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WEEK 02: Tuesday 3 October 2006Artists’ books and conceptual art: 1960s- onwords
browsing for class and to view on your own:
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 1925
Ed Ruscha Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1962)
http://www.goshen.edu/~gwenjm/bookarts/brief12.htm
Ed Ruscha, Various Small Fires, 1964
Dieter Roth, The Daily Mirror
Dieter Roth, Literature sausage [Martin Walser: Halftime].
1961, Chopped book pressed into sausage shape
Christian Boltanski, Le Club Mickey
http://www.imschoot.com/plugins/fotoReeks.php?artikel=90&foto=0
Annette Messager album-collections 1971-1974
Detail of Children with Their Eyes Scratched Out (Les Enfants aux yeux rayés), Album-collection No. 3. 1971-72; Voluntary Tortures (Les Tortures volontaires). 1972.
John Baldessari, Brutus Killed Caesar (detail), 1976.
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Gwendolyn J. Miller. Discovering Artists Books- The art, the artist and the issues
http://www.goshen.edu/~gwenjm/bookarts/index.htm
Read 20th century section (on chapter 2 ‘A brief history of artists books: Finding a context’) and be prepared to discuss the influence of (1922) Moholy-Nagy printed experiments with photograms on the generation of 1960’s artists// in what way the works of Dieter Roth (1930-9 
and Ed Ruscha (1937 - ) stand as a model of artists book // analyse how the book The Daily Mirror represents its process and the role of photography in Ed Ruscha’s Twenty Six Gasoline Stations (1962)
Barbara Bader. Books as Collections: Dieter Roth’s Artists’ Books as Case in Point.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jouhs/michaelmas2005/Bader03.htm
Be prepared to discuss: the idea of books as collections // the structural analogies between books and collections// the two major types of artists books // the role collecting and seriality played in Roth’s books, listing some of his collections// discuss startegies such as incompletion, association, deconstruction in roth’s books// sausage literature//
“Artists’ books and collections (…) take on the status of ‘other spaces’ or heteropoi on various levels. First they function as a separate place in which objcts are integrated into a unity, protected against the exterior, and framed in a new context. Second, by adding a different type of value to the objects contained, they constitute an oppositional realm to that of the market place. Finally, due to their innate aptitude as exhibition spaces, artists’ books can potentially function as alternative spaces and as means of criticizing and circumventing traditional galleries and museums”
Janis Ekdahl .Artists’ Books and Beyond: The Library of The Museum Of Modern Art As A Curatorial And Research Resource
http://www.ifla.org/VII/d2/inspel/99-4ekja.pdf.
Be prepared to discuss how the idea of using the book as a medium coincided with the development of Conceptual art in the late 1960s// the economics of artists’ books // the way John Baldesarri takes advantage of the photographic sequencing in his book Brutus killed Caesar (1976)/ how other artists like annette messager and Christian Boltanski use the book as an album in which to assemble or inventory images or ideas.
DUE on class 3 | POST ON blog
Brief 2- The role of text in photo publications
statement 2 (500w): post it to your blog, with images and text- captions, tagging, commentary, technical, etc)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
OUTLINE OF SESSION 2
1. presentations
Brief 1> what constitute photo publishing practices now
statement 1 (300-500w) and photographic screen presentation (a collection of photos static or as video, animated gif, participatory photo project, tagged,etc) via online blog posting
2. discussion of assigned readings while browsing through selected examples
Gwendolyn J. Miller. Discovering Artists Books- The art, the artist and the issues
http://www.goshen.edu/~gwenjm/bookarts/index.htmstart on chapter 2- a brief history of artists books- finding a context
http://www.goshen.edu/~gwenjm/bookarts/brief10.htm
probes for discussion:
1. be prepared to discuss the influence of (1922) Moholy-Nagy printed experiments with photograms on the generation of 1960’s artists
2. in what way the works of Dieter Roth (1930-9
in depth
1. be prepared to discuss the influence of (1922) Moholy-Nagy printed experiments with photograms on the generation of 1960’s artists
top of page> Duchamp’s Green Box>>.model for so-called book object
more detailed study of greenbox here
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/05spring/thirkell.htm
” the work bears many of the common hallmarks of a twentieth-century artist’s print publication.
