The contemporary artists' book cannot be pinned down to any general subject, medium or material. These books pull from the long history of the practice “developed along tracks that sometimes overlapped and often diverged, each reflecting different aspects and influences of the literary and art worlds.”1
In the period from the 1960’s to 1980’s, artists’ books began to flourish in modern America. This was due in part to a general activist political climate that created a number of artist-controlled alternatives to the traditional gallery and museum structure of art display, including independent publishing of artists’ books.
During this period many artists established small presses and independent magazines, as well as schools teaching book arts that became hubs for emerging contemporary artists. “Nonprofit organizations played a crucial role for all book artists. Artists printed books at the Center for Book Arts (CBA), Nexus Press, Visual Studies Workshop, and Women’s Studio Workshop. They exhibited at CBA and Franklin Furnace, and they distributed their books through Printed Matter or through the informal network for fine press and deluxe books”2. Many of these institutions still exist and are used by book artists today, although some have altered their forms. The Museum of Modern Art bought the Franklin Furnace archive in the 1990’s, absorbing this collection of American Avant-Garde into the institution it had originally been an alternative.
Many of the works by the founders of the artist book movement in the US, including Johanna Drucker, Clifton Meador and Buzz Spector, are in the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³ collection. We hold a selection of Samizdat, or Russian underground books from the 1980’s, several significant works by German artists, including Ines and Peter Ketelhodt’s Encyclopedia, and a small collection of contemporary Chinese artist works, including four pieces by Xu Bing.
The collection also includes significant works by book artists teaching and working in the Pacific Northwest including Ian Boyden, Inge Bruggeman, Diane Jacobs, Barbara Tetenbaum, and .
Footnotes
Bright, Betty. No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America: 1960-1980. New York City: Granary Books: Distributed to the trade by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2005.
Drucker, Johanna. The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
Drucker, Johanna. Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing and Visual Poetics. New York, N.Y.: Granary Books: Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 1998.
Drucker, Johanna. “The Codex and its Variations,” and “The Artist Book as Democratic Multiple.” The Century of Artists’ Books. New York: Granary Books, 1995.
Drucker, Johanna. The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Harrison, Charles. Essays on Art & Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.
Hendel, Richard. On Book Design. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Lauf, Cornelia and Clive Phillpot. “The Spectrum of Artist Books.” Artist/Author: Contemporary Artists’ Books. New York: Distributed Art Publishers: American Federation of Arts, 1998.
Piper, Adrian. “Cheap Art Utopia.” Out of Order, Out of Sight. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996.
Schaffner, Ingrid and Matthias Winzen, Eds. Deep Storage: Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Art. Munich; New York: Prestel, 1998.
Wasserman, Krystyna. The Book as Art: Artists’ Books from the Nation Museum of Women in the Arts. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.
Weitman, Wendy and Deborah Wye. Eye on Europe: Prints, Books & Multiples, 1960 to Now. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006.
Artist Books On Line
The Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry – Founded in Miami, Florida, 1979.
Visual Studies Workshop – Rochester, NY. Closed 2004.
Womens Studio Workshop -- Rosendale, N.Y.
Yale Archive of Book Art by Richard Minsky
Columbia College Center for Book and Paper
Mills College –MFA in Book Arts
School of Library and Information Studies– MFA in Book Art Studies
University of Alabama – MFA in the Book Arts
Visual Studies Workshop