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.
Penguin’s 2007 series “Great Loves” is a twenty-book set of short paperbacks with selections from the usual suspects (D. H. Lawrence) and the unusual (Søren Kierkegaard). The selection of eleven tales from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron provides Carolyn Thompson with the opportunity to create a work of altered book art enjoyable on several levels.
The unaltered cover promises one thing. Its “under-the-cover” title page delivers another.
The Eaten Heart (2013)
The Eaten Heart(2013) Carolyn Thompson Altered perfect bound paperback. H180 x W111 mm. 124 pages. Edition of 3, of which this is #2. Acquired from Eagle Gallery, 7 October 2023. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.
Thompson’s chosen technique of removing text with a scalpel enacts one of the paradoxical meanings of the revealed tell-tale title it presents: the scalpel has eaten away all the text on this title page except for the text chosen as the title. Boccaccio’s text is there but not there, and the “under-the-cover ” title nods toward his missing content. Leaving only words referring to the body, Thompson’s work of book art celebrates the raunchy “under the covers” innuendo in Boccaccio’s text.
The transparent tape that holds the body of cut pages together (just detectable in the image of the title page above) can be removed and the pages turned (carefully!). Below is page 11 “in motion”.
The sequence of pages 116 to 119 below shows that, while the verso pages do not play a role in the work, the movement of words on the recto side away from those that follow them, revealing the blank sheet at the end, invites musing about their possible relationship as well as marvelling at the artist’s delicate patience applied to the indelicate.
Later on, using the 50 books in the Penguin Modern Box Set (2018), Thompson created text pieces, drawings, embroideries, prints and additional altered books in the spirit of The Eaten Heart. The Laurence Sterne Trust exhibited the full set of works at Shandy Hall, York, in 2019. Eagle Gallery hosted them again in London in February 2020, and the same year, After Capote: When Truman met Marlon, her altered version of Truman Capote’s The Duke and His Domain in the series, won the Minnesota Center for Book Arts Prize People’s Book Art Award.
The more wide-ranging but more consolidating work that follows demonstrates Thompson’s indefatigable originality and insatiableness as a re-purposing artist.
The Beast in Me (2021)
The Beast in Me (2021) Carolyn Thompson Print. 130 x 130 cm. Acquired from Information as Material, October 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.
Although The Beast in Me has a previous iteration from 2014, this one commissioned for the second issue of Inscription: The Journal of Material Text (the “holes issue”) expands to over 500 snippets of text beginning with ‘I’ from eight different novels. Its manner of doing so makes The Beast in Me simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal in its effect — perhaps more emblematic of Inscription‘s coverage in its “holes issue” than the impressive work chosen for the covers.
Here is Thompson’s description of the commissioned work:
The statements (over five hundred of them) are presented one after another in a circular narrative with no natural beginning or ending and can therefore be read from any point. When removed from their original context, they become ham-fisted stabs at self-revelation and blurted snapshots of confession. They contradict one another, and the narrator. The piece explores the power struggle within all of us, where different aspects of our personalities vie for dominance over one another at any given moment, while others yearn for internal balance. The narrative, whilst light and frivolous in places, descends into a sinister and uncontrollable rant in others.
If we accept the print’s invitation as we would a book’s invitation to read — to engage in narrative — we find that human identity’s ever precarious balance — between inward and outward forces, its introverted and extroverted elements, the being apart and the being a part of, and integration vs disintegration — is captured sharply. A blank center, a void or hole — there but not there — defined by fragments simultaneously flying outward and pressing inward.
Inscription: The Journal of Material Text – Theory, Practice, History, Issue 2 on Holes (2021) Simon Morris, Gill Partington and Adam Smyth (eds.) Perfect bound softcover, H314 x W314 mm, 180 pages. Editions included: Fiona Banner (aka Vanity Press), Full Stop, front & back covers; Kendell Geers, Stripped Bare, end papers; Carolyn Thompson, The Beast in Me, H1180 x W1180 mm; Erica Baum, Piano Rolls, H120 x W120 closed, W960 mm open; Harold Offeh, Crystal Mouths, H210 x W105 closed, W480 mm open; David Bellingham, Cigar Burn Apertures, H210 x W105 mm; Miranda July, Bookmark, H302 x W54 mm; Christian Bök, Supermassive, LP. Acquired from Information as Material, 10 October 2021. Photos of the issue: Books On Books Collection.
How materially perverse is it that the second issue of Inscription is devoted to “the hole”, yet it is the first issue that actually has a hole in it? The first issue of Inscription did set a seriously playful — or playfully serious — tone, and the second issue does not fail to maintain it. The second issue continues the dos-à-dos binding but with only the front and back covers as the external giveaway. In the middle of this single-spine paperback, pages 1-90 meet an inverted pages 90-1 in the middle, which prompts the reader to turn the open book 180° and flip back to page 1. From either direction, the reader meets the traditional backmatter of a journal in the middle.