-It was produced in a printing medium carefully chosen by the artist to best convey the conceptual aims of the piece.
-The quality of the paper stocks and inks were integral to the success of the work, and although not actually printed by the artist himself, Duchamp closely supervised all aspects of production.
-The main element, however, that set the work apart from other fine art print works of the time was its use of photomechanical, instead of the traditionally sanctioned autographic, printing methods. Here, as with many other aspects of his practice, Duchamp was a pioneer: the use of photomechanical print as a creative medium did not significantly enter the realm of fine-art printmaking until the late-1950s and early 1960s.
halftone letterpress/ offset lithography / rotogravure/ collotype
Moholy-Nagy
His book Painting, Photography, Film (1925) “laid the ground rules for making a photographic sequence function beyond the level of mere collection”38 This work also uses structure and format as part of the content, rather than merely as instruments of eye catching organization. His concentration on the sequence or series of photographs and the declaration that the “knowledge of photography is as important as that of the alphabet”39 make his work a predecessor to the photographic artists books of Ed Ruscha or Sol LeWitt in the 1970s.
available at lsbu perry library>>
2. in what way the works of Dieter Roth (1930-9
Dieter Roth
“-Their works stand as a model to the artists book as a form because they produced book works in a sustained series of projects. Until this time 20th century artists working in the book medium had only dabbled and not created a sustained, long-term body of artists books.-Their work grew out of the non-traditional, conceptual art forms being developed in the late 1950s and early 60s and set a foundation for the medium of artists books and particularly for the artists book as a democratic multiple or inexpensive edition.
During the 1960s and 1970s with the climate of social and political activism, the democratic multiple was appealing to artists shut out of the traditional gallery and museum scene. “The book could be art in and of itself.”
-Artists books became a way to reach a wider audience and the decades of the the 1960s and 1970s were fertile times for this new art form to take hold.
3. analyse how the book The Daily Mirror represents its process and the role of photography in Ed Ruscha’s Twenty Six Gasoline Stations (1962)
The Daily Mirror also represents a process in two respects:
first by enlarging the page to unreadable levels and also having it represented in minuscule form in the bottom corner,
and the second respect is that this book had three incarnations.
The cover of Rot’s Daily Mirror Variante der als ‘Quadratbuch’ bei De Jong in Hilversum 1961
Examples of pages from Dieter Rot’s Daily Mirror.
An important aspect of Roth’s work is that he took the conventions of format and structure as the subject matter of his books.It is also important that he created editions of his books as this helps the format fit into one of the conventions of book publishing, therefore helping to root artists books in the book medium.
Dieter Roth, The Daily Mirror
Dieter Roth, Literature sausage [Martin Walser: Halftime].
1961, Chopped book pressed into sausage shape
Ed Ruscha
Creating in editions were also of primary importance to Ed RuschaMultiplicity was one of the important features of his art as he championed the idea of the democratic multiple, meaning that his books were easily available, cheap and portable.
With his work the customary aura of artwork was dispelled, his books were for use, intended to be handled and enjoyed.
In his first book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1962), Ruscha exhibits 26 photographs of gasoline stations located along Route 40 between Los Angeles (where he lived) and Oklahoma City (where he grew up).
“These images are like 26 letters of a personal alphabet that are structured by the form of the book.”50
Both books [26 gasoline stations and Various small fires] continue the format of a sequence of photographs, printed in an undistinguished way and are designed to have the look of an “incidental publication.”
additonal sites with 26gasoline stations>>
Ed Ruscha
http://www.yale.edu/amstud/r66/st6.htmlconceptual artists like photographer Ed Ruscha sought to find difference in this outlying conformity.
