The Printed Book Week 2 - 22nd April

During my research of the Gutenberg Bible and William Morris and the Kelmscott Presss, I was interested to find that: The Gutenberg Bible is the first surviving book printed from moveable type on a printing press. This was created by Johann Gutenberg around the same time of the introduction of paper - which was less expensive than vellum and available in a higher quantity. Gutenberg (having been trained as a goldsmith) was able to create a metal type that was suitable for printing, was sufficient in quantity and low in cost. There were several versions of the Gutenberg Bible that were printed both on paper and vellum.The Gutenberg Bible used nearly 300 characters of type including upper case, lower case, ligatures, and punctuation marks. Germany is currently home to the most copies of the Gutenberg Bible (12 in total but only 4 of them complete).

WIlliam Morris, an influential author and artist, founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891. He used this press to produce his own works as well as reprints of works he deemed important. Morris designed the press with preserving the art and books relationship in mind. It was during this time that mechanism in art was becoming quite popular. Morris liked tradition. He made his own paper for his handmade books and designed two typefaces based on 15th century fonts. In only seven years the small press produced more than 18,000 copies of more than 50 different works. In my research I managed to find a site that showed different publications from the Kelmscott Press and a fact on each one:

The advances in printing technologies allowed for printing to become a less tedious job and less manual labour. As printing became and easier thing to do, the cost became a lot lower and the quantities printed became a lot higher. The most important changes that printing technologies made to the books appearance was the ability to allow images and text to be closer together. To begin with text and images often had to be on separate pages because previous printing techniques only allowed for printing on one side of the page. As printing progressed the image and text grew closer together allow for the two to be right next or even right on top of each other. With these changes the image and text were able to better compliment each other. Text books with diagrams could better aid learning and children's books with images could spark more interest in smaller children who are learning to read as well as illiterate people.

Holidays Week Two: Essay Research - 15th April

As it gets closer to the due date of my essay and the end of the holidays, I've sent majority of my time researching Artist's Books. I've found some interesting points and came to the conclusion that there is no way of completely defining what an Artist's Book is, but have found that it's easier to say what it is not. This way you can allow for many designs that may contain only a few characteristics of an Artist's Book and allows people to have their own opinions. 
Angela Lorenz wrote a good definition of what an Artist's Book isn't:

"They are not children's books
They are not sketch books.
They are not diaries.
They are not blank books.
They are not exhibition catalogs.
They are not reproductions of a body of an artist's work.
They are not art books(a common misnomer).
However, they may parody or play with any of the above, as well as all other standard categories such as novels, self-help books, non-fiction, cookbooks, operating manuals, manifestos, travel guides, essays, etc. Artist's books function in the same way as contemporary art: as an expression of someone's creativity, often with social commentary, but sometimes in a purely abstract way, in absence of words or recognizable imagery."

For the purpose of the essay though I managed to come up with a definition that is broad enough to cover all possibilities for Artist's Books but still covers the important characteristics that can be included. My definition is: An Artist's Book is a flexible term characterising a collection of works, thoughts, ideas and processes gathered together in a book-like form which is created as a piece of original art rather than a reproduction. The artist strives to explore the medium with which he is working with and pushes the book-form beyond its expectations. The Artist's Book plays with the order and hierarchy found within an everyday book and hides its meaning within its folds without losing it entirely, allowing an audience to explore, or question. The artist has most control of all the factors of an Artist's Book including the form, text, imagery, publication and distribution. This allows for the book itself to be a work of art and may be published as small editions or as a one and only. 

