Leonardo da Vinci was convinced of the power of vision as an instrument of knowledge. He felt that it was, above all, through out eyes that we grasp and understand the world; that visual representation is our primary method of recording knowledge and, most importantly, that such knowledge enables us to master and control our environment.
With this epigraph in mind, how can we define an artists book? Is it something special, with a clear definition that must apply to all? Or can our sketchbooks, memoranda, scribbles, notations, doodles, ideas or possible lines of thought put into folded pages count as artists books? Like many questions of this kind, the answer has to begin by saying: It all depends.
My own approach to the making of an artists book is open and varied. And whether I’m making a unique handmade book or an edition with elements added by hand, I’m aware that books are among the most intimate objects made by human beings. You handle the materials to make them, and you handle the books to read and view them. And whether they are the spontaneous gestures of an individual or a carefully planned collaboration with others, this intimacy of making and using is the same.
In the sketchbooks of Le Courbusier, for example, as in Leonardo’s. there is as much writing as there is drawing. These very different minds used sketchbooks to study, to meditate, to ask questions, to work out ideas, to record the germ of an image, even to doodle. Sketchbooks, even if we regard them as preliminaries or unfinished business, are as revealing as diaries, letters and records of conversations.
Franz Kafka’s diaries can be seen as a writer’s preliminary sketchbooks for stories to be written later. Van Gogh’s drawings in letters and sketchbooks modify and inform our knowledge of his painting. And alongside some of the sketches of Goya are words meaning "I saw this!". Diaries, letters and sketchbooks are not usually meant for public consumption. They are private to the writer, artist or the letter’s recipient. That we are sometimes able to view their contents places us in a privileged position. We are privy to intimate documentation of often intimate matters.
On the other hand, the private insight, word or line will sometimes become public through the artist’s work. Fore me, these preliminary signs or marks are often the prime motivation in making of an artists book, one of the ways in which my private records become public works.
The combination of text and image, coupled with the crafts of traditional book-making, are for me the first steps toward making an artists book. Whether as a unique item, or as a numbered edition, my original passion for the hand-printed image gradually took me on a journey from making prints, which I still do, to making books.
I am not alone in this, even in Australia. The late Melbourne writer, critic and poet Gary Catalano referred to the artists book as "The Bandaged Image", and this is the title of the publication in which he studies some 40 books by Australian artists from 1956 to 1983. Coincidentally, my own first edition artists book was made in 1983. Catalano’s intimate knowledge of the genre and his thoughtful analyses make his book a "must read" for anyone studying the artists book in Australia.
Each artist has their own reasons for practicing this particular form of art-making, and many different kinds of artist have made them. Conceptual artists, post-object artists, pop artists, op artists, and most of the great names we know from the beginning of the twentieth century have made them. Their impulse might be autobiographical, to extend their current practice, to try out ideas in a different medium, or a fascination for the book itself as a carrier of cultural, intellectual and emotional content. For me, all of these have been important in different ways at different times.
Whatever we do as makers of artists books, many have seen the degree to which poems and paintings can be related in a book as intimate, even erotic. Language seeks to embrace the image, and the image seems to provoke language, but as each remains itself, the desire of each is thwarted.
Alan Loney, in his essay in my survey catalogue, puts it this way: "….the term artists book can seem simple enough. It refers to a book made by an artist. And by this definition it is easy to imagine that what you might see is not quite what anyone might buy in their local bookstore. Beyond this point, however, anything can happen, and much of it does and the more artist books you see, the harder it is to come to any more concrete, encompassing definition". But, he goes on, "there is a history of artists books, begun in the late nineteenth century, by which we can gauge the similarities or differences found in new works."
In many ways poets and artists are, in the pages of a book, thinkers. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his book Culture and Value writes: "A thinker is very much like a draughtsman whose aim is to represent all the interrelations between things". When artist and poet, or words and images, are in collaboration, the opportunity exists to link ideas in unusual and unexpected combinations. Our response to the work of another can deepen our reading, our listening and our looking, and enrich our everyday experience of even very ordinary things, and transform through the art of the book.
When I said my own first artists book was done in 1983, it was not done in Australia, but in Milan, Italy, under the influence of Grafica Uno, a workshop dedicated to print-making and artist book production. Under the charge of master printer Giorgio Upilgio, Grafica Uno remains an ideal and stimulating environment in which artists can extend their practice into areas they would not go to on their own. Like many others I too was inspired by this wonderful meeting place for artists, writers, poets and printers. Grafica Uno is a treasure trove of visual and intellectual stimulus and achievement. When I was there I made my first book of Lithographic drawings – no words, just images, in a book.
Visual annotation is close to writing. Jean Cocteau said of his drawings that "they are writing untied and retied in a different way". All drawing is a composite act of decisions, immediate revisions, split-second deliberations, that is, intelligence at a high creative activity and potential.
"Rest before Labour" said William Blake. He might equally have said "play before work", for the sketchbook is both playground and resting place, the free exercise of pure intellect whether in doodling or copying nature with precision.
Looking back at my past, it was in the late 70s in Melbourne that I saw the early books of Tate Adams from his Lyrebird Press. I had been a printmaking student of Tate’s in the early 70s at RMIT, and all I really wanted to do then was to bite a plate and pull a print. I was not at all receptive tot he prospect of making books. But my experience of Tate’s books in the late70s and of Grafica Uno in the early 80s combined in an understanding of the genre which has guided much of my work since that time.
What I have added to the mix of printmaking and making books is my love of poetry, a loce developed In my late high school days when I was taught English literature by Dr Norman Saffin.
I have been fortunate over the years to have worked with distinguished poets such as Chris Wallace-Crabbe with whom I have collaborated many times. The dynamic of our approach to making a new book have been open and varied. At times the poetry may come first and the artist then responds by making images and a book design to go with them. On other occasions Chris will have seen my images in the studio and they become the catalyst for new poems. The same can be said for my collaborations with the well-known New Zealand poet Alan Loney. With Loney the collaborative project may simply grow out of a conversation. From that initial talk or set of talks, any direction can be taken, and the work of both poet and artist is done freshly and specifically for the project.
But collaboration is not the only means of putting text and image together in a book. The poetry of John Shaw Neilson have been a love of mine for some decades now. His work of the 20s through 40s is highly lyrical, and I find his language has an original and simple beauty, especially when he is able to imbue the Australian landscape with resonant images and universal significance. Working with such texts is not collaboration in a strict sense, but I do find his poetry, and that of a few others, wonderful to respond to and work with visually.
To sum up, I have leaned that the fine press artists books is a like a mosaic – not of fractured bits, but rather a thoughtful amalgam of text, image, paper, typography, binding, structure, and meaningful content. It is a discrete form of art making, particular and coherent. The book is an intimate, Kinetic, architectural construction that exists as a sequential narrative. That is, in a book you turn the pages by hand in fields of paper suspended thru time and space.
For me, book making is a continuous love affair. The creative mind is without limit in its search for possibility, and the rewards are many. The artists book is a work of art that lives at the still centre of two primary human processes: that of it making, and that of its comprehension.
