A Century of Artists Books

This splendid celebration of the illustrated book as an art form begins with remarkable works produced in France by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin at the end of the 19th century, and traces the international development of the modern illustrated book to the last decade of the 20th century. Major artists of the modern movement, among them Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, turned to the "illumination" of poems, classical literature, and their own writings to make books that are now collectors' objects, luxuriously produced. Such limited editions have continued to be produced alongside other types of artists' books aimed at a much larger audience. The more available artists' books have served a different purpose, often expressing aesthetic and political principles, in the hands of such artists as Kasimir Malevich, Marcel Duchamp, Ed Ruscha, Joseph Beuys, and Barbara Kruger. Accompanying texts consider the historical background, complex relationships between artists and book manufacturers, technical constraints, and recent changes.

Kasimir Malevich was born in Kiev, Russia in 1878, the eldest of 14 children, four of whom died in childbirth. He claims to have begun exhibiting his work in 1898, but 1905 is his first exhibition on record, a joint show of Moscow and Kursk artists. In 1915 he exhibited his first Suprematist paintings at the 0.10 Last Futurist Exhibition, and continued to produce Suprematist works and manifestos well into the next decade. He held posts at the Vitebsk School of Art, the State Institute of Artistic Culture in Leningrad, the State Institute of the History of the Arts, and the Kiev Institute of Art, and was one of the founders and leaders of UNOVIS. Malevich died in 1935; the site of his ashes is marked by a white cube and a black square.

Henri Matisse was born in 1869 and grew up in northern France, near Belgium. As a young man he studied law and worked in the courts until, convalescing after appendicitis, he began to paint. His work became some of the most important art made in the twentieth century. It is intensely composed and colored; he was the leader of the Fauvists and soon an acknowledged leader across the arts. His career was powerful and enduring by any standard, and 50 years after death in 1954, his work continues to rise in value. In 2003, The Museum of Modern Art organized 'Matisse Picasso,' a show setting the two artists' work side by side, and in 2005 Matisses' son's collection of his work appeared at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"EugEne Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848. He lived in Peru as a young child, and then in OrlEans. After a few years as a sailor, during which he traveled around the world, he started to work as a brokeris agent in Paris. His first known drawings are dated soon thereafter. In 1873, Gauguin married a Dane, Mette Sophie Gad, who gave birth to his five children. In 1874, Gauguin met Pissaro and other Impressionists, and over the next few years, debuted at the Salon and participated in Impressionist exhibitions. In 1883, Gauguin quit the stock exchange, and later left his family to live in Brittany, where he executed some of his most expressive works. His first trip to Tahiti was in 1891, and he returned a few years later, in search of the primitive and the savage, not to mention the colorful, staying almost up until the time of his death in 1903."

Riva Castleman is the former Chief Curator of the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.