Artists’ books extend the limits of the conventional book. They take liberties with its form, content and configuration; they include subjects that might be considered insignificant, risqué, abstract or obscure. Their print run is too limited for ordinary publishing and marketing procedures. This thesis engages with the artists’ book in terms of its various moods as suggested by the bodily humours of Hippocrates and Galen. It argues that humour (in its embodied sense) takes many forms in the artists’ book: from the angry, the despairing or the melancholic to the comic or the joyful. In building a foundation for this approach to the artists’ book the thesis also connects with crucial moments in the evolution of twentieth century conceptual thought about art. Chapter One introduces the idea of humour as a strategy used by book artists to negotiate an art world in which the aesthetic canon is under scrutiny. Up to this point a characteristic feature of this negotiation has been a search for a consistent definition of artists’ book. My concerns are not so much with a fetishization of the book in a digitally challenging age, but, rather with the focus on the artists’ book’s ironic techniques that are employed to oversee the nature of the form relative to changes in its context, both technological and cultural. In the second chapter, I connect the artists’ book to some of its experimental origins within the literature of humour. I discuss a number of artists’ books that exemplify the sharpness of wit, the use of irony, the depth of melancholy and the place of nonsense among other forms within the spectrum of humorous possibility. The “anatomy” of humour is dissected in the third chapter, according to the way in which it embodies the creative process. The concepts of appropriation and détournement are basic tools, for the collection of subject matter. Every one of the books discussed use “wit” to carve a direct channel to the core of the idea it expresses. The diverse manifestations of irony enable the artists’ book in its various guises to mislead, riddle, surprise and seduce its reader. “Nonsense” keeps rationality honest by arguing a case for a productive form of “uselessness” that reflects upon an art world burdened by the weight of “usefulness” and overproduction. The fourth chapter examines a number of artists’ books and writers who, in various ways tap the rich field of the mundane: here is a source that like a compost heap, nurtures and produces those species of humorous surprise that also rejuvenate. The fifth chapter looks at larger aspects of the world, which shape our consciousness through spectacular images and the media. How these pressures permeate and influence the creative activities of the book artist is mapped in Chapter Six, which examines the shared internal space of the reader and the creator of the artwork. This internal space is the workshop of the book artist. Here the tactics are honed and the dynamics of the exterior world are in effect moulded and shaped into the subject matter and forms of artists’ books. In a culture in which “success” is commensurate with the accumulation of wealth, to be unsuccessful is to belong to an under-class, to be invisible. Chapter Seven makes use of an ironic sense of failure as a strategy to support the main objective of the thesis, which is to test the limits for the possibility of an art practice that continues to thrive as it ducks and weaves its way through and under the radar of contemporary cultural conditions. It argues a case for a fugitive practice that even as it is on the move is congruent, and in its selfreflexivity, accountable for its political and aesthetic stance. There has been a considerable resurgence of interest in the artists’ book since the late twentieth century with an increase in small press publications, the development of significant public and private collections of artists’ books and a growing body of critical commentary on them. Digital technology and desk top publishing have enabled many artists to produce books rapidly, cheaply and with qualities ranging in quality from the photocopy through to slick high-end productions. From the 1970s until the present, however, the commentary on artists’ books has been preoccupied with a search for a definition of the genre. Underpinning this endeavour has been a yearning for “consecration” (in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense) where acceptance would elevate the artists’ book to the same level as the “legitimate” art forms – painting, sculpture, photography and the finely crafted art object. By contrast, this thesis considers the artists’ book as an alternative art form and explores its ability to evade the constraints of consecration, to remain fresh and mischievous in creative and subversive ways / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216329 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Farman, Nola, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Writing and Society Research Group |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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