Cette thèse pose la question de la place du livre dans l’expérience de la lecture dans le musée quand dans la seconde moitié des années 1960 tout l’art, tel qu’il est redéfini par les artistes conceptuels, est à lire. Dans les années 1960 et 1970, puis de nouveau au tournant des années 1990-2000, les espaces de lecture se multiplientAlors que l’emploi du livre par les artistes conceptuels s’inscrit dans une quête de démocratisation de l’art, qui serait désormais diffusé hors du musée, le livre dans le musée semble poser le problème d’une relation apparemment contradictoire entre la nature reproductible d’un médium et son ancrage in situ. Force est de se demander si cela ne produirait pas une réification du livre et une interdiction de la lecture pour reprendre les mots de Marcel Broodthaers. A moins qu’il ne s’agisse d’interroger les usages du livre et la place de la lecture dans la constitution de communautés éphémères. La première partie est consacrée principalement à la spatialisation de la lecture à l’ère de l’information aux Etats-Unis entre le milieu des années 1960 et le début des années 1980. Les espaces de lecture sont alors aussi des espaces à lire. Dans une seconde partie, nous verrons que l’institutionnalisation de l’installation est contemporaine de celle de la lecture dans le musée. Enfin nous étudierons l’émergence de modèles originaux d’exposition du livre d’artiste et du livre, créés par des artistes et commissaires qui ont participé à la rédéfinition de l’exposition comme médium et/ou en réinterprétant Le Club des Travailleurs de Rodchenko (1925). / This dissertion investigates the position of book in reading experiences which take place in the museum context when in the mid-nineteen sixties, all art, as redifined by conceptual artists, is to be read. In the 1960s and in the 1970s, then again in 1990s and 2000s, reading space have been increasing. Those could be apparatuses produced for exhibition as well as art environments and installations. In contrast with artists books which deal with democratizing art by circulating outside the control of museums, books in museums leds to questions about an apparent opposition between a reproducible medium and its in situ anchorage. It begs the essential question of whether it might end up in the reification of the book as well as in the prohibition of reading, the Marcel Broodthaers’s Interdiction de lire as stated for Pense-Bête (1964). Unless it provides the opportunity to focuse on the uses of books . The installations we are analyzing contribute to the building up of temporary communities. That is to say that we have also to consider the reader position in social sphere. There are three crucial trends, for it is in exploring them that we can begin to explore as the book as a reference for the environment which is itself to be read at the time of Information Turn which influenced theory on architecture. In the mid-1990s, artists produced what we call in situ books that are produced for reading in the museum. This dissertation dealss also with the wide range of interpretations of the same historic source, The Working Club by Alexandre Rodchenko (1925), by curators and artists from the New York art Scene as well as other American and European Artists.

This thesis examines the relationship between the three artists' workshops Røde Mor (Red Mother), Folkets Ateljé (The People's Studio) and GRAS, who worked between 1968 and 1975 in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Røde Mor was from the outset an articulated Communist graphic workshop loosely organised around collective exhibitions. It developed into a highly productive and professionalised group of artists that made posters by commission for political and social movements. Its artists developed a familiar and popular artistic language characterised by imaginative realism and socialist imagery. Folkets Ateljé, which has never been studied before, was a close knit underground group which created quick and immediate responses to concurrent political issues. This group was founded on the example of Atelier Populaire in France and is strongly related to its practices. Within this comparative study it is the group that comes closest to collective practises around 1968 outside Scandinavia, namely the democratic assembly. The silkscreen workshop GRAS stemmed from the idea of economic and artistic freedom, although socially motivated and politically involved, the group never implemented any doctrine for participation. The aim of this transnational study is to reveal common denominators to the three groups' poster art as it was produced in connection with a Scandinavian experience of 1968. By ‘1968' it is meant the period from the late 1960s till the end of the 1970s. It examines the socio-political conditions under which the groups flourished and shows how these groups operated in conjunction with the political environment of 1968. The thesis explores the relationship between political movements and the collective art making process as it appeared in Scandinavia. To present a comprehensible picture of the impact of 1968 on these groups, their artworks, manifestos, and activities outside of the collective space have been discussed. The argument has presented itself that even though these groups had very similar ideological stances, their posters and techniques differ. This has impacted the artists involved to different degrees, yet made it possible to express the same political goals. It is suggested to be linked with the Scandinavian social democracies and common experience of the radicalisation that took place mostly in the aftermath of 1968 proper. By comparing these three groups' it has been uncovered that even with the same socio-political circumstances and ideological stance divergent styles did develop to embrace these issue.