Louis Lüthi

Books On Books Collection – Karen Shaw

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In the 1970s, post-Minimalism, post-Conceptualism, Language-based Art, Neo-Dada, Fluxus, Arte Povera, OuLiPo, the commodification of art and the “dematerialization of the art object” — all made a messy milieu for visual and literary artists. According to Stefan Klima, this is also the period when the messy notion of the artist’s book or “book art” gained recognition as a genre with exhibitions curated by Dianne Vanderlip for Moore College of Art and Design, Germano Celant for Nigel Greenwood Gallery, and Martin Attwood for the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Into this environment came Bronx-born Karen Shaw, an aspiring artist and data analyst for the broadcaster NBC. On the job, she learned about the hash function — that one-way cryptographic algorithm that condenses input data of any size into an output of fixed lengths. When she saw that she could change a word into a number by assigning each letter a number according to its place in the alphabet and then summing them up, she arrived at the idea of reducing “the masterpieces of literature, poetry and prose to a number, which would signify the ‘essence’ of the work”.

After applying the approach to Blake, Shelley, Keats and others, she tackled the King James version of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Here’s her description of the procedure:

I wrote the numerical equivalent of each letter under each letter … in the Bible itself. Then I added up the number/letter of each word until I had the sum for each word, verse, and chapter. I then recorded the sums in an accounting book. This became the second version …. Next I added it all up on adding tapes, one tape for each chapter, which I measured to find out the length of each chapter. I then attached each labeled tape to a rod at the edge of a shelf that had been built to hold the work. This was the third version …. (Sellem, “Karen Shaw = 100”.)

Here was an utterly different form of artist’s book by alteration: an assemblage of a “Rembrandt” Bible’s St. Matthew Gospel with each letter hand-numbered according to its place in the alphabet; each of the gospel’s words summed and recorded in an accounting book with all of its word-sums summed to its essence of 1,116,071; and the “scrolls” of the adding machine tapes for each chapter ranged alongside the Bible and accounting book. For Shaw, this altered-book form of art was merely a first step into a series of discoveries and inventions that led to a lifetime of artistic exploration and creation.

As she plied her calculations, she noticed that obviously many words had the same number. The impulse to collect words equalling 100 (the sum of her name’s letters) led to creating a numerical dictionary — the Sumantic Vocabulary Collection — listing words with equal sums. With that, Shaw began to see words in what she called “the numerical waste” surrounding her: numbers on receipts, savings coupons clipped from newspapers, brand labels, barcodes and pricing stickers and other everyday consumer signage. Strange poems could be derived from them. Eventually “sumantic” — playing on sum and semantics — evolved into “summantics” as her description of her artistic methodology. Her 1978 artist’s book Market Research spells (or numbers?) this out in its foreword.

Market Research (1978)

Market Research (1978)
Karen Shaw
Softcover booklet, saddle stitched with staples, translucent fly leaves. H280 x W215 mm. 24 pages. Acquired from , .
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

In a process I call summantics, I designate a numerical equivalent to each letter of the alphabet according to its position: A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, G=7, H=8, I=9, J=10, K=11, L=12, M=13, N=14, O=15, P=16, Q=17, R=18, S=19, T=20, U=21, V=22, W=23, X=24, Y=25, Z=26. A word is spelled out numerically and added to reach the sum of a word. Consider the number 33. It is the sum of MEAN = 13+5+1+14 = 33, also ALAS = 1+12+1+19 = 33 and:

DIAS CHEAP NAME ALIBI COMB CAMP FIND SEED
THE GATE SAID RAN ILL MAGIC EWE KEEL
CEASE BOLD HERB AFFABLE OR WEE COIF GAY

to mention a few. Numbers are transcribed into words of the equivalent sum and collected in a numerically ordered vocabulary. Since a particular number can equal the sum of various words the choice is determined by mood, imagination, sound, syntax and/or grammatical structure.

Summantics has its origins in gematria, a cabalistic method of interpretation of the scriptures as well as late twentieth century software systems. Where today’s technocrats reduce all manner of human endeavor to statistical data, I reverse the process believing it to be more enlightening, humorous and humane.

Given the humor of the work’s opening, it’s likely that the title Market Research cheekily refers to her data analysis work with NBC questionnaires completed by mothers for tracking the impact of TV violence on their young sons.

