January 31, 2004

Book art

Someone sent me an invitation to a show by an artist called Doug Beube, called "Palimpsest" (in Toronto, next week, so I guess I won't be going). But if the name hadn't caught my attention, the photograph would have: an amazing sculpture called "Twisted Meanings" made by distorting a Webster's Dictionary into an almost glacial formation. I went on Google to see if I could find a digital photo of the piece. No luck, but I did find other amazing images of pieces by Beube:

“Twisted Disaster," 2002, book

“Borough (Brooklyn, New York, white and yellow page sold together),” 2002, found books/wood stands, 9 x 9 x 7”

Why is the idea of the book as compelling as the book itself? I suppose because the image of a book, or a real, but unread book, has infinite potential. It could be that book: the one you want to live in or the one that changes the way you look at where you do live. And then there is the book itself, the material object. A well made book is art, no-one can deny, but even mass-produced pocketbooks have that evocative pulpy-ink smell, that promise, when you first open them.

It may seem almost perverse to be sitting here at my keyboard fetishizing books. Certainly there is much generalized anxiety floating out there about the demise of the book/reading/culture, etc. During my last job interview (the successful one), while expounding upon "my research," I passed around a little 18thc chapbook in a cellophane slipcase. I said, as it went from hand to hand, “Go ahead, slip your finger in and touch it.” One member of the committee looked horrified, as if I had offered sexual favours to all and sundry right there against the lectern, but others chuckled and who knows? one or two fingers may have slid against that old rag paper. As long as we still have the impulse to touch (and face it, until storage media becomes more reliable for the long term), books are safe. Listen to Umberto Eco.

Here is a piece about Beube from the Brooklyn Artists Alliance, and an interview in Umbrella.

Beube is one of a number of book artists (here, here, and here).