The exhibition Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge at the American Academy in Rome is a true journey into the world of the artist’s book, an area of production and experimentation that has accompanied the work of a great many artists from the early 20th century avant-garde onward. The artist’s book has long served as a space of freedom, offering artists the opportunity to use materials, typefaces and formats outside traditional canons.
The works selected for the exhibition – featuring many pieces from the very important Consolandi and Aldobrandini collections which collaborated on the project – emphasise this idea, showcasing works by artists exploring diverse formats and scales, from painters and conceptual artists to film-makers. Each book represents a different way of conquering a space of freedom and experimentation through an incredible variety of approaches.
As noted in the press release, “Looking at the relationship between the avant-garde and the contemporary, the exhibition aims to highlight how the artist’s book has been, and continues to be, an object of experimentation, a way to resist market constraints and, ultimately, a space of freedom and refuge. The selection on display traces a possible history of how radical approaches to the artist’s book have given rise to innovative graphic solutions that subvert, invent, overturn, and celebrate the letters, words, texts and forms of a publication.
Works by avant-garde pioneers such as Natalia Goncharova, Tristan Tzara, Fortunato Depero, and Marcel Duchamp, and those associated with Pop Art (Andy Warhol and Keith Haring) and conceptual art (such as John Baldessari) start a journey that includes more recent productions, some displayed in the beautiful setting of the Barbara Goldsmith Rare Book Room, open to the public exclusively for this occasion.
This exhibition also features works by artists who have participated in residencies over the years, including Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Irma Boom, William Kentridge, and Arturo Herrera. Also present are the works of Rome Prize winners such as Eugene Berman (1959), Ana Mendieta (1984), Tony Cokes (2022), Rochelle Feinstein (2017), and Italian Fellows such as Nico Vascellari (2008), Luca Vitone (2009), Marco Raparelli (2011) and Rä Di Martino (2018).
The artist’s book transcends traditional conventions, transforming into a rich territory for experimentation and expression, thanks to the potential of space, material and typography to push boundaries, not least those that enclose the book in a precious and barely accessible envelope. The artist’s book becomes an object that its creators inhabit, subvert, experiment with, and make accessible. It transcends all gender boundaries. Suffice it to say that the Franklin Furnace’s collection of artists’ books -founded by Martha Wilson in 1976 in New York and later donated to MoMA in 1993 – was included in a programme focused on time-based works, alongside performance art and site-specific projects.
The exhibition “brings together diverse times and epochs, staying true to its subtitle, Pages of Refuge.” This is how Asia Benedetti lucidly observes the desired and achieved objectives of the exhibition in her beautiful and detailed article published in the Engramma magazine. “The page,” Asia Benedetti continues, “especially in the historical avant-garde, becomes an alternative space in which it is possible to liberate the word from the hegemony of institutionalized verbal language and to overturn pre-established meanings. The synergy between text, images, format, and material expresses an all-encompassing creativity that extends from the cover to the book’s inner structure.” (https://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=5613, October 2024).
The exhibition unfolds through conceptual and thematic groupings – the covers, the pages, the actions (those deposited in the book as a document) and the collaborations – that articulate, rather than divide, the exhibition, which also enjoys a certain continuity in the itinerary of the various rooms that house it.
The journey into the world of artists’ books opens with Twentysix Gasoline Stations by Ed Rusha, a gift from the artist to the American Academy in 2001. This collection of photos of service stations from the landscape of California’s Route 66 in a format that is not too unconventional, represented a new paradigm for the artist’s book: “cheap, portable, and visual”, as one of the texts accompanying the visitor to the exhibition explains, and which takes care of a not so marginal aspect, that of guiding visitors through this journey. On the other hand, while the production of artists’ books was incredibly prolific during the early avant-garde, it took off as an independent form only in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The book – this compact, versatile, and above all, accessible object – captures key moments in their creators’ lives and reflects their historical and artistic contexts.