In his review of the 1978 exhibition “Artists’ Books and Notations” (Touchstone Gallery, 118 E. 64th Street, New York), Lawrence Alloway noted Karen Shaw’s methodology as another instance of “the ways by which language has entered recent visual art, formerly protected from such incursions by the prestige of Form. If artists use words in their work, it is not because they are now more dependent on writers or on theory than in the past, as has been suggested, but because language has become available as subject matter” (p.653). With Shaw in particular, it was a case of language and numbers becoming available as subject matter.

George Orwell 1984 (1984-89)

George Orwell 1984 (1984-89)
Karen Shaw
Diptych box covered with marbled paper on front and spine, wrought iron numerals 1984 and plastic letters fixed to front cover, translucent flyleaf with inked symbols and numbers, with text colored and cut out from translucent paper, plexiglas glued to wooden case with gessoed interior and 11 found items bearing the number 84, each fixed to the interior wooden panel with a black-bead-headed pin. H360 x W290 x D40 mm. Unique work. Acquired from Peter Kiefer Buch- und Kunstauktionen, 21 October 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Whether tabulating words or deciphering numbers, Shaw leaned further into three-dimensional assemblages resembling one- or two-page books. The somewhat-damaged homage George Orwell 1984 blends her interest in transposing literary works into hash codes with that of reversing numbers in the numerical wasteland into words with the help of her dictionary. Shaw plays off Orwell’s idea of double-speak by splitting his title in two. The first half is the sum of the numerical values of the letters in “idea”, appropriate for an idea-driven book. For the second half, however, she seeks out words that sum up to 84, letrasets them on clear plastic, and pins them over found and sometimes manipulated objects. A word may allude to its found object, or it may vaguely relate to Orwell’s book, or whether there’s any association at all may be obscure. A Belmont racetrack betting slip makes an ironic match with “foolish”, but seems unrelated to the novel. The German word Verrat translates as “betrayal”, which certainly fits the book, but what it has to do with the queue ticket (manipulated to show “84”) is unclear. That the word “calamity” has spun upside down over its manipulated token is an accidental irony, and what association the overwritten token has with the word or novel is also unclear.

Like Louis Lüthi’s A Die with Twenty-six Faces (2019), built on a collection of literary works entitled with a single letter, Shaw might have extended this part of her oeuvre with other number-titled works: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Had she been inclined, she could have even used Lüthi’s book and its reference to Marcel Broodthaers’ quip “The alphabet is a die with 26 faces”. These might have yielded results more compelling than George Orwell 1984, but she would have still been captive to finding luckily appropriate words with the right word-sums.

Two summantic works not in the collection — Less is More: Proof in 15 Languages (1999) and Summantic Proofs (2019) — are more compelling and uncanny. The fact that so many languages’ words for “less” have word-sums greater than the word-sums for the words for “more” is simply uncanny, and Shaw’s typography, color and layout in her spiral sketchbook presentation are compelling.

Less is More: Proof in 15 Languages (1999)
Karen Shaw
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Also uncanny is her later collection of “proofs” in which she demonstrates that the word-sum for “odd” is an odd number, that the word-sum for “prime” is a prime number, and that the word-sum for “square” is 9 x 9. The pop-up equals sign, the ruler-drawn lines and the hand-colored script in this late mock-up reflect her ongoing artistic drive.

Summantic Proofs (2019)
Karen Shaw
Photos: Courtesy of the artist.

The most striking and consistent of Shaw’s works in the collection departs from her summantic method. It nevertheless embodies the ingenuity, humor, and humanity at play in her art.

Etymological-Entomological Specimens of the World (1993)

Etymological-Entomological Specimens of the World (1993)
Karen Shaw
Nine codex-shaped boxes of paper-covered boards, each opening to plexiglas-covered diptychs miniature books of various sizes posed as butterflies among text, handcut and painted paper foliage and flowers. H368 x W268 x D77 mm. Acquired from Karen Shaw, 8 October 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Jean Sellem’s interview with Shaw in the bilingual review Heterogénesis has been quoted earlier. In that exchange, we are lucky to have Shaw’s reply to question: “Why do you combine the concept of entomology with that of etymology?”

KS : In the past, I always used to confuse those two words. I knew the definition of each of them, but I couldn’t remember which definition belonged to which word. Eventually, I taught myself a mnemonic method to remember which word was which. “Ent” sounds like ant, so entomology is the study of insects, and so etymology is the study of words. When I was looking for a format for my ideas, using entomology pins seemed like the perfect way to attach words to numbers. The closeness of the spelling and the complicity of the two words was fun and made sense to me. The needles themselves are beautiful, long and thin. It just seemed like the perfect solution.

