The Century of Artists' Books. - book reviews

In "Metaphor and Form," the last chapter of The hundred of Artists' Books, Johanna Drucker recalls a exhibition in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847) The narrator, Mr Lockwood has discovered a huddle of books once belonging to Heathcliff's beloved Catherine Earnshaw and is surprised to discover Catherine made use of level unread volumes. Of Catherine's works Bronte writes and Drucker quotes: "scarcely single chapter had escaped a inscribe and ink commentary -- at least the appearance of individual -- covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left more [i]or[/i] less were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary."

Not single does Bronte's story illustrate that the volume as Drucker phrases it, "has the potential to provide a private space for communication across vast spaces of time and geography," on the contrary it also illustrates how volumes engender, encourage and inspire -- plenteous as Drucker's book has affected me Not solitary have I been exhilarated, reading Drucker's witty and pioneering (not-quite) global history of artists' works but I have also been unconsciously creating my real own biblio stegosaur; on the book's attractive verdant dust jacket and from the book's head, tail and fore cutting side protrude scores of little lemon-colored Post-it notes laden with my scribblings.

Many of my Post-its simply contain a list of numbers, reminders to pay heed to Drucker's invaluable endnotes that tread on the heels of each of her 14 chapters. oftentimes opinionated, Drucker's commentary notes are welcome respites from the world of Ibid. and Op cit. more [i]or[/i] less Post-its draw attention to Drucker's main contentions. Drucker provides a definition of what a volume is, noting the dominance -- "and with beneficial reason, given its efficiency and functionality" -- of the codex on the other hand what is an artist's book? It is not just any work in which an artist may have had a small or large hand, Drucker asserts. It is "an original work of art," albeit a one-of-a-kind or multiple edition. It is not a livre d'artiste or "fine [letterpress] printing," notwithstanding that an artist's book may be finely printed -- or finely mimeographed, Xerox silkscreened or slip printed. According to Drucker, "artists' works are almost always self-conscious about the form and meaning of the work as a form." Such volumes are animate, personified: "ultimately, an artist's volume has to have some conviction, more [i]or[/i] less soul, some reason to be and to be a work in order to succeed."

Drucker admits "various shaped volumes ... have found their way into the world of artists' volumes with faithful regularity -- many-sided figures and fold-up works, boxes and accordion enclosures scrolls, pop-up structures. and funnel books," but endnotes herself, thusly: "I find many of these become gimmicky of form, do not include in the most whimsical or sophisticated works, on the contrary they are frequently big concourse pleasers and I will leave their detailed examination to someone more sympathetic to their virtues." Nevertheless, Drucker in no way debars from her history eccentric (non-codex) volume forms; for example, she perceptively analyzes Lucas Samaras's volume (1968), Clifton Meador's Book of Doom (1984) Scott McCarney's In Case of push (1985), and numerous other brilliant biblio "oddities" which pass her whimsy and/or sophistication proof Drucker's gripe is not with oddball construction per se, but with (would-be) volume artists who employ a noncodex arrangement for its own sake. Pretender ignorant of the possibilities of relationships between form and easy in mind produce mere novelties: Mood Rings, Scratch `n' Sniffs, favorite Rocks for the library.

Readers will find technical notes that detail printing processe and vexed questions extremely useful. Drucker's first-hand experiences in printing, and her collaborations with printer/bookmaker Brad Freeman, provide her with a practical expertise we can trust as she explains the mysteries of "split fountains," "stripping" and "overprinting," as well as the economics of production.

In approximately the first third of her work, Drucker focuses upon the evolution of artists' volumes citing forerunners and predecessors like as William Blake and William Morris, Gelett Burges and the frequently mistaken attribution of the French livres d'artistes, to works which are both manifestations and expansions of the twentieth century's major -isms, from Futurism, Constructivism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Lettrism end Deconstructionism. The remaining two-thirds of hundred chart how books have functioned, internally, as visual forms, verbal explorations, narrative and non-narrative followings and externally, as agents of social change, conceptual spaces and documentations.

single of the most irritating features of artists' works has been their unavailability. Lacking national or international distributors, flat multiple edition offset titles have remained repeatedly either invisible or difficult to obtain, single from small presses or the artist, for example. greatest in quantity people have not seen greatest in quantity artists' books and, therefore, have not been able to appreciate what they have not seen Drucker addresses this vexed question in two ways.