Within the realm of artists' book works there are few that could not be said to display a fundamental concern with the physicality of the book. The mechanics of page turning are integrally implied in any artist's decision to utilise the book form. Indeed, artists' books emphasise the ability of book forms, and of text and language, to acquire meaning through form and structure alone. The physical and conceptual mechanics, or syntax, of the book - whose basis lies as much in the formal, functional dictates of the book's material characteristics, as in centuries of entrenched tradition in page layout and book design - affords a spatial, sculptural and temporal framework whose manipulation may be effortlessly and subconsciously 'read' by the viewer, according to their inherent understanding and appreciation of the form's conceptual function and operation. But while the structural connotations of the book suggest that special kind of decipherment known as 'reading', the broader associations of the book's mythic, iconic and historic symbolism may be equally unavoidable. The book works comprising the research that this paper accompanies therefore aim, on the one hand, to explore the formal, structural physicality and spatiality of the book as both a self-contained sculptural platform and as a particular sort of collection, or series, of visual imagery, while on the other hand, seeking to address the psychological form of the book as an iconic, symbolic object, and to simulate something of the character of the unique, precious and mythic books of the past. Thus it has been an attempt to deal with abstract notions of pattern and structure, as well as with the mental frameworks of association and connotation surrounding the visual modes adopted to represent these structures. The project presents an integrated and interrelated series of unique, hand-made book works that are about books - or perhaps a particular kind of 'bookishness' - a collection which aims to be physically very real, but at the same time completely mythical, and in whose volumes the common conceptual and aesthetic reference is the inherent, traditional austerity of the book page, and the simultaneous conceptual movement and structural dynamics of the mechanical book form.

This Practice-Based Ph.D. thesis is in two sections, the written element presented as a sequence of eight Fascicles, and the practical element presented as an inter-related set of nine Artist’s Books and Multiples. This thesis presents a series of Artist’s Books and Multiples of graphic expressions of anxiety, each informed by a comparative study presented as a sequence of Fascicles of the visual strategies used to advertise cigarettes in America in mass-circulation magazines between 1945 and 1964. The thesis is presented as a boxed object containing the eight Fascicles (each containing a Gatefold Image) and the nine Artist’s Books and Multiples. The thesis identifies specific design and illustration solutions in cigarette advertising such as considerations of artwork, photography, layout, typography, characterisation, and diagrammatic representation of process. The conclusions are then used as the basis for 9 books and multiples in which I explore, within my own artwork, the dynamics of visual instruction, and the devices for reassuring the anxious consumer using irony and humour throughout. Each Fascicle has a Gatefold visual montage with juxtaposed imagery central to the theme. The thesis combines visual analysis and the making of imagery in equal measure. The vast proportion of original visual examples used in the Fascicles are reproduced for the first time in colour from a wide range of contemporary magazines. Particular emphasis is placed on the professional manuals generated by the advertising profession itself. A brief study of the cigarette market in the pre-1945 period identifies early anxieties about the product and how the tobacco industry and the advertising industry sought to address them. The thesis identifies the industries’ invention of the 'Safe Cigarette' and then explores the anxieties implicit in that concept, presenting visual means by which anxiety is depicted. Visual strategies of reassurance in the form of personifiers are compared - ranging from people in socially esteemed professions through to the use of animals (dogs) and visual fictions (Santa Claus). Two factors in particular have been identified to distract consumers from the gathering sense of unease in the safety of the product that culminated in the report of the American Surgeon General in 1964 - the appeal to the consumption of the cigarette in the outdoors and the corresponding success of menthol cigarettes, and the appeal to the reassurance that technology can impart - in the success of the Filter-Tip market. The twin polarities are reflected in the Artist’s books, 'Which Filter Works?' and 'Menthol Daze'. In the last Fascicle the techniques of persuasion after 1945 are compared with those used by the American Huckster of the early twentieth century and the thesis concludes with an assertion of the role that visual humour can play in exposing fallacious marketing.

