A crucial concept behind the making of art in book form is making art effective, inexpensive, easily accessible, and outside commercial means of distribution. The best artists' books are those things, and winning or droll or shocking besides. The worst are full of egregious prose and double-speak trash. Unfortunately, much of this collection falls into the latter niche: posturing of the most callow less-materialistic-than-thou variety. Didn't anyone catch the irony in calling M. Rosler's Service a ``seminal feminist ideolog''? Couldn't the editor strike out ``mediumistic''? Clive Phillpot's and Lucy Lippard's essays stand out as thoughtful attempts to come to terms with the history of book-as-art/not art-book, but this is not a necessary purchase. GraceAnne A. DeCandido, ``School Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
CHOICE Review
Those involved in the book arts will welcome Artists' Books, which provides an overview of both historical and contemporary practitioners. The contributors are well informed and are vitally involved in this fast-growing genre. The book has one serious drawback that is symptomatic of the fragmented condition of the current art world. Books by the ``fine printers'' such as Walter Hamady, Claire Van Vliet, and Andrew Hoyem are omitted. They are major figures in the book arts, but coming as they do from a different philosophical viewpoint, they are not considered part of the artists' books genre. This book never clearly defines what constitutes its subject matter so one is left with the conclusion that such practitioners as those mentioned above, those owing more perhaps to William Morris than to Marcel Duchamp, are not artists-a tenuous position at best. Despite such a major imbalance, Artists' Books does provide a wealth of seldom documented information on the perishable, inexpensive books. The illustrations are plentiful and of average reproduction quality. The joy of the book is the visual diversity of the illustrated works. Although it concentrates its attention upon only one of the several ``schools'' of book art, Artists' Books is very successful in presenting an exciting overview of that genre's work. For undergraduate and graduate students and general readers.-S. Skaggs, University of Louisville
BookPublisher: Rochester, N.Y. : Layton, Utah : Visual Studies Workshop Press, Distributed by G.M. Smith, Peregrine Smith Books, 1985Description: 269 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. + pbk.ISBN: 0898220416.Subject(s): Artists' books
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