The exhibition aims to illustrate the cultural cross-pollination between Italy and the United States, particularly through the dialogue fostered by the American Academy in Rome. At the same time, the carefully selected works offer a comprehensive overview of significant artists and pieces that are representative of key moments within each trajectory, and of its place within the creative landscapes of the time, from which future directions unfold – insights we can now appreciate with the benefit of hindsight.
Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge, curated by Ilaria Puri Purini, Andrew Heiskell Arts Director and Sebastian Hierl, Drue Heinz Librarian, with Lexi Eberspacher, Programs Associate for the Arts e Johanne Affricot, Curator-at-Large at the American Academy in Rome. Exhibition design by Supervoid (Benjamin Gallegos Gabilondo, Marco Provinciali and Anna Livia Friel). Until December 07, 2024 (Friday – Saturday: 4 – 6p.m.).
Artists: Vincenzo Agnetti, Micol Assaël, Josef Albers, Giovanni Anselmo, Stefano Arienti, Fabio Barile, Balthus, Elisabetta Benassi, Eugene Berman (Resident 1957), Irma Blank, Alighiero Boetti, Agostino Bonalumi, Irma Boom (2018), André Breton, Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder, Canemorto, Chiara Camoni, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Maurizio Catellan, Alessandro Cicoria, Francesco Clemente, Tony Cokes (Fellow 2023), Gianluca Concialdi, Matthew Connors (Fellow 2025), Enzo Cucchi, Hanne Darboven, Giorgio de Chirico, Willem De Kooning, Michela De Mattei, Kimmah Dennis (Fellow 2025), Fortunato Depero, Rä Di Martino (Italian Fellow 2018), Marcel Duchamp, Nona Faustine (Fellow 2025), Rochelle Feinstein (Fellow 2018), Leonor Fini, Lucio Fontana, Allen Frame (Fellow 2018), Mario Gooden (Resident 2024), Natalia Goncharova, Keith Haring, Ann Hamilton (Resident 2017), Arturo Herrera (Resident 2024), Jenny Holzer (Resident 2004), ILIAZD, Emilio Isgrò, Isaac Julien (Resident 2016), Vassily Kandinsky, Alex Katz (Resident 1984), On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge (Resident 2011, 2016), Kiki Kogelnik, Jannis Kounellis, Maria Lai, Fernand Léger, Sol LeWitt, El Lissitzky, George Maciunas, Jackson Mac Low, Kazimir Malevich, Piero Manzoni, Franz Marc, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Henri Matisse, Mel Chin (Resident 2024), Julie Mehretu (Resident 2020), Ana Mendieta (Fellow 1984), Mario Merz, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Joan Mirò, Nelson Morpugo, Bruno Munari, Wangechi Mutu (Resident 2019), Francis Offman, Luigi Ontani, Giuseppe Penone, Gordon Powell (Fellow 1988), Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Marco Raparelli (Italian Fellow 2011), Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Ed Ruscha, Kay Sage, Alberto Savinio, Kurt Schwitters, Dread Scott (Fellow 2024), Dorothea Tanning, Tricia Treacy (Fellow 2018), Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Tristan Tzara, Grazia Varisco, Nico Vascellari (Italian Fellow 2008), Elihu Vedder, Luca Vitone (Italian Fellow 2009), Kara Walker (Resident 2016), Andy Warhol, Laurence Weiner, Francesca Woodman, Xu Bing (Resident 2024), La Monte Young.
images: Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge, American Academy, Rome, exhibition view (2) Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge, American Academy, Rome, exhibition view, Barbara Goldsmith Rare Book Room (3) William Kentridge, Portage, 2000 , Courtesy Private Collection, Ph. Alessandro Lui (4-5) Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge, American Academy, Rome, exhibition view (6) Artists Making Books: Pages of Refuge, American Academy, Rome, exhibition view, Barbara Goldsmith Rare Book Room, detail
