Seealso:Museums; United States
Further Reading
Harris, Neil.Chicago’s Dream, a World’s Treasure: The Art
Institute of Chicago, 1893 – 1993. Chicago: Art Institute
of Chicago, 1993.
Maxon, John.The Art Institute of Chicago. New York,
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1970.
May, Sally Ruth.The Art Institute of Chicago: The Essential
Guide. Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1993.
Travis, David.Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection:
Starting with Atget. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chi-
cago, 1976.
One Hundred Years at the Art Institute: A Centennial Celebra-
tion. Art Institute Museum Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1, (1993).
The Art of Photography: Past and Present. Collection of the
Art Institute of Chicago, National Museum of Art,
Osaka, Japan, 1984.ARTISTS’ BOOKS
In diverse forms and contexts, artists’ books experi-
enced a dynamic presence in the myriad of art
movements in the twentieth century. The evolution
of artists’ books reflects changes in technology as
well as social, political, cultural, and economic
developments. Artists’ books have been made
from traditional materials and bookbinding tech-
niques, or radically challenging materials and var-
ious methods of compilation or presentation that
sidestep bookbinding entirely.
No single definition of an artist’s book can be
both broad and specific enough to be useful but
some book forms can be excluded. Some deluxe
editions, letterpress work, handset type, for in-
stance, do not typify the nature of an artist’s book.
Some artists’ books can be mass-produced through
xerography or other economical printing methods.
In the 1950s, Robert Heinecken printed photo-
graphs of highly political or pornographic imagery
directly onto the pages of popular magazines that he
then placed back on store shelves for sale to an
unsuspecting public. Some artists’ books exist in
limited editions, perhaps produced with the partici-
pation of a printer, book center, gallery, or museum
exhibition or collection. These efforts have spread in
recent years, but remain distinct from books called
livre d’artist. Some artists’ books may be a one-of-a-
kind object, but generally the term refers to edi-
tioned, mass-distributed materials. Some artists’
books entirely avoid material existence and circulate
as performance pieces or as part of the World Wide
Web.
Some artists’ books are ‘‘containers of informa-
tion,’’ the material support being secondary to the
expression or contemplation of personal, political,
emotional, or social ideas. In other artists’ books,
the object itself is the principle exploration and can
exist in many forms. Artists’ books can be bound in
traditional, accordion folds, various Japanese bind-
ings, or the book can be otherwise constructed,
involving no binding at all. The book may consist
of pages, be in scroll form, be kinetic and involve
moving parts, or be sculptural and exist for viewing
as a 3-D work of art. Some artists alter already
bound books.
The growth and intensity of work with artists’
books in the twentieth century has several histor-
ical references. In 1974, the Grolier Club organized
an exhibition and book titled,The Truthful Lens,
which describes 175 books with original photo-
graphs, mostly from the nineteenth century, claim-
ing that a more complete list might number 2,500
titles. Technology changes in the late nineteenth
century such as lithography, machine-set type,
and the linotype machine, facilitated the mass-pro-
duction and distribution of books. This activity did
not end the practice of more elaborate book mak-
ing and by the early twentieth century, the mass
production of cheaper editions sometimes included
the production of a limited number of more elabo-
rate copies.
In the 1920s, Russian Constructionism served as
a foundation for the idea of books as art. Art
movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Expres-
sionism, and Futurism searched not only for new
content but for new forms of expression and artists’
books were made by Tristan Tzara, Wassily Kan-
dinsky, La ́szlo ́Moholy-Nagy.ARTISTS’ BOOKS