Amazon.com Review
The first full-length analysis of the development of artists' books as a 20th-century art form, this book explores more than 200 titles: their structure, form, and conceptualization. In this detailed examination of the works of many well-known book artists and publishers, such as William Blake, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst, Johanna Drucker discusses the poetics of the book, the book as a metaphor, and books as narrative and non-narrative sequences, as in Ernst's surreal collage books. Covering the historical, theoretical, sociological, and technical aspects of the artist's book, Drucker, a printer, writer, and scholar who has been making artist's books since 1972, presents a comprehensive study of the medium within every significant modern art movement, from early 20th-century avant-garde, dadaism, and surrealism to the present.