Essay Topic

So I have decided I want to focus on artists’ books for my final paper. I am pretty excited for this because I am taking Greta Golick’s workshop “Deconstructing the Book” and it is going hand in hand with what I would like to examine for this essay. Basically ,what I would like to explore is the past, present and future of artists’ books.

Although the concept of the artists’ book starts before the 20^th century I am not going to spend much time on it because there is so much information and really I want to focus more on the present and future of it. I’m going to pick up in the 1960’s-1970’s when it really began to explode and examine how it grew and transformed through to the end of the 20^th century with technological advancements. I’ve found a few interesting academic essays from the late 1990’s that speculate on the future of the artists’ book, so it has been really interesting to see what artists’ imagined was going to happen to the form of the book before the Ebook was something to consider.

I also have two of Johanna Drucker’s books, “The Century of the Artists’ Book” and “SpecLab” and I plan on (hopefully) getting through a few key chapters in them by the end of the weekend to get a better understanding of some of the in depth criticisms and insights she has on this topic.  I have also been searching the internet and coming across experimental exhibitions and books incorporating new technologies into the artists’ book to use for some concrete examples of them utilizing modern technologies. I would also like to look at how much of a role technology is actually impacting artists’ books or is there in fact more of a disregard for it amongst artists’. Are artists more interested in keeping with the traditional forms and just transforming these traditions on a contemporary platform?

I’m really just at the beginning phase of this topic so I’m just doing a lot of reading and critically examining books to use as examples, so if anyone has any examples they think would fit into this topic feel free to post. Thanks!

Also, here are just a few examples I am looking at that I thought were really interesting, and really, book art is always fun to look at :)

1. Over the course of eight months in 2011 in Edinburgh, ten books were placed in various culture venues with tags reading “In support of libraries, books, words, and ideas”. The artist has remained anonymous, and while the books are made from old books and paper, the project is interwoven with the new(ish) technology of Twitter. Each book was addressed to the venue’s Twitter name.

2.  I absolutely love Jennifer Khoshbin’s work and how illustrative it is. She uses books to create a new narrative and I think it is relevant work because it challenges the fact that nowadays we are encountering text more online and less in an actual book, and I think her artists’ books re-imagine the future of the book. 

3.    This example is one I found whilel I was researching on the internet and I am including the link instead of a picture and description. It is a modern example of a digital artists’ book.

http://www.mirabellejones.com/san-francisco-berlin-digital-artists-book/