It’s happenstance. It’s the physical material. It’s the fun and humor of wordplay. It’s the artistic eye that finds meanings at the curious intersections of nature and language. All of this in Karen Shaw comes to the fore in the nine volumes of Etymological-Entomological Specimens of the World (1993). The top, bottom and fore edges of these book-shaped diptychs mimic closed books, whose mimicry yields to a mimicry of entomological display cases under clear covering, which in turn yields to miniature dictionaries posed to mimic butterflies. A mnemonic solution to an unwanted confusion of words leads to the book artist’s deliberate visual and verbal punning of dictionaries with insects.

In the interview, the only movements and artists directly influencing her work that Shaw remembers are Dada, new-Dadaism, Eva Hesse, On Kawara, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth and Conceptual Art. For Specimens, she has noted in correspondence a direct inspiration: the interest of Vladimir Nabokov in lepidoptery. Seeing butterflies as miniature dictionaries also overlaps a bit with Nabokov’s perceiving letters of the alphabet as having colors. Nabokov’s chasing butterflies and leaping from letter to color finds a simulacrum in Shaw’s chasing words, numbers, and meaning in her everyday environs with her artist’s book butterfly net.

Karen Shaw
27 March 2025

Further Reading

Alloway, Lawrence. 9 December 1978. “Art”. The Nation, p. 653.

Hofberg, Judith. 2001. Women of the Book: Jewish Artists, Jewish Themes. Boca Raton, FL: FAU.

Sellem, Jean. 2020. “Karen Shaw = 100“. Heterogénesis: Review of Visual Arts.

Shaw, Karen. 1 December 2022. “Summantics”. Typo: A Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics and Constrained Design. No. 1.

Nabokov, Vladimir. 5 June 1948. “Butterflies: The Childhood of a Lepidopterist“. The New Yorker.

Books On Books Collection – Louis Lüthi

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Infant A (2012)

Infant A (2012)
Louis Lüthi
Thread-stitched signature. H225 x W160 16 pages. Edition of 1000. Acquired from Torpedo Books, 8 January 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection

Infant A is part of a collection of essays commissioned by castillo/corrales and published by Paraguay Press under the series title The Social Life of the Book. Lüthi’s contribution fits the Books On Books Collection on several scores. First is the epigram’s invocation of the alphabet, which echoes the collection’s concentration of alphabet-related artists’ books and children’s books. See Alphabets Alive! Second is the epigram’s source: Wallace Stevens, whose poetry has inspired Ximena Pérez Grobet’s Words (2016). Would that other book artists be so inspired. Third is the narrator’s fictional conversation with Ulises Carrión in a celebration of all things A-related, in particular Andy Warhol’s novel a: a novel (1968), which finds analogues in Warren Lehrer’s A Life in Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley (2013) and Derek Beaulieu’s a, A Novel by Andy Warhol (2017) (entry in progress). Fifth is how the dialogue reminds me of Suzanne Moore’s A Musings (2015).

A Die With Twenty-six Faces (2019)

A Die With Twenty-six Faces (2019)
Louis Lüthi
Paperback. H200 x W130 mm. 104 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 18 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection

Walter Benjamin’ unpacking of his library has a lot to answer for. Not only do we have Buzz Spector‘s take on it in 1995, but Jo Steffens’ Unpacking trilogy of photos of architects’, artists’ and writers’ bookshelves, Alberto Manguel’s elegiac Packing My Library (2018), and here is Louis Lüthi’s.

Publisher’s website: In A Die with Twenty-Six Faces, the author — let’s call him L. — guides the reader through his collection of alphabet books, that is, books with letters for titles. Some of these titles are well known: Andy Warhol’s “a,” Louis Zukofsky’s “A”, Georges Perec’s W. Others are obscure, perhaps even imaginary: Zach Sodenstern’s A, Arnold Skemer’s C and D. Tracing connections between these books, L. elaborates on what the critic Guy Davenport has called the “Kells effect”: “the symbolic content of illuminated lettering serving a larger purpose than its decoration of geometry, imps, and signs.”

