The evolution of the artist’s book in printmaking and transdisciplinarity as its essence

Bethania Barbosa B. de Souza

doi:10.37190/arc190301

Abstract

This article deals with the aesthetic evolution of the artist’s book in printmaking and its close connection to the graphic procedures resulting from the printing press and the current transdisciplinarity of the various areas of knowledge. Each stride of technical progress in the field of graphic arts spawned a transformation in the aesthetics of the images comprising books, as they served to enhance the graphic quality of the aesthetics presented.

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2019

3(59)

DOI: 10. /arc190301

Since the dawn of the printing press, books and print

were inextricably intertwined, with the fusion of illustration

and text being adjusted to a format similar to the conven-

tional book, predetermined and delimited in its spaces and

forms. Thus, illustrations and texts, different languages,

came to converge in a unique, hybrid and transdisciplinary

process, giving rise to a new creation: the artist’s book. The

two performed a function of diffusion – a characteristic

common to both media – as the images produced by the

artist facilitated the dissemination of the knowledge or text.

A fundamental aspect to address at this point is the de-

nition of the artist’s book in printmaking, as this concept

will permeate this text. The artist’s book in printmaking

entails a series of specic characteristics/singular features,

these including the crafting of the book through engraving

procedures (relief or intaglio), and/or stamping systems (li-

thography or screen printing); the complete (or almost) pro-

duction of the book by the artist; a limited number of copies,

signed by the artist himself; and, nally, the binding. Also

frequent is collaboration with a poet or writer who provides

his texts and/or poems, whereby the characteristics of the

artist’s book are expanded with a new aspect: typography.

The precursors the artistʼs books in printmaking

The selection of the artist’s books in printmaking to de-

scribe their evolution is not based on aesthetic afnity, but

rather how they served to transform subsequent creations.

Bethania Barbosa B. de Souza*

The evolution of the artist’s book

in printmaking and transdisciplinarity as its essence

Ewolucja książki artystycznej

w grafice i transdyscyplinarność jako jej esencja

The vast majority of print in the four centuries follow-

ing the advent of the production of xylographic print in

Europe, in the 14

century, were reproductions; that is,

copies of pre-existing images: paintings, drawings, etc.

It was with the emergence of photography, in 1839, and

photographic media, that original print ourished. While

reproduced or interpretative engraving corresponded to

a documentary and communicative iconography, original

or creative engraving stands as an independent work with

an aesthetic purpose. Between the 14

and 18

centuries,

however, nding artists who practiced engraving as an au-

tonomous plastic medium, without taking advantage of

the image of a painting or a drawing to adapt it into an en-

graving, is difcult. Nevertheless, we do nd some artists

who not only produced images exclusively created for the

graphic medium, but who also introduced innovations to

artist’s books in printmaking.

Apocalypse (1498) by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)

can be considered the rst artist’s book in printmaking,

this Incunable (xylographic books prior to 1501) featured

several aspects constituting innovations in the publishing

eld of the late 15

century. Specically, Dürer personal-

ly bore the cost of the book’s printing, when this was usu-

ally covered by a patron; the images/prints are located at

the front of the book, and the text in the back; and he was

also so condent in the power and quality of his images

that he did not feel the need to add colour, this being an

aspect that greatly increased publishing costs (Fig. 1, 2).

As José Manuel Mantilla points out:

The publication of Apocalypse as a book in 1498 brought

the young Albrecht Dürer, who at that time was just twenty-

* ORCID: 0000-0002-8580-4926. Faculty of Fine Arts, Drawing

Department, University of Granada (Spain).

4 Bethania Barbosa B. de Souza

seven years old, international success almost overnight.

[…] The young man was able to achieve this feat thanks to

the generous help that Anton Koberger, Dürer’s godfather

and a printer of the era, lent him to undertake it, mak-

ing available to the artist his printing presses, type sets,

text patterns […]. With a limited volume of just thirty-two

pages, it was also striking for its large format and its un-

usual composition for the reader of the time: its sugges-

tive carvings, which occupied the entire page, no longer

constituted mere illustrations. Transgressing the tradition

of the book, they appeared opposite the text; that is, the

typographical characters appeared on the left, while the

stamp was on the right page of the book, more important

from an optical point of view. It was also larger than the

box, and clearly dominated the overall image of the book’s

dual page spreads [1, p. 168].

Le Carceri d’Invenzione (The Imaginary Prisons), by

Gio vanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), is a collection

com posed of fourteen etchings, in which Piranesi’s rich

ima gination transformed the architecture of Roman ruins

into prisons, as he envisioned the architecture in a dramatic

and fantastic way. His training as an architect and predilec-

tion for architecture is evident in all his etchings, but it is in

this work where Piranesi lets his imagination soar, depicting

non-existent spaces. His architectural studies endowed him

with exceptional training in drawing, enabling him to do so

with great skill and uidity. With an immense capacity for

work, he managed to produce over one thousand plates. He

was a printmaker – in addition to other trades – who managed

to make a living of the sale of his publications (Fig. 3, 4).

