We usually think of books as vehicles for information and for reading, but a new exhibition, a collaboration between the Neuberger Museum of Art and the Purchase College Library, shows that books can also be art objects, created specifically as a thought-provoking means of artistic expression and valued for their artistic qualities.
We usually think of books as vehicles for information and for reading, but a new exhibition, a collaboration between the Neuberger Museum of Art and the Purchase College Library, shows that books can also be art objects, created specifically as a thought-provoking means of artistic expression and valued for their artistic qualities.
In “P is for Performance: Artists’ Books on Shelves and in Public Spaces”, which opened earlier this week, the book is considered as a conceptual space for performance, as a record of performance, as a time-based medium, and as directing the reader to actually perform. The 28 objects in the show are small, slim “performative” volumes that relate to the performing arts: music, theater, dance, and performance art. Among the artists who created the works are: Jim Dine, Ray Johnson, Sol Lewitt, Claes Oldenburg, and John Cage.
“Ultimately, a lot has to do with showing how seamlessly different kinds of art can be integrated,” says Tennae Maki, curator of the exhibition and a Neuberger Museum of Art Curatorial. She got the idea for the show when she learned that the Purchase College Library had over 100 of these books in their collection. “When I placed all of the books on a table, I was absolutely enchanted by the work.”
Since creating books as art objects became popular during the mid-20th century, the success of these books was measured by their availability to the general public.
“It was a way for an artist to make work that would be accessible to the public, an aesthetic object that someone could hold in their hands,” says Maki. “Artists have since worked to distribute their books to a wider audience in a variety of ways. Some books have been published and marketed by the artists themselves. Other artists have been able to secure publishing contracts with small and large presses.
Ultimately, all of these books have wound up in bookstores and libraries,” continues Maki. Therefore, once the “formal” exhibition concludes, the books will be returned to the shelves in the Library’s Special Collection areas, creating a secondary and continuing exhibition. Visitors are encouraged to see the objects in both phases of the exhibition in order to experience and determine how the nature of their performances change in each environment.
Some of the artists in this exhibition have built conceptual spaces within the pages of their books. The earliest and smallest object in the exhibition, Let’s Make a B for Bennett (1953), was made by members of a small social club dedicated to the appreciation of typography.
In the 1960s, during a period of countercultural ferment, heightened political awareness and industrial innovation, when artists sought to combat the “capitalist gallery system, reject traditional art forms, and celebrate production,” as Maki writes in her essay, artists wanted to make their art available to a larger audience. Eager to disseminate their ideas even more widely and less expensively than most art works, artists turned to reproductive printing technology and printed matter, including books. Many are performance artists themselves and have used the book to document their actions. Ray Johnson, founder of the New York Correspondence School, created The Paper Snake from the mail art he sent to the Fluxus artist Dick Higgins. Some of the artists in this exhibition direct the reader to perform.
Several of the books on view were created by poets, including Ron Padgett whose text was directly influenced by his poetry. Others drew from antiquity, where the written word was frequently recited to communicate with the illiterate. Some performance artists used photography to record their actions, while others collected documents relating to the subject of their performances.
The art historian Joan Lyons has argued that all books are time-based art mediums because time passes as one turns their pages. Some artists’ books depend upon that concept more literally, however, as in the popular example of the flip book. Specific works in this exhibition demonstrate how the concept of time can be exploited. In by Holly Anderson and Janet Zweig, a tiny character on the lower left page, and the adjacent text on the right page, both become mobile once the pages are moved.
“P is for Performance” marks the 35th anniversary of the Neuberger Museum of Art’s student-curated exhibition program. Established in 1978, the program has fostered over 50 dynamic exhibitions — organized by both graduate and undergraduate Purchase College students — culled from the permanent collection of the Neuberger Museum. This unique program highlights the diversity of the Neuberger collection, and engages students in an intellectual discourse surrounding modern and contemporary art.
The exhibit is on display through April 11 on the second floor of the Purchase College Library, while HVAC renovation work inside the museum is completed. (The museum will reopen to the public on Saturday, April 27.)
Janet Zweig and Holly Anderson, Sheherezade: A Flip Book, 1988 (first edition), Pyramid Atlantic, Silver Spring, MD
Phil Zimmermann, High Tension, 1993 (first edition), Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY