Barton Lidicé Beneš

artist, http://www.bartonlidicebenes.org/

Books On Books Collection – Ryuta Iida

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Silent Book, vol. 11

Artistic wooden sculpture resembling a geometrically abstract book, featuring angular planes and a smooth finish.

Silent Book, vol. 11 (2023)
Ryuta Iida
Altered book, camphor tree stump, and glue. H210 × W170 × D190 mm. Unique. Acquired from Fragile Books (Tokyo), 20 August 2024.
Photos: Above, courtesy of Fragile Books; below, Books On Books Collection.

The cover, door, table of contents, numbering, text, and endnotes are all filled with a series of information. I thought to stop and crystallize all the functions of the “book,” … I decided to crystallize it. It took the time to go through the hands of people, the old book that finally reached me, sealed on a pedestal, it is now ripe for its next role. (Artist’s statement)

“Crystallized” is not the first word that comes to mind when viewing and handling this eleventh in Ryuta Iida’s series Silent Book. Perhaps it does for the angled planes of the cut block of camphor wood, but for the coverless codex, folded, draped, moulded, carved, and sculpted come closer. Two names that might not spring to mind (but should) are Giambologna (Jean Boulogne) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Like them, Iida offers us more than a single or primary vantage point from which to appreciate his work. Like Giambologna’s Abduction of a Sabine Woman (Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence) or Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne (Galleria Borghese, Rome) Silent Book must be circled and viewed in the round. The nine images below show the work turned right to left in stages.

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Books On Books Collection – Werner Pfeiffer

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Drawn, Cut & Layered
Werner Pfeiffer
Plastic box containing illustrated pop-ups.Acquired from Toledo Museum of Art, 5 Jun 2017.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Werner Pfeiffer’s playfulness finds its way into viewers’ hands with this offering from his Toledo Museum of Art exhibition in 2015. His archives are housed at Vassar College.

With its structures and photographic representation of Pfeiffer’s other works of paper engineering, Drawn, Cut & Layered demonstrates his breadth in that sub-domain of book art. Not detectable in the box, though, are Pfeiffer’s white altered book objects, which formed the 2010 exhibition at Cornell University, entitled censor, villain, provocateur, experimenter, and demonstrates his scope in the sub-domain of altered books.

In kind, they were preceded by Barton Lidicé Beneš‘ The Life of Gandhi and Beauty Book (both 1973), M.L. Van Nice‘s Swiss Army Book (1990) Irwin Susskind‘s Book Faced Down – Embedded in Plaster (1999). In kind and whiteness, they were followed by Jonathan Callan‘s Zurbarán’s Color Plates (2011), Michael Mandiberg‘s Print Wikipedia (2015), and Lorenzo Perrone‘s Kintsugi(2018).

Further Reading and Viewing

“Hedi Kyle’s The Art of the Fold: How to Make Innovative Books and Paper Structures (2018)“. 24 September 2018. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Movables Now and Then“. 31 August 2024. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Lorenzo Perrone“. 8 September 2019. Books On Books Collection.

“Werner Pfeiffer and Anselm Kiefer“. 17 January 2015. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Kevin M. Steele“. 18 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“A ‘white book report’ on ‘The White Heat’ at MARC STRAUS“. 5 June 2017. Bookmarking Book Art.

“drawn, cut & layered: The Art of Werner Pfeiffer”
6 February to 3 May 2015
Toledo Museum of Art

Books On Books Collection – Linda Toigo

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Altered books as artists’ books present a seemingly endless variety.

Some may be the conversion of old books into just-legible new ones as in A Humument redacted with ink, paint, excision, and collage by Tom Phillips, Tree of Codes mechanically excised by Jonathan Safran Foer, or The Eaten Heart scalpeled into existence by Carolyn Thompson. They give us a new work to read page by page extracted page by page from the earlier work, which remains more or less (mainly less) present in our hands.

Others like Marcel Broodthaers’ page-by-page redactions of Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés by ink in one case and excision in another or Michalis Pichler’s similar reformatting and excision of the same poem in clear acrylic or Jérémie Bennequin’s page-by-page erasures of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past give us artists’ books that make the altered books illegible but still accessible page by page.

Other altered books as artists’ books are mainly one-off spatial objects that can be taken in in one go — not necessarily in just a glance but in the look or gaze given to a sculpture or painting. The ground up and encased works in Literaturwurst by Dieter Roth. The sealed, painted, nailed, and “hairied” works of Barton Lidice Beneš. The torn works of Buzz Spector. The sandblasted works of Guy Laramée. The glued and carved works of Brian Dettmer. The bullet-hole-ridden Point Blank by Kendell Geers. The pun-packed moebius-sculpted Red Infinity #4 by Doug Beube. They give us artists’ books that make the altered books illegible and inaccessible as books.

With Medieval and Modern History (Suggestions for Further Study for Jack Hroswith) (2013), a schoolboy’s textbook burnt into near illegibility but still accessible page by page, Linda Toigo adds an artist’s book that distinctively broadens the variety of alterations and their outcomes.

Medieval and Modern History (Suggestions for Further Study for Jack Hroswith) (2013)

Close-up of a worn book titled 'Medieval and Modern History', showing faded text and staining on a beige spine.
A casebound, altered hardback book with a textured green cover, resting on a wooden surface.

Medieval and Modern History (Suggestions for Further Study for Jack Hroswith) (2013)
Linda Toigo
Altered casebound hardback. H195 x W135 x D40 mm. 832 pages. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 30 August 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

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