INTRODUCTION

rtists’ books are generally associated with images , supported by words and texts, that illustrate or reinforce an idea. However, some artists use only text, characters and typographic devices to communicate their message.

On show are different genres of artists’ books that use text without images to illustrate their ideas. Included are examples of concrete po etry that subvert their verbalization through contrived typographical structures; poetry that uses typographic devices to give precise direction on how it is to be read aloud; seminal Futurist typography books that were created as artworks; books that show excellent examples of hand lettering and printmaking techniques, and many other books that explore typographic and textual conventions.

Beyond Words challenges the viewer to read into and find purpose in the book artists’ choice of typographical devices; to be aware of gaps in and between words; notice the critical placement of text and the empty spaces on the page; be mindful of the artists’ choice of font size and style, and the materials and structures they use in their books.

COVER IMAGE

Composition (Common Threads. Volume 117)
Candace Hicks
Hand embroidered fabric
Unique
2019

Common Threads, a series of hand embroidered unique canvas books which copy the form and design of dime store 'composition' books. The books themselves, self consciously hand made objects, are a record of coincidental occurrences generally gleaned from reading or mundan e events. The use of embroidery thread allows for the production of the text and image with the same mark and material, to make the text, image and substance of the book inseparable. Hicks’ choice of the book as a principle medium is due to the phenomenon of the book as authoritative. Books provide an arena in which fiction can be accepted as fact and observations can take on a mythic narrative quality. Her interest in books also stems from their inhe rent unity of text and image, which lends books continued relevance as a transmedia hybrid.

What is a text?

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that's all” (Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland

Intertextuality implies that every text is from the outset under the jurisdiction of other discourses which impose a universe on it” (Julia Kristeva cited in Culler 1981:105).

“It is language which speaks, not the author; to write is ... to reach the point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not ‘me’” (Roland Barthes 1977:143).

“When writers write they are also written. To communicate we must utilize existing concepts and conventions. Consequently, whilst our intention to communicate and what we intend to communicate are both important to us as individuals, meaning cannot be reduced to authorial 'intention'” (Daniel Chandler 2021:[np]).

“Transtextuality is all that sets the text in relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts ... and it covers all aspects of a particular text" ( Gérard Genette 1992:83 84).

“A text is ... a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations ... The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them” (Roland Barthes 1977:146).

“Each translation is, of course, a reauthoring. No 'neutral' translation is possible, since languages involve different value systems … every reading is always a rewriting” (Chandler on Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique Générale. 2021:[np]).

“Texts come before us as the always already read; we apprehend them through the sedimented layers of previous interpretations, or if the text is brand new through the sedimented reading habits and categories developed by those inherited interpretive traditions” (Fredric Jameson cited in Rodowick 1994:286).

“The frontiers of a book are never clear cut: beyond the title, the first lines and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network . ... The book is not simply th e object that one holds in one's hands . ... Its unity is variable and relative” (Michel Foucault 1974:23).

It is this relative variability of texts in the hands of the artist that are under consideration and examination in this exhibition. Selected here are artist’s books that consist only of texts, metatexts and non texts. Together, these books help unpack their intertextualities and underscore what Gérard Genette terms a text’s ‘transtextuality’: its relationship with other texts and the meanings these texts produce.