The title stirs thoughts of Marcel Broodthaers’ oracular statement in 1974 “I see new horizons approaching me and the hope of another alphabet”. An alphabet that unrolls across the twenty-six faces of a die would certainly qualify as another alphabet. Broodthaers and the die also stir thoughts of Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard to which Broodthaers paid repeated homage. Throwing a twenty-six-sided die would certainly no more abolish chance than would a roll of Mallarmé’s six-sided die. Lüthi’s game, however, has little to do with chance unless we count his luck in finding the works to build his library of single-letter-entitled books. Even less to do with luck if some of the library is fictitious, a likelihood that the “publisher’s” statement suggests. Lüthi’s die is loaded!

A selection of Lüthi’s “alphabet” books on display. Courtesy of the author.
Photo: Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen

On the Self-Reflexive Page II (2021)

On the Self-Reflexive Page II (2021)
Louis Lüthi
Paperback. H200 x W130 mm. 304 pages. Acquired from Idea Books, 18 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

This is a peculiar book in its order and nature. After two variant half-title pages, it begins with a section entitled “Black Pages”. Only on flipping through the volume can we find the remaining front matter — just after page 208. There’s another half-title and then the Table of Contents. Reproducing the marbled page from Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767), the book’s cover gives a clue to this peculiarity. Sure enough, Lüthi spells it out later in the section entitled “On Drawing Pages”.

So much in Tristram Shandy is presented out of order: a second dedication comes not after the first but on page 27, the preface is not at the beginning of the novel but in chapter 20 of volume three, and chapters 18 and 19 of volume nine come not after chapter 17 but are inserted after chapter 25. In a similar act of transposition, we find a marbled page in volume three, even though hand marbling is customarily used to decorate covers and endpapers. As Viktor Shklovsky observed, “It is precisely the unusual order of even common, traditional elements that is characteristic of Sterne.” (p. 240)

This one paragraph confers on Lüthi’s entire book the very self-reflexivity that it explores across a range of literature and artists’ books. Reflecting the custom to which it refers, On The Self-Reflexive Page II carries Sterne’s marbled pages on its front and back covers. In the text before his marbled leaf, Sterne refers to it as the “(motly emblem of my work!)“. Lüthi has taken that exclamation to heart (and cover) as if it were advice in creating this hybrid, motley work of his own: “part artist’s book and part essay, part literary excavation and part typographical miscellany” as he calls it in his middle-of-the-book Foreword.

Lüthi’s work is just one in the Books on Books collection of several inspired by Tristram Shandy. There is Erica Van Horn’s Born in Clonmel (2011), Simon Morris’ Do or DIY (2012), Abra Ancliffe’s The Secret Astronomy of Tristram Shandy (2015), and Shandy Hall‘s The Black Page Catalogue (2010), Emblem of My Work (2013), Paint Her To Your Own Mind (2018) and The Flourish of Liberty (2019). Outside the collection, there is Brian Dettmer’s Tristram Shandy (2004), commissioned by Shandy Hall’s Laurence Sterne Trust, and also Sean Silver’s Shandean online venture called The Motley Emblem (2022~) celebrating Sterne’s marbled leaf and the analytical chemistry of marbling. The latter may become a book, even an artist’s books to add to the tally. In The Century of Artists’ Books, Johanna Drucker draws attention to Sterne’s novel twice as an example of self-reflexivity or self-interrogation, but in 1994 and 2004, Sterne did not rise to the same level of precursor to book artists as William Blake or Stéphane Mallarmé in Drucker’s view. With these later works of book art inspired by Uncle Toby’s nephew in the bag, a dozen or so more might nudge Sterne up the scale.

In the meantime, anyone interested in artists’ books could fruitfully apply to the medium Sterne’s exhortation to his own readers:

Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read, — or by the knowledge of the great faint Paraleipomenon — I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading , by which your reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motly emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unraval the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.

Artists’ books are to be read, handled and digested, not stored away in the archives.

Further Reading

“The First Seven Books of the Papier Biënnale Rijswijk“. 10 October 2019. Books On Books Collection.

“Maureen Richardson“. 28 September 2019. Books On Books Collection.

Silver, Sean. 2022~. The Motley Emblem. Rutgers: Rutgers University. A website that celebrates Sterne, paper marbling and much more related to them.

Books On Books Collection – Inscription 2 on Holes

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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”.

Further Reading

“Inscription: the Journal of Material Text”, Issue 1. 15 October 2020. Books On Books Collection.

Royston, Anne M. 2019. Material Noise: Reading Theory as Artist’s Book. MIT Press.