The Albertine Workout is a collaboration between artist Kim Anno and poet Anne Carson.
Albertine is Albertine Simonet, the central love interest in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. The Workout explores her character in text and image. The illustration above touches the biographical note that, according to Proust, the Albertine character was based on Alfred Agostinelli, sometime chauffeur and typist for Proust.
The images resting in the burgundy Solander box on Anno’s website are well worth a look. (Carson’s text not seen.)
The spectrum of modern and contemporary Artists’ Books in Reed College’s Special Collections and collected on this website include traditional letterpress printed books of poetry, conceptual book works, sculptural and visual works, concrete poetry, and magazine works. This unique collection, which holds significant 20th century and contemporary artists’ books, gives students and the broader population insight into the significant role artist’s books have played among the avant-garde of Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and the United States, from the turn of the last century to the present. This includes livre d’artiste works by David Hockney, avant-garde works by Sonia Delaunay, conceptualist works by Sol LeWitt, and contemporary works by Xu Bing.
A search of the general library catalog with the term “artists’ books collection” yields over 1700 items, not all of which are in the Special Collection. This website offers visitors an organized way to browse the collection and enjoy access to individual sites for select items as shown here:
This 18-video playlist at the Otis College of Art and Design covers a 2014 exhibition highlighting around 120 works in the Artists Book Collection. The playlist contributes to the collection’s goal:
The goal of the Otis Artists’ Book Collection is not to create a comprehensive archive, but rather to provide a valuable teaching resource available to artists and students. Since the collection is available on only a limited basis, providing access to the books via an online image database is a continuing project, one that we hope will assist those with interest in researching our collection as well as the medium in general.
Some videos are better than others, and all benefit from viewing without the background music. Having handled both Susan E. King’s Lessons from the South and J. Meejin Moon’s Absence, I can vouch for the corresponding videos’ effectiveness.
The Lessons video could be closer to the experience of handling the work if the transitional zooming were replaced with a 360 circumferential shot or angled stills to reveal more of the work’s intricacies — for example, this overhead shot taken at the old Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC:
The Absence video comes much closer to a hands-on experience, but the exchange in the Comments section highlights how inclusion of some description by voiceover or bibliographic entry would aid viewers’ appreciation.
Vesper Von Lichtenstein 10 months ago It’s a memorial to 9/11, and the cut out parts are the Two Towers going from the top down…at the end of the book you see the placement of the two towers within the context of the rest of the buildings on a city block. The music seems a bit… upbeat for such a somber book.
Critiques aside, the playlist and site warrant multiple revisits and a thanks to Otis College.
An easily searchable source. The carousel of images in the home page‘s lower right-hand corner highlights some of the favorite artists at Books on Books:
Burtner’s whimsy seems irrepressible as is evident from this undated 100 Best Books, Abridged, composed of the first and last sentences from each of Random House Publishing’s “Best 100 Books of the 20th century” — and from her site’s motto – “Art for my sake”.
Pictured above is the back cover of dongghab, a sort of self-portrait in book art in that its content derives from events occurring in 1963, the year of the artist’s birth. The back cover is not just “another conversation” with Ed Ruscha, but one with American culture, as is the book as a whole.
Why do some books of photography lodge themselves in our minds as book art or artist’s books? Ed Ruscha’s books have done that, so much so that it seems almost odd to call them photobooks, although their deadpan presentation as such is essential to their artistic status. Why do works like Sean Kernan’s The Secret Books and Abelardo Morell’s A Book of Books defy relegation to the coffee table?
In juxtaposing his photos with text from John Lloyd Stephens, the 19th century explorer of Mesoamerica, Charles Agel positions Monuments to the Industrial Revolution (1998) as more than a book of photos. Quite a different conceptualizing strategy from the typologizing pursued from the 1970s onward by Bernd and Hilla Becher, mentioned by photographer John Pfahl in his introduction to Monuments.
Seeking the differences and similarities in strategies of composing the works as well as those of composing the photos adds to the appreciation and understanding of them.
Deep in the Bordeaux region, Diane de Bournazel creates livres d’artiste, sculptures and paintings and prints that will make you think of cave art, Hieronymus Bosch, Marc Chagall, Maurice Sendak, medieval tapestries, illuminated books and, finally, the distinctive art de Bournazel.
Containing over 700 items, the Arnolfini artists’ book collection is one of the largest UK collections of contemporary book art. It leans toward the 1970s and 1980s. The US-based Franklin Furnace Archive Artists Book Bibliography is representative, as are European works such as those of Vito Acconci, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbetts, Helen Douglas, Dieter Roth and Telfer Stokes.
Franklin Furnace Archive Artists Book Bibliography (1977) Unbound notecards of artists’ books catalogues 3 v. ; 430 cards ; 11 x 16cm
The collection is not without later representative works such as those by SooMin Leong, Jonathan Monk and Grayson Perry, but there seem to be no works after 2012. The Arnolfini, Bristol’s center for contemporary art, also hosts the biennial Bristol Artists Book Event.
An easily searchable source. The carousel of images in the 
