Artists ‘ book s are often self-conscious about the elements of book structure. This can involve self-reflexive humor or serious philosophical interrogations of a book’s identity. Disturbing conventions of reading by calling attention to these structures is often a feature of artists ‘ books through an emphasis on the features of the page and pointing to the book as a whole. But a book can also be a self-conscious record of its own production – it can simply examine itself as a proposition – one laden with specific ideas about the ways a book can embody an idea through its material forms. There are really two subtexts here. One is the “idea of the book as Idea” – the self-reflexive creation of books · which are about being books, or what a book can be as an idea in form. The other is the “idea of the book as art idea” – which takes these investigations of the book into a dialogue with the concept of art, and shows that books are an art idea. — Drucker, 2004.

Books on Books (2011)

Books on Books (2011)
Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié, Yann Sérandour & Jonathan Monk
Perfect bound paperback. H160 x W115. 260 pages. Acquired from Chapitre.com, 29 November 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

It was probably inevitable that the self-referentiality of artists’ books would prompt a book entitled Books on Books about an exhibition of artists’ books entitled Books on Books. And that the first and last pages of its content would be printed on its front and back covers, respectively. And, of course, that the content would consist of the editors’ performance of selecting, discussing and photographing the books.

The framing of the photos double-underlines the self-referentiality or recursiveness going on here. The books photographed are framed by Christoph Schifferli’s collection, then are framed by the 26 selected by Schifferli at the invitation of Christophe Daviet-Thierry, then are framed by the editors’ conversation, then are visually framed by the background where the conversation takes place (and include some of the hands taking part in the conversation), and finally are visually framed by the edges of the codex itself.

Talk about disappearing into your own belly band.

Schifferli’s and Daviet-Thierry’s initial aim was for an exhibition that would explore “three different ways in which a book is represented: either as memory or documentation, as image of the book itself as subject for artist’s books and finally as representation of the book as art” (Daviet-Thierry’s blog, 9 September 2009). As page 1 notes, however, Books on Books is not a full catalogue of that exhibition, and on page 3, Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié puts it to his coeditors: “Yes, well this conversation and my camera mounted above this table to photograph the books while you are discussing them became the project.” The result is a gossipy, amusing, casual performative conversation that sheds light on the following 12 works, most but not all of which Saint-Loubert Bié selected from the subset of the 26 exhibited in 2009 by Daviet-Thierry and again in 2011 by the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York.

The conversation also sheds light on the sense of community among book artists around the world, their networks and gaps in them. Sérandour’s exchange of his Thirtysix Fire Stations with Ed Ruscha for some of the latter’s works prompts a star-struck Monk to ask “What is he [Ruscha] like? Did you speak to him for a little while?” Monk’s Cover Version, which consists of photos of the front covers from significant artists’ books in Monk’s own book collection, incorporates a celebrity conversation with Seth Siegelaub, and yields another humorous remark of admiration:

JM: I don’t know how Siegelaub and the artists he worked with managed to make all those books within a three-year period [from February 1968 to July 1971]. An awful lot of those books are exhibitions in themselves. They were made all over, across North America and Europe. And this was without the Internet (p. 82).

1. Bruce Naumann, Burning Small Fires (1968)
2. Richard Prince, American English (2003)
3. Wade Guyton, Zeichnungen für ein grosses Bild (2010)
4. Jonathan Monk, Cover Version (2004)
5. Mike Kelly, Reconstructed History (1990)
6. Allen Ruppersberg, The New Five-Foot Shelf of Books (2003)
7. Claude Closky, Vacances à Arachon (2000)
8. Alejandro Cesarco, Dedications (2003)
9. Martin Kippenberger, The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s Amerika, Tisch Nr. 3 (1993)
10. Matt Mullican, Matt Mullican (1995)
11. Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia (2009)
12. Yann Sérandour, Inside the White Cube: Overprinted Edition (2009)

It is also refreshing to see these well-versed artists unselfconsciously admitting not knowing this or that artist, enjoying the discovery, and making connections from one artist to another.

The conjunction of urges for self-reflexive exhibitions and self-reflexive responses to them must be a recurrent virus. It happened in 1986 with The Book Made Art edited by Jeffrey Abt and Buzz Spector and Artists’ Books / Künstlerbücher Buchobjekte / Livres d’Artistes / Libri Oggetti edited by Klaus Groh and Hermann Havekost. It happened in 2011 with Books on Books. More recently, it happened with COUP DE DÉS (COLLECTION) edited by Michalis Pichler reflecting the exhibition Exposition littéraire autour de Mallarmé at the New York Center for Book Arts (18 January – 1 May 2024). In 2021, Megan N. Liberty organized a talk for the Center that touched on catalogues that cross the line into artist’s books in their own right, but her examples come from single-artist exhibitions. There must be other exhibitions of artists’ books “about the artist’s book” that resulted in self-reflexive works that perform more than the role of exhibition catalogue. Perhaps enough to make an exhibition of them?

Further Reading

“Jeffrey Abt and Buzz Spector“. 8 May 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Klaus Groh and Hermann Havekost“. 2 July 2021. Books On Books Collection.

“Megan N. Liberty“. 17 February 2024. Books On Books Collection. See Craft & Conceptual Art : Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books (2023) for the premise that “craft and conceptual art mutually informed the evolution of artists’ books during the 1970s and 1980s”, which offers a more fluid view of the world of book art than is usually presented, and a list of artists’ books exhibitions that might be a source for identifying those self-reflexive .

“Review of COUP DE DÉS (COLLECTION)“. 19 March 2024. Bookmarking Book Art.

Drucker, Johanna. 2004. The Century of Artists’ Books [Second edition] ed. New York City: Granary Books. See especially chapter 7, “Self-Reflexivity in Book Form”.

Klanten, Robert, Matthias Hübner, and Andrew Losowsky. 2013. Fully Booked : Ink on Paper : Design & Concepts for New Publications. Berlin: Gestalten. For another artists’ books display where the text begins on the front cover.

Liberty, Megan N. 23 March 2021. “Art Books, Artist Books, and the Exhibition Catalogue as a Space for Intervention“. Events. New York: Center for the Book Arts.