Inverted cover and center of Inscription (2021).
Such reversals of expectation call for a countervalent design element to avoid too much confusion. In this issue, that element consists of constant earth-tone backgrounds framing constant black-on-white text boxes (square holes?) for each article. Even within these constants, reversals of expectation play out. The backgrounds are drawn from 14 different sources, ranging from laid paper samples, parchment, pulp and brown boards to a slice of Emmental cheese (sorry, Gromit, no Wensleydale), and the layouts for each square hole differ, being taken from 16 other journals such as The Criterion, The Egoist and National Geographic.
List of backgrounds used throughout the issue.
List of publications whose layouts are used throughout the issue.
The Emmental cheese background around the opening of Marcinkowski’s essay; Hybrid wove/laid paper made for James Watt & Co around the opening of Lüthi’s essay.
There is an even more recurrent “bass” line in this issue. It comes from the South African artist Kendell Geers, interviewed by the Editors. Even this bass line plays with variable perspective. Marking the start of most articles is a sheet bearing on recto and verso pages the image of a bullet hole (entry then exit) taken from Geers’ work Point Blank (2004). Bullet holes in glass — from Geers’ Stripped Bare (2009) — punctuate inversely the inside covers, bringing two symmetric/asymmetric openings to this topsy turvy production.
Kendell Geers, Point Blank (2004), front and back covers; Stripped Bare (2009; inside covers of Inscription (2021).
Long-time admirers of the 1960s-70s multimedia magazine Aspen, the editors have continued their practice of including unbound elements. In this issue, they have included Carolyn Thompson’s enormous poster The Beast in Me, whose sentences and part-sentences beginning with “I” have been cut from eight different novels and pasted down to form the hole seen below. Also included are Erica Baum’s Piano Rolls, Harold Offeh’s Crystal Mouths, David Bellingham’s Cigar Burn Apertures, Miranda July’s, Bookmark and Christian Bök’s Supermassive LP.
Carolyn Thompson, The Beast in Me, H1180 x W1180 mm. Photo: Ricky Adam. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
Erica Baum, Piano Rolls, H120 x W120 closed, W960 mm open. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
Harold Offeh, Crystal Mouths, H210 x W105 closed, W480 mm open; David Bellingham, Cigar Burn Apertures, H210 x W105 mm; Miranda July, Bookmark, H302 x W54 mm; Christian Bök, Supermassive, LP. Photos of the works: Books On Books Collection.
Like the famous combined Aspen issue Nos.5/6 — an homage to Stéphane Mallarmé — Inscription manages to pull off an eclectic unity with the essays included, which unlike Aspen was accomplished after a double-blind review process. Inscription‘s editors have turned on its head Robert Frost’s dismissive characterization of free verse as playing tennis without a net; they are playing doubles with a net and blindfolded and have created a work of art. This issue’s entries range from Paul Reynold’s erudite and whimsical definitions of all sorts of holes; the scholarly detective work on the holes that bind (pin holes and punch holes by Craig Robertson and Deirdre Lynch and filing holes by Heather Wolfe); James Mission’s tracking the crafts of scribe, typesetter and coder in representing lacunae, gaps or holes in the text; Louis Lüthi’s puncturing juxtaposition of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1948 abridgment of Moby-Dick, Orion Books’ 2007 Moby-Dick in Half the Time and Damion Searls’ 2009 riposte ; or The Whale; to Fiona Banner’s photo-essay on her hole-creating Full Stop‘s, granite sculptures of full stops (periods) created from the Peanuts , Klang and Orator typefaces, two of which were dropped into the marine protected area of Dogger Bank to put a sure stop to industrial fishing there. Here is the table of contents:
Michael Marcinkowski — “house / table” Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovíc — “Reading the Hole on the Last Address Memorial Plaques in Moscow” Fiona Banner — “Full Stop intervention with Greenpeace” Simon Morris — “Perspective Correction” Dianna Frid, Carla Nappi and Ian Truelove — “Wormholes, The Cascabel Butterfly and an AR collaboration” Aleksandra Kaminska and Julian De Maeyer — “The Perfect Cut: Talking with Myriam Dion” Paul Reynolds — “A Glossary of Holes” Louis Lüthi — “A Snow Hill in the Air” James Mission — “Signifying Nothing: Follow a Hole Through Three Text Technologies” Editors — “An Interview with Kendell Geers” Heather Wolfe — “On Curating Filing Holes” Craig Robertson and Deirdre Lynch — “Pinning and Punching: A Provisional History of Holes, Paper, and Books”
Inscription continues to provide one of the liveliest examples of what Anne M. Royston calls “artistic arguments (my emphasis), a term that indicates theory that pushes back against the expectations of the theory or criticism genre, specifically by employing signification that exceeds the semantics of printed text”.
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