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system.” Also, printing technologies were improving all the time, making it increasingly inexpensive to self-publish. Anybody with an idea and access to basic printing equipment could create a book. There was no shortage of people looking for such an accessible and affordable medium of expression.

Writers were among the first to experiment with new ways of presenting the printed word. William S. Burroughs used the “cut-up” technique to create poetry out of rearranged fragments of other texts. Bern Porter popularized “found poetry,” poems derived from words and word fragments encountered in daily life. Concrete (or visual) poets used the layout of their poems to illustrate or lend further meaning to their words. These writers created art out of nothing but the simple beauty of language. The books they made reflected a new insight into the potential for the printed word to convey beauty.

Visual artists quickly joined in. One of the first to experiment with the book form was Swiss artist Dieter Roth. In the 1950s, he began creating books that challenged societal expectations of what books were and how they should be experienced. Over the next few decades he made more than 200 book art objects in a wide range of formats. He is well known for his innovative use of off-set printing, making books out of everyday objects such as shredded newspapers and food products and using existing books as an artistic medium. Probably his most famous piece was called Literaturwurst (Literature Sausage), made of sausage casings stuffed with the shredded pages of books he disliked. According to Johanna Drucker, an internationally recognized expert on artists’ books, Roth’s work stands out because he used books as a means of creating art as opposed to “a publication or vehicle for literary or visual expression.” Unlike the avant-garde artists who played with the structure of books to communicate their ideas, Roth’s subject matter was the book itself. As Drucker has commented, “There would be no way to translate a Dieter Roth book into another medium – the idea of the works is inseparable from their form as books and they realize themselves as works through the exploration of the conceptual and structural features of a book.”
George Maciunas was another early player in the field. A vociferous opponent of serious or high art, Maciunas founded an artistic movement in the early Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125
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