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828),

better known as Goya, realised that his drawings could

easily be rendered into print that were widely popular.

His Caprichos (Whims) was devised as a collection, or,

it might be said, an artist’s book. The result of this cre-

ation are the eighty plates comprising the Caprichos pub-

lication. On Wednesday, February 6, 1799 the Diario de

Madrid newspaper announced the sale of Goya’s series of

engraving, Caprichos, with a text, probably written by his

friend Leandro Fernández de Moratín, in which he sought

to defend Goya from potential censure or attacks, due to

his critical images (Fig. 5, 6).

The text began as follows:

A collection of prints of whimsical matters, invented

and engraved, in aquatint, by Don Francisco de Goya.

[…] Since most of the objects represented in this work

are imaginary, it will not be fanciful to believe that their

defects might be largely forgiven by the discerning, upon

Fig. 1. Albrecht Dürer, The Virgin Appearing to Saint John,

no date – front page of The Apocalypse,

(source: The Metropolitan Museum– metmuseum.org)

Il. 1. Albrecht Dürer, Dziewica ukazująca się świętemu Janowi

– pierwsza strona Apokalipsy

(źródło: The Metropolitan Museum – metmuseum.org)

Fig. 2. Albrecht Dürer, The woman of the Apocalypse

and the seven-headed dragon (Latin Edition: 1511 – second edition,

source: The Metropolitan Museum – metmuseum.org)

Il. 2. Albrecht Dürer, Kobieta Apokalipsy i siedmiogłowy smok

(wydanie łacińskie: 1511 – drugie wydanie,

źródło: The Metropolitan Museum – metmuseum.org)

The evolution of the artist’s book / Ewolucja książki artystycznej 5

considering that their creator has not followed the exam-

ples of others, or copied much from nature.

And if imitating it is difcult to achieve as it is admira-

ble when attained, he should fail to merit some esteem he

who, distancing himself entirely from it, has had to expose

his eyes, a forms and manners hitherto existing only in the

human mind, obscured and confused by a lack of illustra-

tion, or blinded by unruly passions [2, p. 715].

Thus, it is clear that Goya used engraving as a means of

autonomous expression, with images that were designed

to be engraved. Iconographically, these were totally dif-

ferent from his paintings, a veritable haven for Goya’s

socio-political reections. This made him one of the few

creative engravers existing between the 15

century until

the 1

half of the 19

, during which engravers habitually

produced reproductions or interpretative print.

The rst three artists selected – Dürer, Piranesi and

Goya – present a correlation between their modus ope-

randi, even if they are separated by space and time. These

three artists conceived of their body of graphic work as an

inseparable whole, a single creation with a single theme,

the same procedure, and a sequential ordering of the

works that led to a reading of the images just as the artist

had intended; it should be noted that each of the print were

numbered so that their order was always the same, their

characteristics coinciding with those identied with the

execution of an artist’s book in printmaking.

We shall now proceed to analyse the work of an artist

representing a precursor to the transdisciplinary concept

associated with the artist’s book in the 18

century: the

transdisciplinary artist par excellence, an outlying artist

during his era; the engraver, sketch artist, painter, poet and

self-publisher William Blake.

Thus, it is essential here to clarify the concept of trans-

disciplinarity, the foundation upon which we believe that

artists were based, or the spirit that informed the construc-

tion of the artist’s book, even if, as creators, they were not

aware of it, as such. Transdisciplinarity is a concept intrin-

sic to the creative production of the artist’s book today, and

research has been done on artists of previous centuries, who

in one way or another also embraced transdisciplinarity.

Though absent, per se, from the frequent discussions

of the artist’s book over the course of history, the concept

still pervaded the conception of this type of artistic work.

We are, from the outset, faced with a question: what

does transdisciplinarity mean? “Trans” is the prex denot-

ing that transdisciplinary, as a term, suggests something

that transcends limits. Its essence, then, is going beyond

just one given discipline, whether it be drawing, engrav-

ing, painting, sculpture, architecture, computer science

(today) etc. It is an approach based on seeking, on defy-

ing the rigid connes of disciplines, where the multiple is

made one and, at the same time, the whole.

