The codex, compared with computers, is undeniably limited in its capacity to store, perpetuate, generate and recreate information, I accept these boundaries – Doug Beube
We can call Beube the Constant Gardner of the book. for three decades he has fed and watered the book in all of its metaphorical and material aspects -Betty Bright
Life, 2004
For over 30 years now Doug Beube has cut, folded and gouged his way through life. He along with Richard Minsky are two of the godfathers of contemporary bookworks.
With Doug Beube Breaking the Codex: Bookwork, Collage and Mixed Media we now have a fitting tribute to the man and his work.
Deconstructing Picasso, 1994
The book is edited by Marian Cohn with essays from a number of heavyweights in the world of book arts including Betty Bright, Judith Hoffberg, Sara Reisman among others.
The monograph is a bookwork itself:
On the dust jacket encircling the eyes of the collage is a perforation, if you peel away that section the lozenge shape becomes a bookmark. Glimpsed beneath the elongated tear, the artwork below on the hardcover is a similar veiled image, seen together it alludes to a burka.
His work is smart, political and demands engagement. The beauty and intensity of each piece grows with prolonged viewing. He makes sense.
Vest of Knowledge, 2008
“Knowledge is a kind of investiture. Sixty-four altered volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica become a new kind of loaded but undetonated World Book.”
The Portable Knowledge of Obsolescence, 2002
Masked Words, 2011
Revolutions, 1992
X-plosions, 1992
“The life threatening implication of reading or touching the altered book could explode into the surrounding area leaving its indelible mark of shattered black letters, broken phrases and tattered pages”