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 Reed College collection includes several significant avant-garde works including El Lissitzky’s About 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 |
About 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, |
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| author |
Blaise Cendrars |
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|
artist |
Sonia Delaunay |
Bartram, Alan. Five Hundred Years of Book Design. New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 2001. View Reed library catalog record
Bettley, James, Ed. The Art of the Book: From Medieval Manuscript to Graphic Novel. London: V&A Publications, 2001. View Reed library catalog record
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. View Reed library catalog record
Drucker, Johanna. The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1995. View Reed library catalog record
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. View Reed library catalog record
Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists’ Books. New York: Granary Books, 1995. View Reed library catalog record
Drucker, Johanna. The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. View Reed library catalog record
Hendel, Richard. On Book Design. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. View Reed library catalog record
Hubert, Renée Riese. The Cutting Edge of Reading: Artist’s Books. New York City: Granary Books, 1999. View Reed library catalog record
Il Libro Come Opera d’Arte. (The Book as a Work of Art). Mantova: Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna: M. Corraini, 2006. View Reed library catalog record
Rowell, Margit. The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1920-1934. New York, N.Y.: Museum of Modern Art, 2002. View Reed library catalog record
Schaffner, Ingrid and Matthias Winzen, Eds. Deep Storage: Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Art. Munich; New York: Prestel, 1998. View Reed library catalog record
Wasserman, Krystyna. The Book as Art: Artists’ Books from the Nation Museum of Women in the Arts. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. View Reed library catalog record
Word & Image. London: Taylor & Francis. Issues 1 (1985) -22(2006). View Reed library catalog record