In one respects this is a flush time for the artist work world.

In one respects this is a flush time for the artist work world. Despite continuing shortages of artist main division distributors, bookstores and outlets for serious criticism, there are more titles in print than at any time before and more colleges and universities offering courses and extents in the production, history and criticism of the form. sum of two units major museum exhibitions devoted to the genre are now touring the home "Die Bucher der Kunstler: Artists' works from 1920-1990," an historical view (weighted toward work produced since the 1950s) of artists' volumes published in Germany, has been traveling extensively in Europe since 1994 and has begun the North American portion of its itinerary. "Artist/Author: Contemporary Artists' Books" a traveling exhibition curated according to Cornelia Lauf and Clive Phillpot for the American Federation of the Arts (AFA), expanded in February 1998 and focuses upon an international array of publications issued since 1980

"Die Bucher der Kunstler" curated by the agency of Michael Glasmeier for the Institut for Auslandsbeziehungen, is the larger exhibit, the two in terms of artists (more than 150) titles (651) and in the drift of its treatment of the bring under rule Glasmeier describes his project as "an exhibition in ten chapters," and indeed, the installation is visually correlated to the chapter formation of its catalog, with 10 clusters of densely packed display cases: five thematic groupings - Fluxus and Happenings; Researchers and Collectors; Authors and Theorists; Painters and Drawers; and Documentors and Xerox artists - and five from the principally influential publishing houses of artists' main division s in Germany - Edition Hansjorg Mayer, Edition Hundertmark, Rainer Verlag, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig and Wiens Verlag.

All of the greatest in quantity important German book artists appear in the exhibition. The extraordinarily prolific Dieter Roth is describeed by all 25 volumes of his Gesammelte Werke (1971-85) along with more than 50 of his other publications. There are 19 works by Martin Kippenberger, 11 by dint of Jan Voss, nine by Hans-Peter Feldmann and eight by means of Hanne Darboven, among others. Since the exhibit is relate toed with artists' publication activity in Germany rather than citizenship, there is an ample selection of works from artists from elsewhere, including as it is luminaries as Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and many of the Fluxus artists. A Humument (1982) by dint of English artist Tom Phillips, perhaps the best-selling artist part of all time, is included because London-based Thames & Hudson issued the main division with the permission of Phillips's German publisher, Edition Hansjorg Mayer.

The catalog, with a shield by Voss, includes Glasmeier's flowing and full of feeling topical essay "The Impossible Library." Glasmeier casts the genre in the shadow of Gustave Flaubert's desire for "a work about nothing, a book with no external connection that is carried by way of the internal force of its concede style, just like the world is held aloft without supports . ." The curator proposes an unadorned description of the artist work as "the result of what artists do with, about, upon for, or against books," acknowledging the tautological aspect of this characterization while insisting immediately after its open-endedness. The range of publications in "Die Bucher der Kunstler" increases from high-budget offset editions to works in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as Voss's Doc-u-ment (1993), a circumscribe collated book comprised of 25 lids from various forms of cartons and boxe (including laundry cleansing pizza and women's shoes).

Although the catalog dutifully represents every item in the exhibit, without any multiple page spreads readers do not procure any sense of the narrative or following among the multitudes of contortions nor do viewers of the exhibition as the works are shown in display cases. Fortunately a certain 300 items included in the exhibition are available for browsing in an accompanying reading scope an extraordinary feature of "Die Bucher der Kunstler" At the Krannert the readers' copies were continuationed by dozens of books donated to the museum according to American artists' book publishers and distribution agencies participating in a museum-sponsored artists' main division fair in November.

"Artist/Author," forward the other hand, devotes a great deal of catalog space to an expansive definition of the form while exhibiting a nothing else but 130 objects and slide projections of book-related installations, including 22 historical volumes presented under the heading: "Pre-1980 artists' main division s from the Franklin Furnace Artist main division Collection, the Museum of recent Art, New York."

The exhibit itself and the accompanying catalog are handsome enough. Richard Merkle's A-frame traveling exhibition furniture allows for easy access to all the works on display except the Franklin Furnace Collection. The catalog, designed by means of artist Renee Green, possesses many fine graphic details including, at intervals, Green's confess image/text work. In the acknowledgments, AFA Director Serena Rattazzi notes that "Artist/Author" is the organization's first exhibit businessed with "books as an art form" and describes the two the furnishings and publication as "curatorial devices [that] pursue from the central concept present forward by the guest curators that a main division conceived by an artist is not simply an artwork, but one of equal significance to works execut in more conventional mediums." It is for what reason this egalitarian ideal figures in the selection of works that ensues in a strangely skewed view of the field.