When a Book Becomes Art

Vanderlip wrote just two short paragraphs for her catalogue and commissioned two longer essays. As a curatorial strategy for selecting publications for the exhibition, she utilized the Duchampian prompt: if the artist said their publication was an artist’s book, she accepted their designation.2 In addition, she excluded exhibition catalogues and artist portfolios.3 With her deference to artist-defined publications and just two self-imposed curatorial limits, she sidestepped the opportunity to further define what artists’ books were or could be, leaving this task to future curators and critics.

In the thirty years following her exhibition, there was a lively discussion about what artists’ books should be defined as. Many people—artists, designers, photographers, printers, critics, collectors—quickly tired of these ongoing discussions to refine the definition of artists’ books. Instead, there was a concentrated effort to shift the conversations to why and how publications were artists’ books, with less focus on “what is an artist’s book.” At the apex of these debates, Duncan Chappell published “Typologising Artists’ Books” in Art Libraries Journal in 2003, highlighting many definitions that had evolved over time. 

The most influential antecedents of post-1973 artists’ books can be found among conceptual photobooks and FLUXUS publications. Ironically, the most influential conceptual photobook artist, who started publishing in 1962, Ed Ruscha, has quietly distanced himself and his “little photobooks”4 from the genre of artists’ books. Artists involved with FLUXUS utilized creative publication formats often to document performances or as instructions to activate performances. Both strategies used by 1960s conceptual photobook artists and FLUXUS artists found that artist publications were a critical expression, both creative and documentary. In the latter years of the 1960s and into the ’70s, there was a shift to incorporate a greater diversity of artists who were bringing social justice narratives to artists’ books publications. This was a time of anti-establishment political and social movements, of experimental ideas and actions, in which artists were seeking to get art off the wall and into the hands of the viewer. Not only with happenings and performance art, but also with mail art, Pop art, conceptual art, and minimalist movements, where concept was more important than its realization, and where there was a shift from art as an object to art as an idea.

FLUXUS emerged from a re-newed interest in the Dada movement, specifically the conviction that art must be withdrawn from its special status as a rarefied art experience and brought within the realm of the everyday experience of every person. This utopian ideal of art for everyone was central to and promoted by FLUXUS artists. These artists aimed to create works beyond categorization and were relentlessly experimenting, pushing boundaries of what art could be and might become. One well-known happening was Bruce Nauman’s burning of Ruscha’s book Various Small Fires. Nauman’s book was titled Burning Small Fires. This work was both a conceptual photobook and a photo-documentation of a FLUXUS-like performance.

Their focus on art for everyone led to the ethos among early artists’ books publishers in the 1970s that large editions priced modestly could bring art to the masses. It was a strategy to bring art outside of the established art world and open opportunities for art dissemination to wide public audiences. 

During the 1970s and into the ’80s, the production of artists’ books was fueled by the development of high-speed, sheet-fed, rotary offset lithography presses at colleges and universities in the United States. Important examples included the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, Visual Studies Workshop Press in Rochester, Nexus Press in Atlanta, the Tyler Offset Workshop in Philadelphia, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Offset printing allowed artists to print in color and easily run editions of 500 to 1,000 books, allowing the unit prices to remain low. While this is a great concept, most artists’ books were too esoteric for a broad readership, and most failed to sell out. The only two shops still in business since the 1970s, Art Metropole (Toronto, 1974) and Printed Matter (New York City, 1976), operate as nonprofits. Very few artists broke even, much less made a profit selling artists’ books. And yet, each year new people are drawn to the medium and practice of producing artists’ books. 

In the early part of the twenty-first century, new technologies began replacing offset printing. More artists were using the world wide web for distribution and taking advantage of desktop publishing and commercial print-on-demand technologies, giving artists greater creative agency to manage production, distribution, and revenues. Risograph printing—a stencil duplication process—also provided new opportunities for full-color printing while constraining costs and keeping edition sizes modest. In addition to online sales, whether through a bookshop or individual artist website, most communities around the world host art book and zine fairs, with many including lectures, workshops, demonstrations, performances, and symposia. The proliferation and indelible nature of artists books is sustained by evolving creative practices and frequent (re)discovery by new audiences.

At the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School, since 2018 I’ve taught a course titled “The History of Artists’ Books Since 1950.” It includes discussions, presentations with books, site visits to public and private collections, and the production of a collaborative Risograph-printed artist’s book made from student-generated collages and illustrations. In addition, students create a keepsake and transform a found book. The combination of critical discourse and hands-on production, while spending five days learning about the history of this expressive and variable genre of contemporary art, is inspiring. This course champions the low-stakes possibilities of expressive book production with an emphasis on the do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-together (DIT) strategies that make individual and community-centered publications so satisfying. 

Whether you are familiar with or new to artists’ books, I encourage you to visit your local research, college, or university library and ask the art or special collections librarian to show you their favorite artists’ books. Ask them to pull a selection of five to ten for you to view. You will make new discoveries, and perhaps you will also become enchanted with the possibilities of artists’ books.  

Further Reading

To learn more about the origins and ongoing work in artists’ books, Dianne P. Vanderlip’s artists books (Philadelphia: Falcon Press, 1973), Richard Kostelanetz’s Twenties in the Sixties (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), Artists’ Books: A critical anthology and sourcebook. (Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985), Stefan Klima’s artists books: a critical survey of the literature (New York: Granary Books, 1998), Looking, Telling, Thinking, Collecting (Italy: Edizioni Corraini, 2005), Art Rite magazine, no. 14 (the special themed issue on artists’ books) (New York, 1976), and Kathy Walkup’s Possibilities: when artists’ books were young (San Francisco Center for the Book, 2022) are all excellent resources. The archives of Umbrella newsletter (1978-2008) and The Journal of Artists’ Books (1994-2020) also offer insights into the history of the genre.

Some influential titles in the past decades of artists’ books to explore include Parallax by Karen Chance (Atlanta: Nexus Press, 1997), Chicago Skyline by Conrad Gleber (Chicago: Chicago Books, 1977), Burning Small Fires by Bruce Nauman (San Francisco: self-published, 1968), A box of smile by Yoko Ono (New York: ReFlux edition, 1984), Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious, Love: An Adult Romance for the Post Structuralist Woman by Karen Reimer writing as Eve Rhymer (Chicago: Sara Ranchouse Publishing, 1996), Detour by Jan Voss (Stuttgart: Hansjörg Mayer, 1989), and Heinz and Judy: A Play by Janet Zweig (Boston: Photographic Resource Center, 1985).

1Richard Kostelanetz’s Twenties in the Sixties (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979).

2Dianne P. Vanderlip’s Artists Books (Philadelphia: Falcon Press, 1973).

3Ibid.

4John Copelans’ “Edward Ruscha Discusses His Perplexing Publications” Artforum (Feb. 1965): 25.

Rare Book School at the University of Virginia provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and skill levels to study the history of written, printed, and digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the field. For more information, visit rarebookschool.org.