Contemporary artists and the art of the book

Abstract

Sarah Bodman has been invited to give the lecture Contemporary Artists and the Art of the Book as part of the 2012 University of Bristol Art Lectures. This series of lecutres looks at the art of the book, from the physical beauty that books can convey in the illuminated manuscript, the natural history publication and the work of William Morris, through the commercial beauty of Penguin covers, to graphic novels and how artists work with books today. This series has been organised by a small working group, led by Andrew Kelly, founder and director of the Bristol Festival of Ideas. It is presented in association with the festival. The artist's book has emerged over the years from the rich tradition of the French 'livre d’artiste’ and livre de luxe' towards more sociable interaction with a public audience. From the 1960s - late1980, artists began to publish their own works of art in affordable book formats using offset-lithography, photocopy or screenprint. It was this trend that resulted in the contemporary artist's book often being referred to as a 'democratic multiple', the idea being that anyone could afford to buy artwork by an artist. More recently artists have been utilising developments in technology, from desktop publishing in the 1990s to publish-on-demand (POD) and