I found that the most interesting part of this essay's topic was the constant debate on many factors of the term 'Artist's Book'. It included everything from what classify's as an Artist's Book?, to Where should the apostrophe in Artist's be? There was much criticism related to Artist's Books and their place in the contemporary art world and also with who was allowed to create them. Researcher and Book Artist Sarah Bodman believes that Artist's Books are an important part of the contemporary art world. And even if they are never as widely noticed as a painting or sculpture may be, it simply means that an artist or audience will be able to engage in the books on a more personal level. Angela Lorenz seems to agree saying that Artist's Books are respected but galleries haven't accepted them as much because they have a fear of not being able to sell them. She believes that anyone can make Artist's books whether they are an artist, a writer or a philosopher compared to author Clive Phillpot who states that an Artist's Book is "a book where the artist is the author". But who decides who is an artist or not?  In 'Artist's Books: The Book as a work of Art, 1963-1995' (1995) by Stephen Bury (Librarian and Author), Bury also argues that no matter how inspirational these works are, they cannot be artist's books because they were not made by artists. So we can see how there would often be debates on the terminology used for artist's books. Lorenz hopes that artists making Artist's Books will be able to ignore criticism and keep creating and freely exploring.

I think that there will always be debates on these factors due to everyone's different interpretations (which I talked about in my last post). And with the growth in technology bringing the ability to explore books even more and push the book form to its extremities, will come more topics for debate. Can/Will Artist's Books become a digital/online medium? Personally I think no. The sensation of holding and exploring an Artist's Book personally is one of the most important parts of the books design.

Different Interpretations - End of Week One Holidays - 14th April

During my research for my essay I found myself getting quite frustrated with trying to come up with a definition for Artist's Books that would cover all the necessary points. It sparked a conversation with my mum as I tried to explain to her what an Artist's Book is (thinking that actually voicing my opinion to someone else may help me realise that I could describe one). I told her that finding the right definition for this has been as hard as finding a correct way of defining Art or What a Book is.

She said to me that questions like that, that are so subjective will never be easy to answer due to everyone's differing interpretations. She then gave me a great example of this. She said:
"You could fill a classroom with people and give them coloured pencils and paper, you could then give them instructions of what to draw on that paper eg. draw a square in the top corner, draw a triangle overlapping the square etc. You can almost guarantee that no drawing will be the same." 

Don't all of these pictures have a square in the top corner with a triangle overlapping? But they aren't all the same. Even though the full room could be given the same set of instructions, everyone interpretates them differently. Much in the same way that people have different opinions of what a book is, or what art is, or what an artist's book is. I think that even if there was a precise definition for what any of these are, people would still find holes and see things differently all based on how they interperate it.

Holidays Week One - Essay

During the non-teaching period, my focus has been to plan and begin writing my essay for assessment item two. I have chosen to do the topic on Artist's Books.

What is an artist's book? What differentiates an artist's book from a sketch book or visual journal? 

Your response must demonstrate an awareness of the debate of this topic among book artists and scholars. You will need to look at texts by writers such as Johanna Drucker, Clive Phillpot, Cathy Courtney, or Sarah Bodman. In the end you should draw some conclusions of your own, with reference to specific examples of artist's books.

I've chosen to do this topic in order to expand my knowledge on artist's books, explore different ideas on what can be classified as an artist's books and gain a stronger personal idea and definition of my own.

In order to do this essay I have written points to research and expand on and also to help me with the structure of the essay.

These are the points to be considered;

- A brief history on Artist's Books 

• What are they?
• How they are made
• Types?
• Author/Artist involvement
• When are they made and why?
• What is their purpose - audience?

FIND EXAMPES

- Difference between livre d'artiste and an artists book - the artists book movement

- Difference between artist's book and visual journal - identifying parts

- Artists views on Artist's Books

- Scholars views?

- William Blake - first artist's book?

- Johanna Drucker vs. Phillpot, Courtney or Bodman

- Artist's Books and the 20thC

- My conclusion and personal definition - argue case, use specific examples

Topic 3: The Printed Book; Brief History and Advantages and Disadvantages - 1st April

As books became more popular it was hard to meet the demand by hand production. This meant that an alternative method had to be found, which bought the introduction of printing.
The earliest known printed book was printed in China. Other methods of printing were evidently present in China before Europe e.g. small stamps for seals. However, there is also evidence of similar printing methods dating back to 2270 BC. This included clay tablets and amulets. No ink was used in these instances, the stamp was pushed into the soft material, but the same method was present.
It wasn't just the printing method that needed an update, but the printable material as well. Vellum, which was used in some early printed books, was too expensive for mass production. Paper making was a cheaper method and helped aid the growth of printing technology. Even ink had to be further developed in order to allow it to stick to metal type.

