Texturing artist’s book discourse

Abstract

This paper reaffirms the critical roles that artists book practice and haptic aesthetics play in advancing artists book discourse to the level of a critical field.

In her 1965 essay ‘Tactile Sensibility’, Anni Albers added her voice to the critique of the entrenched ocularcentrism within the West, specifically in relation to the reception and evaluation of works of art. Albers broke into three parts the problem of an increasing insensitivity to touch, the third of which is the loss of tactile sensibilities among artists and the public. Albers then called for artists to engage the senses of touch in their studio practice that would necessitate new vocabulary for the discourse. Albers’s call remains compelling, and dovetails seamlessly with a corresponding call for critical vocabulary within discourse engaging artists books. As a creative field, artists books still lack critical recognition despite the growing number of internationally acclaimed works of art realised through the book. This concern is identified by leading figures within the discourse, such as Lucy Lippard in 1985 and Johanna Drucker in 2005. Responding to Albers’s call, this paper backgrounds and documents studio research that articulately employs tactile sensibilities through the mediums of papermaking and the book. A key starting point for the research is a derivative of Georges Didi-Huberman’s ‘ressemblance par contact’—that is, representation by touch.