Autorité Bibliothèque. Artist's book

It is not necessary to read all eight volumes of "1001 Nights". It is enough to open the first volume - and almost immediately we will meet a book smeared with poison, which killed anyone who read it, salivating his finger. A little further on we will see a performance book made of colorful fish swimming in a pond: when they were caught and fried, they recited poems... And here is what a young calligrapher, who was turned into a monkey by evil spells (he was sold by sailors to the Emir of some island), tells us: "And I took a kalam and, taking ink from the inkpot, I wrote this couplet in the handwriting of the rick... And I wrote in the handwriting of the reikhani and the handwriting of the suls... And I also wrote in the handwriting of the neskhi and the handwriting of the tumar... And in the handwriting of the muhakkik I wrote..." -
As we can see, even in ancient times there were many different approaches to book-art. This is probably due to the fact that the book is one of the most important human symbols. Now it is loaded with meanings, which it has been growing over the centuries. Here a book is a sacred attribute of a cult, its writing and reading is a privilege of a narrow and closed circle of the initiated. Here is a book - a luxury, a jewel, its possession is unusually attractive and prestigious. (Catullus asks: "For whom is my smart new book, just scrubbed off with a hard pumice stone?")...
Other meanings appear in the era of printing: the book is alienated from the author, sanctioned by some authority, almost always impersonal, but all the more authoritative. There arises a special trust and piety for the printed and with it a new pretension of the book, which can be felt as pretentiousness. (Beranger: "How are my songs? And you - in octavo? A new folly! This time you yourself give the critics the right to persecute you with a new anger.")...
Undoubtedly, the Futurists' return to the unique and marginal book is connected with their general protest against "officialism". -A printed text is a text in a dress uniform or a tailcoat: it's hard to breathe, hard to move, and generally feels silly... Another thing is now, when postmodernism and computer technology break the backbone of culture (i.e. its hierarchical, value-magisterial organization) and everything becomes in a certain sense private and marginal, - of course, book-art is no longer a protest...
But the book's overload of various, even contradictory, meanings makes it extremely attractive for artistic play. This applies to both artists and writers. The book is a boundary object between them, and we will see that they approach it from different sides.
For the writer, the most important (and maybe the only obligatory) conventional component of the book remains the text: the book is a presentation of the text, a way of its existence and a way of presentation that provokes some actions: to take it in one's hands, to examine it in a certain sequence. The text is always linked to time: its presence unfolds gradually - in durations. - and requires a reciprocal "dance" on the part of the reader....
The artist, on the contrary, does not single out any of the book's functions as the main one, for him they are all equal. In this sense, he is more free, but also lacks a "passionate" attitude: he is relaxed and cool. He gives the book as a synthetic image, always present in its entirety, paused for timeless contemplation...
If we add to this that the artist and the writer are combined in each book creator in their own unique proportion and configuration, it is difficult to even imagine the diversity to which this leads. All sorts of surprises are possible, and the language is silent.