Scope and Contents

This is a very well illustrated catalogue of exhibition announcements and posters. Descriptions are often referenced to the Sackner Archive catalogue of 1984. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents In an introductory essay, Stephen Bann writes that "artists like Willem Boshoff and Frederic Bruly Bouabre clearly demonstrate the fertility of language-based investigations on African soil: Boshoff prepared for his work with dictionaries by lengthy exercises in concrete poetry." Okwui Enwezor contributes an essay "Where, What, Who, When: A Few Notes on "African" Conceptualism." Bann adds that "Willem Boshoff's conceptual practice is an elaborate effort dedicated to the study of ignorance, that is, pushing to the point of dissolution the idea that the world is knowable. Imprisoned by South African authorities for his refusal to serve in the military (the micrographic work, Kleinpen I, was produced in prison as a way to maintain mental equilibrium)... Boshoff finds in obscure and obsolete words a way to construct a map that denies sight but empowers knowledge...His study of linguistics and Wittgensteinian philosophy led him to explore other ways of rendering words into pulsating...

Scope and Contents Clive Phillpot asked 23 collectors of artist books in addition to himself to select mass produced, inexpensive artist books from 1950 onward to the present for this exhibition. He also asked each to write an essay explaining his choices. Each of the collectors is listed under contributors. Books by Dieter Roth, Tom Phillips and Ulises Carrion were the most popular cited by the collectors. Sackner's essay follows. When I received the request from Clive Phillpot to provide a list of artists' books - inexpensive books authored by artists that utilize mass-production printing technology - with examples from 1950 to date, I thought that the task would be simple. I would search my database under the classification Artist Book and be finished in a few hours. Here I am one week later writing the essay on the artists' books that I selected from our collection. This is because our database has a single entry for Artist Books that includes one of a kind to press runs of thousands. I had no...

Scope and Contents Clive Phillpot asked 23 collectors of artist books in addition to himself to select mass produced, inexpensive artists' books from 1950 onward to the present for this exhibition. He also asked each to write an essay explaining his choices. Each of the collectors is listed under contributors. Books by Dieter Roth, Tom Phillips and Ulises Carrion were the most popular cited by the collectors. Sackner's essay follows. When I received the request from Clive Phillpot to provide a list of artists' books - inexpensive books authored by artists that utilize mass-production printing technology - with examples from 1950 to date, I thought that the task would be simple. I would search my database under the classification Artist Book and be finished in a few hours. Here I am one week later writing the essay on the artists' books that I selected from our collection. This is because our database has a single entry for artists' books that includes one of a kind to press runs of thousands. I had...