Construite à partir des questions soulevées par le travail artistique de l’auteur, cette thèse examine le rapport qu’entretiennent certains artistes, essentiellement contemporains, avec la réalité de l’image photographique, sa capacité à produire une abstraction et à s’inscrire dans un agencement. Considérée selon un double point de vue, la notion d’agencement apparait ici d’une part comme le processus de l’artiste qui travaille avec des images,et d’autre part comme une forme d’organisation qui favorise une diversité de relations entre les images, àla façon de constellations. La première partie intitulée « les conditions de l’agencement » s’intéresse au passage à l’acte photographique, à l’appropriation d’une image, comme au détachement que nécessitent parfois ces deux actions propres aux pratiques de Christian Marclay et Wolfgang Tillmans. Alternative à ces divers mouvements qui animent les élans de l’artiste vers le réel, l’abstraction photographique fait l’objet d’une étude à travers l’analyse des travaux de quelques artistes parmi lesquels Pierre Cordier, Michael Flomen et James Welling.La seconde partie s’attache à décrire comment « l’agencement d’images » est investi d’un fonctionnement caractéristique du montage cinématographique et de l’atlas warburgien. Sont ainsi tour à tour observées des oeuvres où l’agencement d’images est délimité par le cadre (John Baldessari et John Stezaker), ventilé à travers les pages d’un livre (Hans-Peter Feldmann, Luis Jacob, Gerhard Richter, etc.) et déployé dans l’espace d’exposition : sur les cimaises, au sol ou sur des tables (Pierre Leguillon, Batia Suter, Wolfgang Tillmans). L’intérêtest finalement porté sur les enjeux de transmission de l’agencement, sa volonté de non-Hiérarchie aussi, et ce notamment, dans le contexte d’expositions de collections publiques et privées (Des images comme des oiseaux, Le Mur, Les peintres de la vie moderne).À l’issue de ce texte placé en regard d’une succession de planches d’images s’ouvre une autre collection dephotographies annotées et légendées, consacrée à la pratique artistique de l’auteur. / Developed based on questions from the author’s artistic practice, this thesis examines the relationship between some artists, mainly contemporary, and the reality of the photographic picture, its ability to produce abstraction and to fit within a display. Considered here in a double perspective, the concept of display is seen, on one hand, as the process of the artist working with pictures and, on the other hand, as an organizational model that foster a variety of connections, like constellations do.Entitled “display’s conditions”, the first part deals with photographic acting-Out, the appropriation of a picture as well as the detachment that sometimes these two actions involve like in Christian Marclay’s and Wolfgang Tillmans’s practices. As an alternative to these various movements which spur on the artist’s impetus towards reality, photographic abstraction is considered for further study through the analysis of artistic works like Pierre Cordier’s, Michael Flomen’s or James Welling’s.The second part describes how the “display of pictures” is invested by a functioning that is a feature of editingand Warburg’s atlas. Several works are observed in which the display of pictures is delimited by the frame(John Baldessari and John Stezaker) scattered through the pages of a book (Hans-Peter Feldmann’s, LuisJacob’s, Gerhard Richter’s, etc.) and spread out in the exhibition space: on the walls, the ground and tables(Pierre Leguillon, Batia Suter, Wolfgang Tillmans). The interest is finally moved on the issue of displaytransmission, its aim of non-Hierarchy, especially in the context of public and private collections exhibited(Des images comme des oiseaux, Le Mur, Les Peintres de la vie moderne).As the outcome of this text that appears beside a series of plates, a new collection of annotated and captionedphotographs is developed, dedicated to the artistic practice of the author.

Narrative, often considered synonymous with “story,” can be viewed from a structuralist perspective and analyzed independent of any particular content. Breaking narrative into categories of story and discourse, this autonomous structure makes possible a translation of content from one form to another. The various media and form types common in graphic design can serve as both recipient and translator of narratives, converting content into a framework that includes the concept of craftsmanship, aesthetic components and specifications, legibility and composition, and the physical form of the designed object. To examine how this framework functions in practice, I have developed a series of three volumes in which cinematic tropes are represented in book form based on a morphology of traits.

