ABSTRACT
The artist’s book “integrates the formal means of its realization and production with its thematic or aesthetic issues”. The artist’s book refuses to relinquish its allegiances to either art or to the book. But it has many more allegiances. Artists’ books are committed to a permanent process of reinvention. “Anything can be considered a book if that is the artist’s intention." Artists’ books are a radical format of bringing art to a wider public. Unlike the dancer and the musician who “produce and consume their aesthetic product” but are themselves “instruments for yet a further audience,” the reader of an artist’s book is “both performer and audience.” An artist’s book “consists of various elements, one of which might be text. A text that is part of a book isn’t necessarily the most essential or important part of that book”.