The term transdisciplinary appeared for the rst time

in the 1970s, in the works of the Swiss psychologist Jean

Fig. 3. Giovanni Battista Piranesi,

Carceri d’invenzione – Imaginary prisons, front page: 1749–1750

(source: The Metropolitan Museum – metmuseum.org)

Il. 3. Giovanni Battista Piranesi,

Carceri d’invenzione – Wyobrażalne więzienia, pierwsza strona, 1749–1750

(źródło: The Metropolitan Museum – metmuseum.org)

Fig. 4. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, The Drawbridge, 1749–1750

(source: The Metropolitan Museum – metmuseum.org)

Il. 4. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Most zwodzony, 1749–1750

(źródło: The Metropolitan Museum – metmuseum.org)

6 Bethania Barbosa B. de Souza

Piaget, the Austrian astrophysicist Erich Jantsch, and the

French sociologist Edgar Morin, in which they agreed

that it was necessary to identify integrations or re ci pro-

cities between the different elds, and to situate these

connections within a total system, without xed bound-

aries.

One of the proponents of transdisciplinary thinking to-

day is Basarab Nicoluscu, a physicist and founder of the

International Center for Transdisciplinary Research and

Studies, who has stated that:

Transdisciplinarity, as its prex “trans” indicates,

deals with what lies between the disciplines and, at the

same time, permeates the different disciplines […] Its ob-

jective is to understand the current world, for which one

imperative is a unity of knowledge [3, p. 35].

We perfectly understand the transdisciplinary concept

when we think about the breakage of the old mercury

thermometers, and how the particles of mercury were dis-

persed in different drops, if we imagine each drop cor-

responding to a discipline, a fragment of human knowl-

edge. The disciplines grow more and more distanced from

each other, but, in reality, they are fragments of the same

whole, and, if they are brought closer to each other, they

connect once again.

Transdisciplinary thinking proposes and suggests tran-

scending “yes” or “no”, “it is” and “it is not”, and the pos-

sibility of surpassing certain limits. This thought is based

on the idea that, for the construction of a common body of

knowledge, and work, one should not necessarily be lim-

ited to a single discipline. However, let us not think that

transdisciplinary thinking isolates the singularity of the

disciplines, or that it does not aspire to consider all of them.

The artist’s book is the result of an aesthetic/plastic

process conceived, from the beginning, as a work of art in

itself. Its creator, the artist, has the power to decide over

the how and why of each of the materials, shapes, colours,

textures, spaces, structures, procedures and techniques

that will be used to produce his nal artwork. Hence, this

artistic medium constitutes one of the most transdisci-

plinary for the artist.

In the creation of an artist’s book, as in the transdisci-

plinary concept, the disciplines merge, with some pene-

trating the spheres of others. This concept of unity within

the complexity of the whole constitutes one of the most

obvious formal characteristics within the current produc-

tion of artist’s books, as the artistic eld is perfectly at-

tuned to this concept of unity and complexity between the

disciplines.

Fig. 5. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes,

Los Caprichos nº1, front page, 1797–1799

(source: Real Academia Bellas Artes San Fernando

– realacademiabellasartessanfernando.com)

Il. 5. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes,

Kaprysy, nr 1, pierwsza strona, 1797–1799

(źródło: Real Academia Bellas Artes San Fernando

– realacademiabellasartessanfernando.com)

Fig. 6. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes,

Los Caprichos nº 6 – Nadie se conoce, 1797–1799

(source: Real Academia Bellas Artes San Fernando

– realacademiabellasartessanfernando.com)

Il. 6. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes,

Kaprysy, nr 6 – Nikt nie zna samego siebie, 1797–1799

(źródło: Real Academia Bellas Artes San Fernando

– realacademiabellasartessanfernando.com)

The evolution of the artist’s book / Ewolucja książki artystycznej 7

Having established the importance of the concept of

transdisciplinarity in the eld of artist’s books in print-

making, we return to the transdisciplinary artist William

Blake, who employed and demonstrated this concept ex-

tensively, merging his poetic work into his own aesthet-

ic/plastic creations, including print, drawings and paint-

ings – an approach that was decidedly innovative for his

time, the 18

and early 19

centuries. In his books he

combined arts of engraving and poetry, mainly, gener-

ating a new reective dimension in illustrated books, at

both the conceptual and technical levels. With regard to

the conceptual we can perceive how a poet creates his

texts and poems, as he himself illustrates it, endowing

his works with an aesthetic/plastic result different from

others. At a technical level, he produces his illustration

through relief etching, also innovating in the execution

of this technique, developing a new method based on en-

graving the copper plate with different heights, or levels,

to achieve his aim of producing print in relief, or, con-

versely, intaglio. In this way he was able to craft the plate

in both ways, incorporating on the same plate/mould both

texts and images, thereby rendering process less costly.