I was interested to find that the method of carving the woodblock for printing is actually called xylography. The woodblock print was created by carving away (along the wood grain) any parts of the woodblock that were not part of the text or image. The raised surface was inked and pressed firmly and evenly onto paper, material or in early printing vellum. The use of woodblock printing was not only for paper printing and had also been used to make patterns on textiles. The method was quite similar to using a stamp. When used for colour printing, different blocks had to be used for different colours. Block printing was even the standard method for producing wallpapers!
There were 3 different ways of printing with woodblocks:

• Stamping - hand pressing the block to paper
• Rubbing - block face up with paper on top which is then rubbed with a hard pad
• Press Printing - device to apply pressure through a rolling bed; originally a screw press and developed after into the steam powered rotary press

Jikji, a Korean Buddhist document, printed in 1377, is the world's oldest existing book that was printed with movable type. Movable type printing used 3 different materials during its development; ceramic (fragile) wood (grainy) and metal (durable).

The type was made by carving the letters in to wood, this was then pressed in to clay to form a mould. These moulds were then filled with the liquid metal. Once set they were filed and scraped of any imperfections and ready to be used for printing.To print with movable type, a metal frame was used to hold metal characters in place. When the frame was full it formed a full page of type. The metal characters could be changed to form different sentences and paragraphs for different pages or documents. Ink is applied and pressed to paper at high pressures.

Johannes Gutenberg is famously known as the first to invent a metal movable type printer in Europe, known as the printing press. However, as said above with Jikji, movable type printing had already began in Asian countries. 

There were some noticeable advantages and disadvantages with both wood block and movable type printing.

Wood Block:

Advantages

• Introduction of paper was a lot cheaper than vellum
• Great for mass production
• Cheaper than metals
• Could be combined with movable type

Disadvantages

• Can take a long time to carve, hours or even days
• Difficult to carve small details

Movable Type:

Advantages 

• Even better for quick mass production
• More durable than wood
• Higher quality and relatively low priced
• Mistakes could be fixed by changing the wrong characters - wood was permanent errors
• Text in frames could be altered or updated for changes made to documents

Disadvantages

• For the Chinese it was easier to keep woodblocks due to their numerous amounts of characters 

Topic 2 - Illuminated Manuscripts and Art - 25th March

The images found in illuminated manuscripts included; illustrations (referred to as miniatures) which could be small within the text or full paged, ornate initial letters, borders and margin decorations. 

The images in illuminated manuscripts were often used to; highlight something relevant in the text, spark an interest in illiterate readers, as an act of worship in gospel books, to aid scientific and medical books, to mark status, to indicate the start of of a chapter, paragraph or sentence, or simply as a decorative element.

I believe that in order to decide whether or not these decorations are classed as art, art has to first be defined.
Art to me is an expression or representation of something that comes from an artist, whether it be an idea, emotion, belief etc. I believe that art can be created in any form as long as it pleases, causes an audience to question, or sparks an emotion - basically has some kind of effect on an audience. 
I think that even though something may not be intended to be viewed as art, it can still be appreciated from an art perspective. 

After coming up with my own definition I decided to compare it with the dictionary definition.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines art as; skill acquired by experience, study, or observation,the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects
It's a very broad definition. I think my definition better defines art as art rather than a profession.

As for Illuminated Manuscripts, I think that they can be classified as art. The designs and illustrations within the manuscripts fit within my definition of what art is. The fact that we can look at how these books were made and feel for the creators, and the time took to make them as well as look at decorations and feel pleased with what we see, definitely means that it has an effect on us.

So in believing that illuminated manuscripts are works of art, it then needs to be decided who is the artist? and who is responsible for the finished product?
There are many people involved in the making of the illuminated manuscripts but i think that the actual artists of the final product are the scribes and the illuminators. I think that without them the manuscripts would just be empty books. Even though the artworks or their placing were not decided by the illuminator, and the illustrations were just copies, I still think that the skill involved in creating the illustrations makes the illuminator worthy of being called an artist.