Contemporary artist books are on view in an exhibition of 70 books made during the past 15 years by artists working in France, at the Grolier Club, on New York's Upper East Side, organized by the Koopman Collection at the National Library of the Netherlands.

The exhibition presents the art of the book as a seemingly endless variety of mediums and methods, printing and binding crafts, and unconventional uses of surfaces not always thought to be raw material for the pages of a book. The fluidity with which traditional means can be combined with digital is often so well conceived that the one can be hard to separate from the other. And how these “volumes” are to be read is another question, whose answer is generally left to the “reader.” Hence the subtitle, “The Imaginative French book in the 21^st century.”

Artist books, in the sense of livres d’artiste, reached an apogee during the period in which Henri Matisse devoted much of his his wartime years to this art and craft, seen recently at the exhibition, Graphic Passion: Matisse and the Book Arts, at the Morgan Library & Museum. But since the last mid-century, a shift occurred in the ways in which artists approached  the printed book as a stage for their ideas and production. Highly original binding methods and formats were invented and picked up by artists who almost collectively approached this “new” art form, in places such as Paris and New York; Iowa and Minnesota; and San Francisco. Experimental printing methods were combined with traditional ones, resulting in an unlimited palette of colors and unusual surface textures. Paper itself is literally another field of exploration, with crops grown specifically for making the surface on which to print a particular book. 

Jerome Rothenberg,  Romantic Dadas. Collages and illustrations by Miguel Angel Rios. Colombes: Collectif Génération, 2009. Collectif Génération is the publisher of artist books by an international roster of poets and artists. Romantic Dadas was printed in Paris by Atelier Mérat-Auger. Jerome Rothenberg is an American poet, translator, and editor who lives and teaches in California; Miguel Angel Rios is an Argentine artist who divides his time between his studios in Mexico City and New York.

The field of artist books grew exponentially when digital production became the norm for commercial printing. In the decade when proofing presses from the 19^th century became redundant, many artists were able to fund the purchase of a Vandercook press—which became the workhorse of the métier in the United States—sometimes in exchange for removing the unwanted equipment from a pressroom. Around the same time, cases of handset metal fonts were put up for sale at what today would be considered modest prices. This was the advent of an explosion in the field of small fine press printing and an expanding conception of the artist book.

Because the livres d’artiste is so deeply ingrained in French arts and culture, it is not surprising that the art of the book, as seen in this extraordinary exhibition, took root in the small private presses of France, primarily in Paris. But the global phenomenon of this medium is a strong component of the show, emphasized by the presentation of collaborative work done by several of the artists working in France, New York, and Dusseldorf, to name a few. The exhibition also highlights various aspects of modern typography and graphic design that come into play, underscoring the extent to which the modern world is represented in their work.

Artists & Others: The Imaginative French Book in the 21^st Century continues at the Grolier Club through July 30^th. Info
On Tuesday, June 14, Curator Paul van Capelleveen will lead a lunchtime tour of the exhibition. Info 
On Thursday, July 28^th, the Grolier Club will host an Artist Book Roundtable, “Books Crossing Borders: The Migration of French Artists’ Books to the USA.” 
Copies of the full color catalogue are available at the Grolier Club and can be ordered. Info
History of the Koopman Collection at the National Library of the Netherlands. Photos: Peggy Roalf

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