The Catalogue Is the Exhibit: Artists’ Books at Memorial University Libraries

Artists’ books announce themselves in extravagant ways. They exist on a continuum between the traditional book (the codex) and book objects that resemble sculptures. There is no general agreement about when artists’ books first appeared; depending on who is asked, it was either in the early decades of the twentieth century or sometime in the 1960s. Nor is there any consensus about what constitutes an artist’s book: it is perhaps a traditional book reimagined, a sculpture, a painter’s portfolio, a coffee table book, a book of photographs, a novelty item, a work of art in book form, or some combination of the above. Could an artist’s book simply be any book composed by an artist (Lauf and Phillpot 75)? Probably not. The only thing commentators agree on is that the genre has proven highly elusive to definition