Abstract_16.01.2013

This project aims at understanding the evolution of the artists’ book since its emergence around the 1960’s. Artists started to create them in order to distribute their vision to a mass public in an affordable way. The book is not just showing art but is an art form itself. Interviews of artists, independent publishing houses and artists’ books collectors had shown that today publications are proliferating. Technology has evolved and so has its accessibility. For the past few years, Art book fairs, workshops, and presentations were popping everywhere. Today, they occur to discuss about the economy and the futur of independent publishing. Did the peak of independent publishing already occur or is it happening today?  How are the publications going to evolve?  The answers to these questions differ according to points of view. But what everybody agrees on, is that printing technology and its accessibility gave the chance to independent publishing to arise.