Looking back in our class, I think Les mots en liberté futuristes (1919) and Fluxus 1 (1964/65) represent many of the changes that occur through the 1900s in the book world. Les mots focuses more on typographical changes, and has some innovations in page design and reader interaction, while Fluxus takes full advantage of page design and the outside world.

Les mots, featuring text and graphics by F.T. Marinetti, takes advantage of cheap material and binding in order to reach a larger audience. It begins innocently enough, like any other mass-market book. Gradually, however, its design changes – font types shift throughout the text, and it grows larger and smaller. Eventually, words jut and slide around the page, until the text launches into Futurist poetry that stretches beyond the normal boundaries of a page. The typographic arrangement and the use of onomatopoeia create a cacophony made to awaken the common people and break the status quo in order to begin anew.

Ultimately, however, what has endured and influenced future works is the innovative typography. It has influenced much of popular culture after World War I, such as in advertising, and many artists and art movements, such as Pop Art and Bauhaus, seem to have taken inspiration from the unique design of text. George Macinaus, the ringleader of the Fluxus movement, is one of these artists (though he may not have been directly inspired by Futurism). His typography unites the diverse works that Macinaus compiled and published in Fluxus 1 (1964/65), which is a cacophony of a different sort, and further innovates the structural ideas found in Les mots.

Where Les mots expanded the page by having the reader unfold them, Fluxus works to make the outside world a part of its story. The reader is invited to pack and unpack the numerous envelops in the book, pulling out different objects that represent exhibits and performances by Fluxus artists (who all worked in different ideological schools and movements). One envelope has a paper airplane, while another has some messy napkins.

But what really draws in the outside world comes near the end, with a musical opus of silence. The pianist is asked to sit at the piano, “play” each piece with the page and not from memory, and to turn the pages. The trick here is that the musical piece isn’t about the melodies – it’s about the sounds outside of the music. It’s about the ambient noise that we don’t always pay attention to. In this playful way, Fluxus 1 incorporates the reader and the space outside of the book beyond just turning the page.

Futurism and Fluxus are similar in some regards – they both share a mistrust of the concept of “high art,” and focus on changing everyday reality into something else. Futurism wanted a complete societal change by destroying the institutions around them and embracing the future, and distorted ordinary words into something unrecognizable at the time. Fluxus, on the other hand, didn’t have such grand aspirations; it’s more comparable to Dada, but with a much more tongue-in-cheek, almost innocent nihilism. Rather than destroying reality, Fluxus just brings it on the level of art.

So yeah, I think they’re pretty cool books!

(for whatever reason, I’m having problems putting up images; I’ll figure this out soon)

Jean de La Fontaine and Marc Chagall’s Fables and Paul Eluard and Joan Miro’s A Toute Epreuve are both interesting examples of the Livre d’Artiste movement, considering the way they incorporate text and visuals.

First, as a quick overview of each of the books – since Fables was filled with well-known stories (which were adapted into French by Fontaine), those buying it weren’t getting it for the text. It was published for art collectors, and featured Marc Chagall’s Primitivist etchings, which appear as full pages of monochrome illustrations that almost look like they were drawn with a thick paintbrush. He certainly didn’t skimp out on illustrations; it looks like there’s one for every fable in each volume. The images appear side-by-side with dark italicized text aligned in the center of the page; the words don’t stand out compared to the images, even though the stories are apparently beautifully written.

(image source)

A Toute Epreuve, with poetry and publication by Eluard and illustrations by Miro, unites the text and images. The woodcuts and prints use bright streaks of color that swirl around the page, guiding the eye around the text, sometimes even drawing the eye away from the poetry. While the images aren’t Primitivist, they have a childlike quality to them, somewhat similar to Chagall’s illustrations.

Both of these books follow a quote written in Henry Matisse’s Jazz  – the text accompanies the visuals, unlike most books. I think, however, that these books vary in their degrees of success in collaboration. Although I’d say the illustrations are the focus of A Toute Epreuve, they can’t stand alone without the text to dance and play around. In other words, the poetry contextualizes the illustrations, not necessarily through narrative, but through visuals. Considering that Eluard was both poet and publisher, he could display the collaboration as he pleased, probably to the satisfaction of both parties, and the result is a book with a deep unity between its different aspects.

Fables, on the other hand, is less successful in its unity with text and image. The images don’t flow into the words as they do in A Toute Epreuve, but coexist at each other’s side. Each can stand without the other, and do. Fontaine’s fables were universal in France long before these books were published. Meanwhile, when I tried looking for images from the 1952 book, it was easy for me to find the etchings but just about impossible for me to find a full page with both the illustration and text. Still, when they’re both placed into the same book, Chagall’s etchings are given a narrative contextualization through Fontaine’s stories.