The Museum of Modern Art: A Century of Artists Books

The Museum of Modern Art
For Immediate Release

October 1994
A CENTURY OF ARTISTS BOOKS

October 23, 1994 - January 24, 1995
A wide-ranging survey devoted to the modern book as an art form opens at

The Museum of Modern Art on October 23, 1994. A CENTURY OF ARTISTS BOOKS
traces the international development of these books, and celebrates the
extraordinary impact that modern artists have had on the centuries-old
tradition of book design. Organized by Riva Castleman, Chief Curator,
Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, this exhibition demonstrates how a
diverse group of artists, with the collaboration of writers and publishers,
have transformed printed books into beautiful, enduring works of art.
On view through January 24, 1995, the exhibition is generously supported
by a grant from the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund. Additional funding
has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
In explaining the importance of the artist book, Ms. Castleman states,
"The difference between xi 11 ustrateo* books' and 'artists' books' is what makes
them modern: the artist augments the text with images that do not necessarily
define passages in the text. In this way, the reader-viewer may form personal
responses to the images as well as to the text, thus broadening the experience
of the book.... The intention of the illustrator is to clarify the text, while
the intention of the artist is to create Images that extend and/or enhance the
text."
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11 West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019-5498 Tel: 212-708-9400 Cable: MODERNART Telex: 62370 MODART
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Featuring 140 titles by over 100 artists, A CEKTURY OF ARTISTS BOOKS is
organized around the themes of publishers of illustrated books, the complex
relationships between artists and writers, the various subjects and purposes
of artists' books, and the methods -- and evolving concepts --of bookmaking.
Examples from the Museum's outstanding collection of artists' books are
augmented by loans, Including numerous drawings, maquettes, and a selection of
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century illustrated books, offered as historical
models. In addition, four books are shown in their entirety in video
presentations in the galleries.
The exhibition begins with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's innovative Yvette
Guilbert, the first example of a modern book where text and image were dealt
with as a single, clearly conceived object, and Paul Gauguin's manuscript and
prints for his planned book Noa Noa, both of 1894. It continues with famous
volumes by Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso from the first half
of the twentieth century; avant-garde experiments from World War I through the
1960s by artists ranging from Sonia Delaunay-Terk and Kasimir Malevich to
Robert Rauschenberg and Edward Ruscha to recent books by other contemporary
artists, such as Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Anselm Kiefer, and
Barbara Kruger.
By the end of the nineteenth century, when the audience for posters and
prints by painters began to grow, entrepreneurial publishers began to
commission artists to illustrate small editions of books. Some of the first
publishers of illustrated books were art dealers who felt that producing books
embellished by their artists would increase the audience for their paintings.
Foremost among these visionary publishers was Ambroise Vollard, whose
publication of Odilon Redon's haunting lithographs Illustrate Gustave
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Flaubert's La Tentation de Saint Antoine (begun in 1896, published in 1938).
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was known for collaborating with avant-garde artists
and writers, and his first publication, L'Enchanteur pourrissant (The Rotting
Magician, 1909), paired Andre Derain with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
Albert Skira published Matisse's first artist's book, Poesies (1932) by
Stephane Mallarme, a harmonious matching of seductive linear drawings with
Mallarme's poetry. More recently, Tatyana Grosman worked with American
artists to produce books with unusual formats, like Rauschenberg's Shades
(1964), a book without words printed on sheets of Plexiglas.
Often classical literature, fables, and folk tales have been the subject
of artists' books. The exhibition features Les Metamorphoses (1931) by Ovid
with Picasso's etchings, The Ecologues (1927) by Virgil with Aristide
Malllol's wood engravings, and Fables (1931) by Aesop with Alexander Calder's
wiry line drawings of animals.
Artists have also used the pages of the printed book to focus on
political and social issues. For example, George Rouault's Miserere (1948),
an album of fifty-eight black-and-white aquatints, mixes episodes from the
life of Christ with images recalling the brutal events of World War I.
Picasso produced Sueho y mentira de Franco (Dream and Lie of Franco, 1937),
two nine-part compositions of violent and satirical images representing Franco

and the suffering Spanish people, in order to raise money for the Spanish
Republic.
Numerous collaborations between contemporary artists and well-known
writers and poets are examined in the exhibition. Fiorades/Fizzles (1976),
Samuel Beckett's short story (printed In both English and French), Includes
Jasper Johns' characteristic stenciled words, which appear in English and
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French on facing pages, as 1f in a magic translating mirror. Other examples
of collaborations are Larry Rivers and Frank O'Hara in Stones (1960), Louise
Bourgeois and Arthur Miller in Homely Girl, a Life (1992), and Barbara Kruger
and Stephen King in My Pretty Pony (1988).
In some works in the exhibition, artists have contributed more than
images by serving as authors of their own texts. Unlike books in which the
artists embellish the words of a writer, these books constitute entire
artistic creations, from cover to cover. One early example is Gauguin's Noa
Moa, consisting of writings and woodcuts related to the artist's impressions
of Tahiti and the paintings he made there. Later, Matisse's famous Jazz
(1947), combirfes his writings and twenty brilliantly colored and boldly
stenciled compositions, while more recently Georg Baselitz's Malelade (1990)
presents archaic folk language and images of animals in forty-one prints.
Among photographers, the sparely-designed books of Walker Evans, particularly
his American Photographs (1938), became models for most presentations of
diverse but linked photographic reproductions in book form.
For some artists, books have been the means to convey and preserve their
teaching and working methods. Maievien's Suprematism: 34 Risunka (1920), a
group of black-and-white prints, was designed as a textbook for his students.
Marcel Duchamp's La Mariee mise a nu par ses celibaraires, meme (the Green
Box, 1934) reproduces his notes for his masterpiece by the same name, produced
two decades earlier. Josef Albers' Formulations: Articulation (1972) is a
compendium of the artist's compositional repertoire, which includes 121 color
and six black screenprints.
In the decades since the end of World War II, when American art came to
the forefront, there was a similar flourishing of publications, both on art
and as art. In the early 1960s, artist's books -- inexpensive booklets and
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object books usually entirely composed by artists -- became major vehicles of
artistic creation. With Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), 1n which
all but one photograph faces a blank page, a new artistic attitude was
established.
In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Ms. Castleman writes
about this abundance of creative work on the part of so many modern artists as
evidence that "the book form has become a symbol of a turning point in our
culture. Just when electronics have called into question the privacy of
possession, these multidimensional creations reaffirm the human need to
embrace objects worthy of dedicated attention, admiration, and affection."
* * *
PUBLICATION A Century of Artists Books, by Riva Castleman. 264 pages.

224 Illustrations, Including 76 in color. Published by The
Museum of Modern Art. Hardbound, $55.00 distributed in the
United States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York;
paperbound, $29.95; both available at The MoMA Book Store.
No. 55
For further information or photographic materials, contact the Department of
Public Information, 212/708-9750.

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The Museum of Modern Art

For Immediate Release

A CENTURY OF ARTISTS BOOKS

A wide-ranging survey devoted to the modern book as an art form opens at

two nine-part compositions of violent and satirical images representing Franco

PUBLICATION A Century of Artists Books, by Riva Castleman. 264 pages.

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