Openings: Studies in Book Art (E-Journal)
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The Thing The Book: A Monument to the Book as Object
Get PDFReview of The Thing The Book: A Monument to the Book as Object edited John Herschend & Will Rogan for Chronicle Books, with particular attention to how practicing book scholars and artists may receive the project
What Shall We Want to Have Called a ‘Book’?
Get PDFThis article is written from the perspective of an art book publisher, in this case the executive director of DAP Press. It addresses issues surrounding the book as artifact and its relevance in contemporary culture
What We See When We Read
Get PDFReview of Peter Mendelsund's, What We See When We Read, a book about the phenomenology of reading and how we make meaning from words printed on the page. A visual feast using philosophy, psychology, literary theory and visual art becoming not just compelling investigation into the act of reading, but an innovative teaching manual for field of book arts.
Framed By Thumbs: Reading Raymond Pettibon
Get PDFAlthough Raymond Pettibon started out publishing his drawings in zines, many are now better known as individual images, stripped of sequential context. While their original format influenced the images' reception, a thematic bookishness continues to haunt them as they appear in a variety of settings
Textual Activity in the Artist's Book
Get PDFTextual activity, then, can be the sense of an author’s words moving through time and physical space. It can also be applied in a more practical sense. Paul Eggert, my old professor, and an eminent bibliographer in his own right, writes about text as a fluid entity that can be traced and tracked through various incarnations but which can also be ‘concretised’ in an object (work) that becomes crucial to its future presentations (2009: 198)
Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books
Get PDFBook review of Leah Price's book, Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books, examining its tension between a sentimental attachment to collections of well-used books and serious reflection on the meaning of personal libraries. The review draws out the impliclations for the book art field and areas ripe for further analysis
“The Unique Apparition of a Distance”: Aura in Julie Chen and Elizabeth McDevitt’s Octopus
Get PDF The distinction Walter Benjamin makes between unique and mechanically reproduced art would seem to fit easily into the field of book art. Like the sculptural bookwork, Benjamin’s unique work is located in a single place, seems distant from the viewer, and is steeped in ritual. Similar to the democratic multiple, Benjamin’s technologically reproduced work allows art to serve a political function. Benjamin writes that the aura, defined as “the unique apparition of a distance,” is part of the unique work, but is lacking in the multiple. Although the field of book art ostensibly supports the distinction between the auratic, unique work and the political multiple, a closer reading of the artist’s book ends up complicating this binary. Octopus is a 1992 limited-edition work designed by Julie Chen, with text by Elizabeth McDevitt. Its form is a tunnel book, a three-dimensional, underwater scene. At the back of the book, the tentacles of an octopus lurk behind the text of a poem. The poem speaks of disguise, particularly within language. The book’s form physically hides the text, while the poem’s language simultaneously conceals and reveals. Octopus thematizes distance in its textual content and its physical structure. Like many of Chen’s works, Octopus seems like a unique object despite being part of an edition. Due to its high cost and small edition size, the reader is likely to encounter it in a library or an exhibit, rather than own it. The delicacy of Chen’s works create a different atmosphere than more traditionally bound artists’ books. Once Octopus is extended, the reader must change position: if it is on a table, the reader must crouch to view the content. Octopus requires the reader to bow down to it, like the auratic art that Benjamin describes. As the content and effects of Octopus show, aura is not inherent to specific unique objects, but instead is a sense of reverence evoked in the reader by the book’s value and the collecting institution’s attitudes. 
Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending
Get PDFReview of Elizabeth Eisenstein's book, Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending, and why this history of the printing press is of interest to book artists