The Century of Artists' Books by Drucker, Johanna - 1995

New York: Granary Books, 1995. Hardcover. VG/VG (minimal shelf wear, dustjacket has small bend in front at bottom, otherwise all pages clean and intact). Green cloth boards with silver gilt lettering on spine, green pictorial dustjacket with red and black lettering, xii, 338 pp., bw illustrations throughout. "The Century of Artists' Books is the first full-length study of the development of artists' books as a twentieth century art-form. This work situates artists' books within the context of mainstream developments in the visual arts from Russian Futurism and Surrealism to Fluxus, Conceptual Art, to Postmodernism. Designed to raise critical and theoretical issues as well as provide a historical overview, this book explores more than two hundred individual books in relation. To their structure, form, and conceptualization. Topics include the discussion of the poetics of the book, the book as a metaphor, the conceptual space of the book, and books as narrative and non-narrative sequences. Each chapter uses these specific issues to examine the works of well-known book artists and publishers. The book provides a foundation for future work in the history and critical interpretation of artists' books, as well as offering a structure for teaching. Artists' books to practitioners, collectors, and curators." from dustjacket.