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 Reed College 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 Sarah Horowitz.
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. 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 Codex and its Variations,” and “The Artist Book as Democratic Multiple.” 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
Harrison, Charles. Essays on Art & Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. View Reed library catalog record
Hendel, Richard. On Book Design. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. View Reed library catalog record
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. View Reed library catalog record
Piper, Adrian. “Cheap Art Utopia.” Out of Order, Out of Sight. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. 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
Weitman, Wendy and Deborah Wye. Eye on Europe: Prints, Books & Multiples, 1960 to Now. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006. View Reed library catalog record
Artist Books On Line View website
The Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry – Founded in Miami, Florida, 1979. View website
Visual Studies Workshop – Rochester, NY. Closed 2004. View website
Womens Studio Workshop -- Rosendale, N.Y. View website
Yale Archive of Book Art by Richard Minsky View website
Columbia College Center for Book and Paper View website
Mills College –MFA in Book Arts View website
School of Library and Information Studies– MFA in Book Art Studies View website
University of Alabama – MFA in the Book Arts View website
Visual Studies Workshop View website