Beauty Book; The Life of Gandhi; Untitled (1973)
Barton Lidice Beneš
Mixed media book constructions. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Beauty Book (1973)
Barton Lidice Beneš
Altered book with human hair. H220 × W140 × D50 mm. Unique. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Beauty Book consists of human hair wedged between anonymized painted book covers. The use of human hair in artists’ books is unsurprisingly common since it has appeared widely in art in general. Akiko Sakaizumi’s Female Sampler (2001), Diane Jacob’s The Black Hole (2003), Jenine Shereos’ Archive series (2006) and Leaf series (2011-17), Lucy May Schofield’s All the News That’s Fit to Print (20212), Karen Hardy’s Vellicate (2015) and Pull (2018), Sun Young Kang’s Hair (2018), Kellee Morgado’s Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful (2020), Alisa Banks’ Afrocentric (????) and History of a People (2023), and Masoumeh Mohtadi’s The Sleep of Reason (2023).
The Sleep of Reason (2023)
Masoumeh Mohtadi
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
The Life of Gandhi
Barton Lidice Beneš
Altered book with embedded nails. H197 x W140 x D86 mm. Unique. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Beneš’ disrespectfully and adolescently entitled The Life of Gandhi may be the first artist’s book embedded with nails, although Lucas Samaras’ prickly Book 4 (1962) in the Museum of Modern Art might have provided inspiration. Later examples are Floating Concrete Octopus’s* Book of Nails (1992), Daniel Essig’s Book of Nails II (2003), Anne Maree Hunter’s Nailed (2005?), Sasha Meret’s Aggressive Book (2009), Werner Pfeiffer’s Difficult to Fit, Censored Nailbook, and Nailed Shut (ca. 2010-12), and manuel arturo abreu’s Kanga Book (2021). The frequency is considerably less than say treatments 0f Saint Sebastian in painting and sculpture, but the latter had centuries as a subject whereas the book nailed shut has only had decades.
Untitled (1973)
Barton Lidice Beneš
Altered volumes of Reader’s Digest, sanded and varnished. Each H197 x W140 x D85. Unique. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
With his two Untitled volumes, Beneš may again lay claim to another first-of-its-kind in this category among artists’ books. Two volumes from the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books series have had their component titles almost completely sanded off. They have been sealed and varnished to constitute a work more naturally called Untitled than any other work of art assigned that ubiquitous title.
These works of book art and his 1970s mail art interactions with Aart van Barneveld and Ulises Carrión secured Beneš’ position among the Fluxus and neo-Dadaist crowd. His later AIDS-related art such as the Lethal Weapon series (199o’s), made with his infected blood, may dominate his legacy, but these three works of book art sculpture place him alongside John Latham and Dieter Roth as an original and vanguard book artist.
Further Reading
Beneš, Barton Lidice. 2002. Curiosa : Celebrity Relics, Historical Fossils, & Other Metamorphic Rubbish. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Kilgannon, Corey. 17 July 2012. “After an Artist’s Death, His Home Becomes a Work of Art“. New York Times. Accessed 7 December 2025.
*Floating Concrete Octopus: an intermedia/performance group which changes its name every year, its core members being Elizabeth Was & Miekal And.
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