To start things off, I just want to critically analyze Susan Viguers’ introduction to her own dissections of other artist books. I’m mainly doing this to help myself understand what she’s really getting at, to simplify her instructions, and to help me relate these ideas to my own work. So after analyzing her intro, I’m going to discuss why I think it’s important to consider perspectives on artist books, followed by a dissection of my own artist book under these ‘loose perspective rules.’
Thesis: “…my primary motivation for this article is my interest in
developing and articulating a lens that can be useful in
approaching other works as well. Indeed, I would suggest that
such a lens could contribute to understanding the nature of
the accomplishment of many artists’ books”
Paragraph #2
Introduces narrative for books.
Good or bad, undecided. But most books have a narrative quality by default.
Paragraph #3
Codes of belief for narrative as focus, not academic structure of narrative.
Paragraph #4
Defines narrative more. Baseball diamond. Home base looks at all other bases. References author that slips from one perspective to another, similar to description being from home base looking out onto 1st 2nd and 3rd, but instead first base is generally the focus, but in context, 1st 2nd and 3rd are all described the same way. Could be described better oops.
Paragraph #5
Artist bookmaker plays not only descriptive game, but also creates description. The artist presents, so concepts and ideas need to pass through perspective of presenter, so ideas in book are personal perspective focused.
Viguers, off the bat, discusses the focus for her studies. She introduces the idea that it’s important to understand perspective in artist books, and does so in a really gentle way. I like that she’s not writing this in an essay form at all, and instead chooses to let the viewer understand that she’s just presenting an idea, rather than a rule. I believe that this is important because, to begin with, artist books are incredibly visual, and from my perspective, they parallel 2d visual art very much. An artist book, in my opinion, is designed to be dissected from form, to content, and then onto interpretation of these two things.
She then introduces narrative as a focus for dissection/interpretation. As I was saying before, she’s very passive in introducing the idea. “Not every artist’s book is a narrative, but perhaps no art medium, except film and video, has as much affinity to
Storytelling.” BUT, “Even books that aren’t explicit narratives frequently have narrative elements and thus could also be approached using narrative tools.” So, I think she is trying to tell us that it’s not imperative that we create an artist book with a narrative structure, but because of formal elements and subject matter, it will most inevitably end up having some sort of narrative in place. I definitely agree with this because if you think about it, a book is a page by page structure, so it will most definitely describe time, and if not time, it will describe space. And in visual arts, these two things almost always describe a narrative.
The next things she discusses is not that important to dissect, but for the sake of examination, why not? Also, I think it shows a character trait in her that is very interesting. She describes narrative as less of an academic structure, but more of something that we feel, or something that describes perspective. Like, if you’re reading a novel, and it switches from 3rd person to 1st person, it’s a formal element to interpret. But with an artist book, a perspective can be visual and not an element that is read. This idea is very similar to my book, in that switching from the perspective of industry in war (canvas cover, battle instructions, map structures) to a more humanistic way of drawing (loose, gesture, mixed with instructions that contradict the humanistic element), it is a perspective switch, and it’s one that lends to the structure of the book. And this idea is actually what defines the book as a discussion.
So I’m getting a little unorganized here, but I’d like to talk about Viguers’ point on perspective. She states, “Narrative, as I am defining it, is a construction of connected events caused or experienced by actors presented through a point of view.” And my immediate visual association looks a lot like this:
So, I used this diagram of a baseball diamond because I think that it describes perspective very well. If you place yourself as a viewer at home base, you will then look at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd from an individual perspective. Imagine home base talking to you, gossiping about all of the other bases. Then, imagine home base gets lost, and your left with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd base, and all you can do is look at all of their experiences together, and/or their interactions from 1st base’s viewpoint. This is my interpretation of Viguers’ description of perspective in narrative. I think this is good because it explains that it is possible to change perspective in an artist book, and that it’s almost import to do so, so that the book maintains a quality of endlessness. It cycles through perspective, and by doing so, it’s not so definitive and literal.
So that last section to analyze here is kind of my favorite bit of her writing. She explains that “Central to that complexity is the idea of the narrator as not only a speaker, but also a presenter.” I think is definitely super important to understand while creating an artist book. I don’t believe that it’s something that needs to be used as a tool because it’s actually impossible not to be, but it’s just something that should be understand while creating your book. What she’s saying is that, yes you are a speaker, yes you are explaining this idea, but because you are the presenter, you need to understand that we are reading your book that is written ultimately from your perspective. One will create a book, and it might just be very much fact based, but it’s still the one creating the book that decides what facts we see, they decide what visuals we are to interpret. They also decide the forms to use. The artist/author will decide every element of the book. I tried to use this idea for my own book as a perspective. With our assignment, we were given the loose guideline to use three perspectives, and I chose my own interpretation of the two pre-juxtaposing ideas (industrial/human) to add another element to the discussion.
I really enjoyed Viguers’ interpreting methods for artists books. I like that these are guidelines to use for interpretation, but they’re also very loose guidelines, and ones that give you a lot of room to play with ideas. Having a lot of room to work in artist books is a great idea, but it’s also good to have a little bit of structure, or at least something to help make points clearly.
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