Art Book Fever

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Michelle Santiago Cortés on the enduring appeal of a book that’s not quite a book.

I haven’t been a student in over five years, but every September, as the air changes, I’m moved by the urge to gather notebooks, pens, and books as if they were nuts and berries for the winter. The current art book fair boom isn’t helping: In New York City alone we had the annual Brooklyn Art Book Fair and the East Village Zine Fair in the summer. And this September, two new fairs joined the packed circuit: The Booksmart Fair and the Rehearsal Art Book Fair. Instead of hosting its blockbuster New York Art Book Fair (which often takes place in September or October), Printed Matter revived the Los Angeles Art Book Fair for the first time since 2019. Art book fairs are basically Scholastic Book Fairs for adults. And while fairs come and go, art books are here all year.

The term “art book” can be used to describe any number of book-ish things, including photobooks, zines, and ephemera. Art books tend to foreground the book as a medium or as an art object. An art book doesn’t have to even be an actual book, but it helps if it is. It can be an ouroboros of paper or a matryoshka of nesting pages. Take David Stairs’s Boundless for example, the pages are bound with a 360-degree spiral that makes it impossible to open.

Rarely is the term “art book” used to refer to books published by institutions like museums or galleries, although you will likely find such books included if you ever attend an “art book fair.” For self-published printed matter that has a relatively small circulation and a profound political commitment, you are more likely to use the term “zine.” (Unless said book costs more than $10.) So what IS an art book? Like my autumnal urge to hoard school supplies, it’s all about instinct.

Anyone can make an art book: artists, architects, graphic designers, academics, researchers, and especially anyone in between. Art books were really popular in the sixties and seventies, when the art market was becoming more commercially conservative while artists grew conceptually restless. As the commodification of art raged on, Megan Patty writes in Art Writing In Crisis, “artists began looking to the possibility of the book, rather than the institution, for exhibiting their work.” The book became “an exhibition space” for artists like Ed Ruscha, Kathy Acker, Lucy Lippard, and Sol LeWitt. The last two co-founded Printed Matter in 1976, a nonprofit bookstore, publisher, and arts organization that is responsible for hosting the New York and Los Angeles art book fairs.

But this is just one of the art book’s many origin stories. The histories of art writing, the public sphere, independent publishing, graphic design, bookbinding, and zines all share chapters with the history of the art book.

On my current wishlist: Juliana Huxtable’s Mucus In My Pineal Gland, XXI Century Science: Oceanography, and Trinh T Minh Ha’s The Twofold Commitment. These run the gamut of what an art book can be, but I tend to lean towards books where artists take interdisciplinary approaches to topics I’d typically find impenetrable—like math, critical theory, or the technical sciences. However, don’t let the artist and theory name-dropping fool you, most of my art book collection consists of erotica and small zines that look like they were made by middle-schoolers. I’m quick to draw my credit card when it comes to these essentials.

In my collection: An art book that is actually a folder containing a book-length diary, some pamphlets, two postcards, and a large foldable map of Puerto Rico’s highway system—it doesn’t purport to offer a definitive history of transit, but to tell a story of fragmented and archipelagic development. Another favorite is a spiral-bound photo book of luminous summer images with charms of seahorses and gummy bears dangling from the loops—the inside and outside are equally girly and nostalgic. One of my favorite art books is actually a quad of cheaply-made booklets, each compiles stock photos of four celebrity Chris’s—Pines, Hemsworth, Evans and Pratt—except each booklet contains one easter egg image of a celebrity lookalike of its namesake Chris. A Joe Edgerton in a sea of Chris Pratt’s, for example. Is it a comment on Hollywood’s infinite variety of white men or is it a fun parlor game? Or both?

Now, the recommendations: I am a deep admirer of Chang Yuchen and Neta Bomani’s work. I am a close follower of Queer Archive Work, GenderFail, Brown Recluse Zine Distro, Black Mass Publishing, and Sojourner’s for Justice Press (Bomani’s micro press with Mariame Kaba). For art books and zines about technology specifically, there’s Tiny Tech Zines in Los Angeles and the Tech Zine Fair in New York. Also in New York, aside from Printed Matter, the Center for Book Arts, offers classes, presentations, lectures, and of course, books to buy. For Spanish-language or bilingual reads I check in with Chicago-based Inga Bookstore or Puerto Rico’s La Impresora, a small press and publisher. You can often buy art books directly from artists or independent presses. Otherwise, your local indie bookstore or art school likely has an offering of zines and art books to get you started.

However, it is possible to get your art book fix without coming into contact with the actual objects: Instagram Curator Oscar Salguero collects artist’s books that specifically deal with “alternative interspecies futures” for his growing Interspecies Library. Also on Instagram, @eff_ervescent posts pictures of thickly collaged journal pages and Press SF posts (and sells) rare vintage art books, meaning books about photography, art, design, and architecture. Additionally, the internet is full of zine and art book libraries with free PDF downloads you can print and bind at home.

If I had to come up with my own definition of an art book, I’d say it’s a book where the object and the content are equally prominent, if not totally indistinguishable. I like art books that simultaneously lean into the book-ness of a book while also stretching the limits of what a book can be. By expanding the potential of what a book can be, art books broaden the range of activities that “reading” can include. For me, the act of “reading” a good art book includes a lot of touching, page-turning, and reading from various orientations (upside-down, lengthwise) and, shamelessly, a lot of smelling (paper, yum).

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• The story behind the Romeo and Juliet (1968) stars' lawsuit against Paramount (Vulture)

• The Next Meme Stock? Owning a Slice of Your Favorite Song (Wired)

• A profile of Oneohtrix Point Never in the New Yorker

• “Letterboxd is the social media for the people who hate social media” (Washington Post) From where I stand, it was fully acknowledged that Letterboxd was a formidable social media platform back in 2020. I even know of married couples who met on Letterboxd. Two years ago, it was normal to ask for someone’s Letterboxd after matching on a dating app. But given the current state of social media, I gather we’ll see declarations like these gain traction and perhaps influence social media use at a larger scale.

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• A fascinating read about how small island nations like Tuvalu and Guernsey sell their web addresses (.tv and .gg, respectively) to companies like Twitch and Discord and how Anguilla (.ai) is handling the demand (Rest of World)

• A review of Daniel Clowes’ (Ghost World and Patience) newest graphic novel, Monica (4Columns)

• The Internet Is Forever (Spike Magazine)

• This week, I enjoyed learning about two hot women in STEM: Asia Carrera, a sex-worker who built an online empire, including e-commerce interface, all by herself in the mid-2000s. I also learned about Katrina Barillova, fashion model, Czechoslovakian spy, IT prodigy, and tech startup founder.

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