The Printing Museum closed in its old, very cramped location last year and moved to a new building in Midtown. It has just reopened, and they are celebrating their new space with an interesting exhibit, Book Arts of Houston, curated by Erica Reed Lee. I’ve never thought very hard about book arts until I saw this exhibit and discussed it with Lee. To me, a book is primarily a vehicle for what it contains—a novel, poems, graphics, or prose of some other sort. While I can appreciate a beautifully-made book as the product of craftsmanship that has been honed by book-makers for over a millennium, a book’s contents still strike me as the reason that book exists. Given that I’ve read dozens of books electronically, as well as listening to a few via audiobooks, my attachment to printed paper books is slight, but it is there. When I look at the packed bookshelves in my apartment, not to mention the piles of books laying around and boxes of comics, magazines and zines, I feel pleasure. Indeed a problem for artlovers/book lovers like myself is that bookshelves take up wall space that I could use to hang pictures.
But starting in the 20th century, artists began producing books as unique artworks or as limited editions. The physical book was the artwork. In order to create such an object, an artist has to think of a book as a physical object. As someone who worked in book publishing for years, I think of the parts of a book as title page, small title, indicia, forward, afterward, index, etc. In short, I tend to think in terms of content. But someone physically manufacturing a book has to think about signatures (how the pages in a book are gathered), binding (case binding, Coptic binding, perfect binding, saddle stitch, etc.), and so forth.
All of this is to lead into the contents of Book Arts of Houston. These are small artworks, so the entire exhibit is in one room. Some books are on the wall and some are in vitrines. Unlike most gallery shows, some of these books are meant to be handled by viewers. The publications held against the wall with a black band can be flipped through, as if one were browsing in a book store. All the other items on display should be treated just as one typically treats objects in a museum—look, but don’t touch. That was frustrating in a few cases, as in the ten Bayou Books—displayed as a pile of boxes.
I was extremely curious about what was contained in each box. Lee told me that the Hirsch library at the MHAH has a complete set of Bayou Books that patrons can open and look at. The books were originally produced to accompany Perspectives exhibits at the CAMH from 1991 to 1993. Among these ten books were several by Houston-based artists, including the late Bert Long and Robin Utterback, as well as a book by Manual (the collaborative art of Suzanne Bloom and Ed Hill). But without knowing what is in their boxes, it’s hard to judge them as books or as artworks.
Some of the works on display are zines. Zines are something I have long experience with—I made my first zines in 1975 while I was in junior high. But discussing zines with Lee gave me an interesting perspective. I think of the heyday of zines was the 1980s and 90s—before the internet came along. They acted as very specialized magazines at that point. Let’s say I was a young punk rock fan and I had just seen Culturcide at the Axiom (I have no idea if Culturcide ever played at the Axiom, but for the purpose of this illustration, let’s pretend that they did). I’m excited and want to let everyone else know how great it was, so I produce a zine. In short, my punk zine is like a magazine—it has news and criticism. Sure, my modest zine, produced at my local Kinkos, is qualitatively different from a slick, professional magazine like Rolling Stone, but it occupies a similar niche—providing info of interest to fellow members of your subculturw; in short, it’s for fellow fans.
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