Refletindo sobre uma sensação de leveza e dilatação da passagem temporal, a pesquisa elabora a expressão \"tempo suspenso\" e analisa de que maneira essa singular percepção pode ser transmutada em códices. Para sua compreensão, dialoga sobretudo com duas produções artísticas: Em busca do tempo perdido (1908-1922), de Marcel Proust, e A última tempestade (1991), de Peter Greenaway. A primeira foi escolhida por discutir uma sensação como estopim para a elaboração de uma poética. A segunda, por colocar o códice artesanal como receptáculo de um assunto. O campo formado pelas duas referências aglutina a temática levantada e representa princípios geradores e norteadores no desenvolvimento de uma sintaxe visual composta de referências históricas e formais da estrutura do códice. Ademais, para a compreensão da dilatação do tempo foram analisadas obras clássicas japonesas onde se encontram características próprias dos termos wabi-sabi e ma. Elas são a representação estética de um método no qual a práxis poética é um momento decisivo na estruturação do objeto final. A partir dos diálogos estabelecidos, foram realizados sete livros de artista, chamados de códices, cada um apresentado separadamente em capítulos formados por registros fotográficos e textos contextualizadores dos assuntos elaborados. / Reflecting upon a soft and expanding sense of the passage of time, this re- search elaborates the term \"suspended time\", analyzing how this singular perception is possibly transformed into codex art. It dialogues mainly with two artistic works for further comprehension: Marcel Proust\'s In Search of Lost Time (1908-1922) and Peter Greenway\'s Prospero\'s Book (1991). The first one has been chosen for debating a sensation as the trigger for the elaboration of poetics. The second one for setting the handicraft codex as receptacle of a subject. The field formed by both works ties together the presented topic and represents the generative and guiding principles of a visual syntax made up of formal and historical references from the codex structure. Furthermore, in order to comprehend the expansion of time, classical Japanese works in which specific characteristics of the terms wabi-sabi and ma appear, have been analyzed. They are the aesthetic representation of a method in which the poetic praxis has a major role in the final object construction. Seven artists\' books named codex have been created out of the established discussion, each one is presented separately in chapters formed by photographic records and guiding texts about the formulated topics.

Refletindo sobre uma sensação de leveza e dilatação da passagem temporal, a pesquisa elabora a expressão \"tempo suspenso\" e analisa de que maneira essa singular percepção pode ser transmutada em códices. Para sua compreensão, dialoga sobretudo com duas produções artísticas: Em busca do tempo perdido (1908-1922), de Marcel Proust, e A última tempestade (1991), de Peter Greenaway. A primeira foi escolhida por discutir uma sensação como estopim para a elaboração de uma poética. A segunda, por colocar o códice artesanal como receptáculo de um assunto. O campo formado pelas duas referências aglutina a temática levantada e representa princípios geradores e norteadores no desenvolvimento de uma sintaxe visual composta de referências históricas e formais da estrutura do códice. Ademais, para a compreensão da dilatação do tempo foram analisadas obras clássicas japonesas onde se encontram características próprias dos termos wabi-sabi e ma. Elas são a representação estética de um método no qual a práxis poética é um momento decisivo na estruturação do objeto final. A partir dos diálogos estabelecidos, foram realizados sete livros de artista, chamados de códices, cada um apresentado separadamente em capítulos formados por registros fotográficos e textos contextualizadores dos assuntos elaborados. / Reflecting upon a soft and expanding sense of the passage of time, this re- search elaborates the term \"suspended time\", analyzing how this singular perception is possibly transformed into codex art. It dialogues mainly with two artistic works for further comprehension: Marcel Proust\'s In Search of Lost Time (1908-1922) and Peter Greenway\'s Prospero\'s Book (1991). The first one has been chosen for debating a sensation as the trigger for the elaboration of poetics. The second one for setting the handicraft codex as receptacle of a subject. The field formed by both works ties together the presented topic and represents the generative and guiding principles of a visual syntax made up of formal and historical references from the codex structure. Furthermore, in order to comprehend the expansion of time, classical Japanese works in which specific characteristics of the terms wabi-sabi and ma appear, have been analyzed. They are the aesthetic representation of a method in which the poetic praxis has a major role in the final object construction. Seven artists\' books named codex have been created out of the established discussion, each one is presented separately in chapters formed by photographic records and guiding texts about the formulated topics.