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Carol Barton,
Bethesda, MD. Everyday Road Signs, 1988, silk screen, offset,
7x 9",20" deep fully extended
Richard McClintock,
Hampsen Sydney, VA. In & Out: A Marble Book, 1988, marbled
paper, board, marbles, 8 x 6", 12" wide fully opened
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In the following decade many artists and critics engaged
in dogmatic debates attempting to develop a definition or a better
term for artists books. Clive Phillpot (past director of the Library
of the Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Lucy Lippard (well known
author and art critic) as well as Ulises Carri-n (poet, essayist and
founder of a store and exhibition space for artists books in Amsterdam)
were three dominant voices in this debate.
Clive Phillpot, also a frequent
lecturer and writer, has had various definitions for artists books
since he became involved in the debate. In 1976 while addressing librarians
about the difficulties of cataloguing artists books he defined the
term as "books or booklets produced by the artists using mass-production
methods, and in (theoretically) unlimited numbers in which the artist
documents or realizes art ideas or art works."5 By 1980 in a
review in Art Journal, his definition had changed to suggest
that artists books "were not inextricably dependent on the book
form."
His definition becomes broader
still by 1998, in his essay in "Books by Artists and Books as
Art." By this time, he also frequently uses the term artists
books instead of his previously preferred, bookworks:
Artists' books are distinguished by the
fact that they sit provocatively at the juncture where art, documentation,
and literature all come together. Indeed, one of the characteristics
of the field is its mongrel nature. ... What really characterizes
artists' books is that they reflect and emerge from the preoccupations
and sensibilities of artists, as makers and as citizens.6
Both Phillpot
and Lippard started their discussions on the definitions of artist
books in the 1970s when artists books were being created to "democratize"
art, meaning the artist's intent was to make art available to the
masses. The definition in Lippard's 1977 essay "The Artists'
Book Goes Public," published in Art in America, is written
in this context.
Neither an art book ... or a book on art
... the artists' book is a work of art on its own, conceived specifically
for the book form and often published by the artist him/herself.
It can be visual, verbal, or visual/verbal. With few exceptions,
it is all of a piece, consisting of one serial work or a series
of closely related ideas and/or images = - a portable exhibition.
... Usually inexpensive in price, modest in format and ambitious
in scope, the artists' book is a fragile vehicle for a weighty load
of hopes and ideals: it is considered by many the easiest way out
of the art world and into the heart of a broader audience.7
In her
early enthusiasm for artists books, Lippard co-founded Printed Matter,
a book store for artists books in New York City which is still in
existence. By 1985 in an essay published in Artists' Books: A
Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, her support is more reserved.
This reserve may in part be because the genre of the "democratic"artists
books has more or less gone out of existence. Her definitions changes
to "like performance art, artists' books are best defined as
whatever isn't anything else," but she also states she would
miss them if they ever went away.8
Shortly before the disillusionment
of Lippard and Phillpot was expressed an essay intended for a literary
crowd "The New Art of Making Books" by Ulises Carri-n,9
caught the attention of visual artists and Carri-n soon became a
spokesperson for book artists. His definition looks beyond the1970s
format and purpose of artists books. In the words of Renee Riese
and Judd D. Hubert, authors of The Cutting Edge of Artist Reading:
Artists' Books, he provides a useful definition for the protean
artist book: "Bookworks are books that are conceived as an
expressive unity, that is to say, where the message is the sum of
all materials and formal elements."10 This definition
is much more aligned with the direction artists books were headed
as they moved away from the goals of creating affordable art for
the masses and moved into an art form that incorporated a much larger
scope of processes and materials. Lippard's prediction that artists
books might be disappearing did not materialize and as the medium
flourishes, so does the search for a definition.
In 1998 members of the
Book_Arts_L listserv were invited to respond to the list with a
concise definition of artists books for the purpose of providing
a definition for an art history class. One hundred and forty-nine
definitions and responses to definitions arrived in the next six
days.
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