An Exhibition built on the book as object

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/books/books-as-art-objects-reading-is-optional.html

Books as Art Objects (Reading Is Optional)

By MICHAEL FRANK

Published: January 2, 2004 

'Ninety From the Nineties: A Decade of Printing'' is an exhibition built around a conundrum that lies at the center of most surveys of the book as object. The tension centers on purpose: books, which we are accustomed to thinking of as containers -- and conveyers -- of information, are placed in a context in which form is valued over content. Language is less important than the type that impresses it on the page. The paper counts for more than the story told on it. The illustrations and the binding might be the story. Words? Who needs 'em?

O.K., that may be extreme, though this cavalier -- or perhaps more accurately, cheeky -- attitude does seem present in some of the more inventive letterpress books on display at the New York Public Library, where Virginia Bartow has put together an exhibition that has a long tradition there. (Previous surveys considered the 1960's, 70's and 80's.)

Ms. Bartow herself seemed aware of the puzzle at hand. Asked what drove her as she winnowed down to 90 the more than 4,000 letterpress books the library acquired in the decade in which they were made, she replied with a question that the show obviously hopes to answer in the affirmative: ''Can books, without much explanation, without being read even, say something?''

Before this is sorted out, it's probably worth understanding the terms of the show. The library has a policy of buying books made by American and European presses that follow in the tradition of the private-press movement, set in motion by William Morris and the Kelmscott Press in London at the end of the 19th century.

In an increasingly industrialized world, Morris's goal was to reintroduce dedicated craftsmanship into the printing and binding of books. Using fine paper, typefaces based on calligraphic letter forms, decorative illustrations and aesthetic bindings, Morris sought to ''recapture the beauty and harmony of an earlier age,'' as Ms. Bartow puts it in her pamphlet accompanying the show.

A hundred years later his followers draw on the same vocabulary, though naturally many of them seek to deploy it to different ends. Morris's models were medieval manuscripts and early printed books; his descendants are not always so backward-gazing. Frequently the only thing they have in common with their progenitor is the most basic rule Ms. Bartow applied to the books she collected for the library: that they be the result of a relief-printing process, in which a surface has been inked and pressed to paper. This alone links them to Gutenberg; everything else is up for grabs.