Getting a shelf life - various artists, various galleries

In some respects this is a flush time for the artist book world. Despite continuing shortages of artist book distributors, bookstores and outlets for serious criticism, there are more titles in print than ever before and more colleges and universities offering courses and degrees in the production, history and criticism of the form. Two major museum exhibitions devoted to the genre are now touring the country. "Die Bucher der Kunstler: Artists' Books from 1920-1990," an historical survey (weighted toward work produced since the 1950s) of artists' books published in Germany, has been traveling extensively in Europe since 1994 and has begun the North American portion of its itinerary. "Artist/Author: Contemporary Artists' Books," a traveling exhibition curated by Cornelia Lauf and Clive Phillpot for the American Federation of the Arts (AFA), opened in February 1998 and focuses on an international array of publications issued since 1980.

"Die Bucher der Kunstler," curated by Michael Glasmeier for the Institut for Auslandsbeziehungen, is the larger exhibit, both in terms of artists (more than 150), titles (651) and in the scope of its treatment of the subject. Glasmeier describes his project as "an exhibition in ten chapters," and indeed, the installation is visually correlated to the chapter structure of its catalog, with 10 clusters of densely packed display cases: five thematic groupings - Fluxus and Happenings; Researchers and Collectors; Authors and Theorists; Painters and Drawers; and Documentors and Xerox artists - and five from the most influential publishing houses of artists' books in Germany - Edition Hansjorg Mayer, Edition Hundertmark, Rainer Verlag, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig and Wiens Verlag.

All of the most important German book artists appear in the exhibition. The extraordinarily prolific Dieter Roth is represented by all 25 volumes of his Gesammelte Werke (1971-85), along with more than 50 of his other publications. There are 19 books by Martin Kippenberger, 11 by Jan Voss, nine by Hans-Peter Feldmann and eight by Hanne Darboven, among others. Since the exhibit is concerned with artists' publication activity in Germany rather than citizenship, there is an ample selection of works by artists from elsewhere, including such luminaries as Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and many of the Fluxus artists. A Humument (1982), by English artist Tom Phillips, perhaps the best-selling artist book of all time, is included because London-based Thames & Hudson issued the book with the permission of Phillips's German publisher, Edition Hansjorg Mayer.

The catalog, with a cover by Voss, includes Glasmeier's eloquent topical essay "The Impossible Library." Glasmeier casts the genre in the shadow of Gustave Flaubert's desire for "a book about nothing, a book with no external connection that is carried by the internal force of its own style, just like the world is held aloft without supports . . ." The curator offers an unadorned description of the artist book as "the result of what artists do with, about, on, for, or against books," acknowledging the tautological aspect of this characterization while insisting upon its open-endedness. The range of publications in "Die Bucher der Kunstler" extends from high-budget offset editions to works such as Voss's Doc-u-ment (1993), a bound, collated book comprised of 25 lids from various forms of cartons and boxes (including laundry detergent, pizza and women's shoes).

Although the catalog dutifully reproduces every item in the exhibit, without any multiple page spreads readers do not get any sense of the narrative or sequence among the multitudes of volumes nor do viewers of the exhibition as the books are shown in display cases. Fortunately some 300 items included in the exhibition are available for browsing in an accompanying reading room, an extraordinary feature of "Die Bucher der Kunstler." At the Krannert the readers' copies were supplemented by dozens of books donated to the museum by American artists' book publishers and distribution agencies participating in a museum-sponsored artists' book fair in November.

"Artist/Author," on the other hand, devotes a great deal of catalog space to an expansive definition of the form while exhibiting a mere 130 objects and slide projections of book-related installations, including 22 historical books presented under the heading: "Pre-1980 artists' books from the Franklin Furnace Artist Book Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, New York."

The exhibit itself and the accompanying catalog are handsome enough. Richard Merkle's A-frame traveling exhibition furniture allows for easy access to all the books on display except the Franklin Furnace Collection. The catalog, designed by artist Renee Green, possesses many fine graphic details including, at intervals, Green's own image/text work. In the acknowledgments, AFA Director Serena Rattazzi notes that "Artist/Author" is the organization's first exhibit concerned with "books as an art form" and describes both the furnishings and publication as "curatorial devices [that] follow from the central concept put forward by the guest curators that a book conceived by an artist is not only an artwork, but one of equal significance to works executed in more conventional mediums." It is how this egalitarian ideal figures in the selection of works that results in a strangely skewed view of the field.