Artists Who Do Books: New Complexities in Editorial Design’s Agency

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Ruben De La Nuez  

The title of this paper quotes from a word-painting made by Edward Ruscha, in 1976. This American artist is part of a conceptually driven cohort that returned the notion of ‘book’ to a pre-Guttenberg status as artistic object. Ruscha moved along cross-boundary agencies between his initial position as a layout artist and the latest as a fine artist. This paper examines the current state of affairs with respect to the “art-book.” Historically structured, the analysis is introduced by pre-Modern models of handmade books such as Medieval and early Renaissance illuminated manuscript, and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican codices. William Blake’s illuminated books (and his nostalgia for book hand-making in the midst of the industrial revolution) serve as a bridge between pre and post industrial notion of book production, circulation and consumption. The paper concentrates on the contemporary situation, starting by the 1960s coincidences between the intellectual propositions by the Conceptual Art movement and John Debes’s notion of "visual literacy". Case studies include The Xerox Book (1968), edited/curated by Seth Siegelaub; and On Kawara’s twenty books series One Million Years (1969–1981). The analysis incorporates the impact of East-Asian artistic legacy regarding the materiality and craftsmanship of book making in today’s global scenario. The work of contemporary artists such as the Japanese Noriko Ambe and the Korean Minjung Kim are analysed. East-Asian calligraphy is featured as a conceptual engine for the typographic hybridity between “readable images” and “visionary writings” in today’s art-book revival.