ABSTRACT
The artist’s book has, throughout its history, has employed many formal and conceptual approaches. Its relationship with the universe of plastic and visual art is somewhat structuring, reflecting the heterogeneity and the dilution of barriers of the same nowadays and thus presenting a multitude of formal, conceptual solutions and an encompassing use of materials in its execution. The artist’s book, as an object, constitutes one of the most commonly used means of expression in this type of artistic expression. Within this scope, the artist’s book as an object resulting from the destruction of existing books, constitutes one of the more extreme approaches, raising the question of ethics in a proximity with some Dadaistic attitudes. This extreme artistic methodology puts creativity at a threshold, requiring the destruction to physically reformulate the existing objects, in this specific case, books. This extreme artistic approach, at its multiple levels of destruction of existing books, the inherent question of ethics in this process, and the consequent formal solutions arising from it, are the objectives/aims of this chapter, which results from my role as researcher, benefitting from my experience, my training in the area of artist’s books at the Slade School, in the fact that I create artist’s books and that I lecture this subject at university.
