Joseph Kosuth. On the Phenomenon of the Library, 2006The Artist's Library, currently on view at the Centre international d'art et du paysage de l'ile de Vassiviere, features work by 9 contemporary artists whose work centers around the book."The Artist’s Library represents a ‘Library of Babel’ like that born in the visionary mind of the great Argentinean writer J. L. Borges. Artists and spectators become its librarians"This seminal exhibition is curated by Carrie Pilto and consumes all of the Aldo Rossi designed building. The bookshop, the theater, the reading room, the cafe have all become part of the "library."The artists featured...
Book Art: The Coupland 50 and the Hirschhorn 37
Douglas Coupland is as much of a visual artist as he is a writer. With his book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture Coupland engraved his name on popular culture by tagging the post baby-boomer generation. Books; however, are more than words for Coupland.Coupland's latest book piece is titled Fifty Books I Have Read More than Once. Coupland takes the covers from the 50 books he has read more than once and glues them to the ends of wooden blocks, the length of which is determined by the books importance to Coupland. The installation is on view at the...
Where He Called From: Raymond Carver’s Landscape
I am not sure what's in the water of these little towns on the Olympic Peninsula near Seattle but genius sure gets cultivated. The small town of Aberdeen on the south end of the peninsula was where Kurt Cobain was born and raised. His band Nirvana turned the music industry upside down. Raymond Carver's life in Port Angeles , on the north end of the peninsula, provided the fodder for his short stories which revolutionized the genre. Granted the lives of both these men were packed with pain and suffering but one cannot discount the landscape as an influence.Bill Booth...
The Book That Didn’t Get Built
It would have been something to behold. In 2004 Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn was invited to create a piece for the Walker Art Center 'Walker Without Walls' series.His idea: To build a 50 foot replica of the book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.Inside the giant book there would be a library of philosophy books, room for all the things necessary to print a daily newspaper, and a meeting and exhibition space. Outside there would be a cafe.The installation was tentatively titled The Road-Side Giant Book Project and was scheduled to...