Artists’ Books – What Are They?

Artists’ Books are inherently a rather complex art form. As currently recognized, they developed during the 1960s and have their antecedents in a number of related forms. Simply put, books written by artists or in which artists play a significant role in some other manner can be thought of as Artists’ Books. However, more recently, Artists’ Books have come to be viewed as a specific art medium just like painting, drawing, sculpture, or collage.

Historically, artists have written, illustrated, distributed, self-published, and marketed books as an extension of their practices. During a variety of postmodern movements, artists took control of the print medium as a way to distribute their ideas, bypass the gallery system, and gain more control over their output. Early on, these works were used in the service of disseminating ideas related to their other (i.e., their main work) works created by these artists and the various related events (such as manifestos, symposia, exhibitions, etc.).

Within approximately the last 70 years, the idea that the Artists’ Book is a free-standing artwork is a defining characteristic of this type of work. The idea of conceptual art is actually relatively recent and parallels the growth in the Artists’ Book field. The distinction needs to be made between Art Books and Artists’ Books. Art Books are about art, whereas Artists’ Books are art. 

A number of questions invariably come up related to this medium: Is this craft or an art form? Does something need to be a codex form to be considered in this category? What about artists’ record albums, CDs, or DVDs? Are these works implicitly a political act and do they inspire a new type of reading? Is there a difference between various terms that have been used in describing this field: Artists’ Books, Book Arts, Bookworks, Livres d’Artiste, Fine Bindings, and other Fine Press Books? Should one-of-a-kind books or those created in very small editions that are very expensive be considered in the same category as small inexpensive pamphlets created in editions greater than 100? While this exhibition does not attempt to answer these questions, there is a wide variety of works on display that may assist you in considering some of these issues.

In the 1970s and 1980s, this field became much more widespread with many new artists incorporating Artists’ Books as part of their practices or devoting themselves entirely to this art form. Exhibitions of this type of material became more prevalent, major libraries, museums, and universities began or greatly expanded their collecting activities in this vein. Catalogues and other books began to be published on this topic, including academic critical inquiry. A few magazines focused exclusively on this burgeoning field. Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. was an early ‘adopter’ of this route to creative expression, and long before the field became commoditized, as other art forms had already become, amassed one of the largest collections of this type of material in the world. It is interesting to see some of these works with their original price tags of $1.50 or $3.00 and realize that some of these works are now valued in the thousands of dollars.

Mark S. Waskow, Curator
President, Northern New England Museum of
 Contemporary Art (NNEMoCA)