His 1967 book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, is a series of deliberately a mateurish photographs of gasoline stations.
He fashioned them together in a tiny flip book, beginning with the gas stations closest to his birthplace in Oklahoma and ending with those in California.
With this arrangement, flipping through the book presents a stilted experience of a cross-country drive.
Four from Twentysix Gasoline Stations
The underlying concept of Twentysix Gasoline Stations is that of typology:Typology is the study of types, and a photographic typology is a suite of images or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive manner; to be fully understood, the images must be viewed as a complete series. The components of a typology have no equal weight and no fixed sequence; hence they neatly subvert the ideas of uniqueness, originality, and the artistic masterpiece.
Ruscha’s use of a photographic typology comments upon the uniformity and standardization of the gas stations he photographs.
If one flips through Rushca’s book quickly, it reads as an ironic comment on a cross-country journey where all places are beginnin g to look more or less the same.
If one looks at the photographs more carefully, it becomes apparent how the gas stations differ from each other in subtle ways. Ruscha is challenging the viewer to pay closer attention to the mundane and overlooked aspects of our environment.
more on ed ruscha’s work
http://glowlab.com/lab2/issue.php?issue_name=10
The famous Ed Ruscha book Every Building on the Sunset Strip of 1966 captured a landscape of Los Angeles that conveyed the complex task of defining a landscape without an explicit center. Sunset Strip serves as a map of Ruscha’s movement in the city while conceding that this is only one of many potential maps and itineraries underlying the presumed common landscape, the façade, of the city.
other books by ed ruscha (scroll to bottom of page)
Edward Ruscha, 16 books, 1962-78
including SOME LOS ANGELES APARTMENTS, 1965 / 1970
TWENTY SIX GASOLINE STATIONS, 1962 / 1967
VARIOUS SMALL FIRES AND MILK, 1964 / 1970
EVERY BUILDING ON THE SUNSET STRIP, 1966
THIRTY FOUR PARKING LOTS IN LOS ANGELES, 1967 / 1974
ROYAL ROAD TEST, 1967/ 1971
BUSINESS CARDS, 1968
NINE SWIMMING POOLS AND A BROKEN GLASS, 1968
CRACKERS, 1969
BABYCAKES WITH WEIGHTS, 1970
REAL ESTATE OPPORTUNITIES, 1970
DUTCH DETAILS, 1971
A FEW PALM TREES, 1971
RECORDS, 1971
COLORED PEOPLE, 1972
HARD LIGHT, 1978Ed Ruscha, Various Small Fires, 1964
II.Barbara Bader. Books as Collections: Dieter Roth’s Artists’ Books as Case in Point.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jouhs/michaelmas2005/Bader03.htm
Be prepared to discuss:1-the idea of books as collections //
2-the structural analogies between books and collections//
3- the two major types of artists books //
4-the role collecting and seriality played in Roth’s books, listing some of his collections//
5-discuss strategies such as incompletion, association, deconstruction in roth’s books// sausage literature//
“Artists’ books and collections (…) take on the status of ‘other spaces’ or heteropoi on various levels. First they function as a separate place in which objcts are integrated into a unity, protected against the exterior, and framed in a new context. Second, by adding a different type of value to the objects contained, they constitute an oppositional realm to that of the market place. Finally, due to their innate aptitude as exhibition spaces, artists’ books can potentially function as alternative spaces and as means of criticizing and circumventing traditional galleries and museums”Janis Ekdahl .Artists’ Books and Beyond: The Library of The Museum Of Modern Art As A Curatorial And Research Resource
http://www.ifla.org/VII/d2/inspel/99-4ekja.pdf.
Be prepared to discuss1-how the idea of using the book as a medium coincided with the development of Conceptual art in the late 1960s
2-the economics of artists’ books
3-the way John Baldesarri takes advantage of the photographic sequencing in his book Brutus killed Caesar (1976)/
4-how other artists like Annette Messager and Christian Boltanski use the book as an album in which to assemble or inventory images or ideas.
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