism, but it does question what a book can be.

William Blake is an obviously excellent example whose works, mostly speaking on religion, had an "effect of unity" (pg 25). He was able to "mobilize the space of the page, the tones of the paper, the colors of ink and paint,..." and created books where images and text were in dialogue with each other (pg 25). Where I can see how all of the examples are artist's books, I must say I do not believe one can give a complete, accurate definition of what an artist's book is (even though I tried to earlier in this post). It is probably best to explain what an artist's book is not.