The history of the artist’s book was highly influenced by agendas and artistic fashions of the avant-garde movement as they became a common medium of experimental artists. Russian and European avant-garde artists such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Fernand Léger, and André Breton took on the task of dissembling the conventions of the book via typography, materials, and illustration.1 These books explored language and typography as material by breaking down conventional syntax and text layout. Others delved into the book object as machine, rather than container, that must be turned, altered, or disassembled by the reader in order to access its information.2
Avant-garde books produced through the Russian and Italian futurist movements were motivated by a desire to produce inexpensive, democratic multiples that could be readily circulated to disseminate their doctrine while the format was still entirely controlled by the artist. Many of these books were done on a small scale with modest materials.3 This form of the inexpensive multiple also allowed the artists’ book to become democratic for artists themselves, as artists that had little to no fame and limited means could create works to be easily circulated.
The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³ collection includes several significant avant-garde works including El Lissitzky’s Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³ Two Squares, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist Cook Book and Léger’s La Fin Du Monde, each of which model new typography and the double page layout.
Footnotes
1 Betty Bright. No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960-1980. Granary Books. New York City: 2005. 38.
2 Maura Picciau. “Between the Rooms and the Shelves, Disturbing Objects”….21.
3 Johanna Drucker. The Century of Artists’ Books. Granary Books. New York City: 1995. 45.
|
title |
Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³ Two Squares |
title |
Les Mots en Liberté Futurists |
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|
artist |
El Lissitzky |
artist |
Filippo Marinetti |
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|
title |
La Fin du Monde, Filmée par L’Ange N.-D. |
title |
Ses Peintures, Ses Objects, |
|||
| author |
Blaise Cendrars |
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|
artist |
Sonia Delaunay |
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