Even as our lives become ever more digitalized, the beauty of the printed page continues to hold sway. Take Jonathan Safran Foer’s recent literary dissection of Bruno Schultz’s novel The Street of Crocodiles, which he painstakingly pruned in order to create an entirely new story. Although the concept was more literary experiment than arts and crafts hack-job, the resulting book is a visually stunning reinvention of its preexisting form. To illustrate the multimedia value of this alternative usage, here are ten artists who have transformed traditional texts into works of genuine art.
Collecting discarded books from thrift store bins and even dumpsters, Robert The creates objects of art that comment upon their own meaning and irrelevance. In his artist statement, The explains that these tossed aside books “are lovingly vandalized back to life so they can assert themselves against the culture which turned them into debris.”
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and please check out these coming down the aesthetic pike: http://bit.ly/gTY7Ck
[...] Flavorwire compiles this list of visual artists working with books. Some of these pieces work in tandem with [...]
The Vancouver, BC artist Rachael Ashe also creates fantastic altered books – http://rachaelashe.com/category/altered-books/
Alex Lukas’s submerged cities, created on old book pages. http://www.alexlukas.com
Don’t miss Katya Marritz
http://bookobjects.blogspot.com/2008/10/katya-marritz.html
Check these out: Beautiful photographs of decaying books by Erik Schmitt.
http://cargocollective.com/erikschmitt
Alison Knowles / The Big Book [1967] and a multitude of others since.
Nina Katchadourian / Sorted Books [1993] ongoing
http://www.alexanderkorzerrobinson.co.uk/
[...] gives us 10 artists who use books as their preferred [...]
Love the way artists use books!
I wrote about a number of them working in LA earlier this year, check it out if you like: http://www.createfixate.com/2010/05/urban-scrawl-003-books-they%E2%80%99re-not-just-for-reading-anymore/
http://www.robertscobey.com/books
with fewer people reading books…. glad to see old ones are being used to make art.
[...] good people over at BoldType complied a list of “10 Visual Artists Who Use Books as Their Medium” for this week’s issue, and boy it is [...]
[...] this type of book as art will inevitably get hardcore book lovers up in arms about destroying books, yada yada, try to just [...]
[...] ~ Kim at Bookstore People linked to this fantastic site highlighting 10 Visual Artists Who Use Books As Their Medium. [...]
Amongst my favourites, Tom Phillips’s ongoing work (45 years or so at this point) A Humument: http://humument.com/
There’s an amazing show of works based on books at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, Brooklyn, going on right now. Some photos if you’re interested: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=81549&id=1616670828&saved
[...] 10 Visual Artists Who Use Books as Their Medium by Chelsea Bauch (from Flavorwire) “Even as our lives become ever more digitalized, the beauty of the printed page continues to hold sway. Take Jonathan Safran Foer’s recent literary dissection of Bruno Schultz’s novel The Street of Crocodiles, which he painstakingly pruned in order to create an entirely new story. Although the concept was more literary experiment than arts and crafts hack-job, the resulting book is a visually stunning reinvention of its preexisting form. To illustrate the multimedia value of this alternative usage, here are ten artists who have transformed traditional texts into works of genuine art.” [...]
Cool designs, and I like Guy Laramée’s interpretation but for those old college textbooks, might as well resell it at http://www.cheaptextbooks.net .
[...] For biblioholics who want more, here are 10 visual artists who make art with books. [...]
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