Blake’s technique transformed the nature and appearance

of illustrated books, opening them up to the possibility of

entirely new forms. The artist called these books “Illumi-

nated Prints”. A limited number have been selected, as the

list is quite extensive. There is Songs of Innocence and of

Experience (1789), and Europe: A Prophecy (1794); in

the same year he published the rst book of Urizen and,

one later, Songs of Los (1795).

William Blake elevated the artist’s book to another

creative and experimental dimension, melding multiple

disciplines, providing subsequent artists with a vision of

the creative amplitude that an artist’s book could feature,

without creational limits (Fig. 7, 8).

When creating an artist’s book today, this new dimen-

sion of great versatility liberates the creator from a spe-

cic technique or isolated discipline, a constraint that

formerly prevailed. It was in this liberal environment that

transdisciplinarity emerged, as a concept inherent to this

breadth of forms.

The artist, immersed in this context, enjoyed the pos-

sibility of transgressing the technical rules imposed by

predetermined spaces or techniques, the artist’s book

Fig. 7. William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience

– The fly, 1789 (source: The William Blake Archive – blakearchive.org)

Il. 7. William Blake, Pieśni niewinności i doświadczenia, 1789

(źródło: The William Blake Archive – blakearchive.org)

Fig. 8. William Blake, Songs of Innocence, 1789

(source: Tate Modern – tate.org.uk)

Il. 8. William Blake, Pieśni niewinności, 1789

(źródło: Tate Modern – tate.org.uk)

8 Bethania Barbosa B. de Souza

granting him unlimited freedom in the conceptual realm.

The impetus behind these transgressions emerged from

the preceding three decades, during which society under-

went transitions never before imagined, and continued to.

Drastic changes encompassing every eld of knowledge

appeared in every area of society: science, technology,

culture, economics, communications, arts, etc. Fields

of knowledge related to the role of cause and effect ad-

vanced, and fed on each other, in an evolutionary process

subjecting humanity to a veritable whirlwind of rapid de-

velopment and great complexity.

Thus, every work of art, including that in question –

the artist’s book – reect the aesthetic dynamics of the

ideological and technical period during which it was pro-

duced, revealing, with or without the artist’s consent, his

consciousness, his conception of the world, his aesthetics

and the nature of his time. Much of the historical juncture

we now face is a consequence of globalisation, a dynamic

resulting from the scientic and technological advances

mentioned above. Globalisation reveals to us the hetero-

geneous aspects of the world, which, with the passage of

time, often become homogeneous, as we can easily per-

ceive in the most recent architectural constructions, when

we visit a big city, notice the people’s attire, their works of

art, or their codes and conduct.

Artistʼs books in printmaking evolution

produced by technical advances

and transdisciplinarity

Until the early 20

century these theoretical, artistic

and procedural codes were well demarcated, providing the

artist with a clear understanding of the knowledge that he

was to master in order to carry out his aesthetic/plastic

project, whatever it might be. With globalisation, and ad-

vances in new technologies, the technical procedures that

form part of the development of an artistic creation have

changed considerably.

The consequences of globalisation and transdiscipli-

narity also include the immediacy with which information

and knowledge are transmitted, the loss of borders, migra-

tory movements, the dissolution of space/time limits, etc.,

aspects present in the social reality and disciplines of the

different elds of knowledge. In the same way, these con-

sequences are reected in the transdisciplinary processes

employed in the artist’s book, in both its conceptual and

procedural contexts.

In the production of an artist’s book, it may be gener-

ally observed that, in relation to the development of aes-

thetic/plastic work, images are increasingly manipulated,

captured, metamorphosed, and digitalised, generating

a constructive process of fragmented, non-linear images

in various disciplines; with a result, nevertheless, of unity,

an entity, on the whole, a complex and hybrid transdis-

ciplinary process. In this procedural form of production

of the artist’s book, the transdisciplinary process does not

spurn the tradition of artistic procedure, as this is an essen-

tial aspect of the transdisciplinary process.

As we can appreciate in this image, the artist has ma-

nipulated, captured, metamorphosed and digitalised it, in

a process yielding a fragmented image, bridging the histo-

ry of art and engraving, but with a result of unity, an entity

resulting from a transdisciplinary process.

These are aspects that do not imply a rejection or in-

validation of traditional artistic techniques. Rather, the

artist’s book comes to occupy a privileged place for ex-

perimentation and the creation of new concepts existing

alongside pre-existing ones.

As we can see: the past, the present and the future, as-

sociated with transdisciplinary processes, spark the art-

ist’s interest in the transformative potential of the creative

and procedural aspects available, capable of producing

something superior.

In this way, the images developed by any aesthetic/

plastic activity may proceed from different elds and ar-

eas of knowledge, such as: drawing, photography, sculp-

ture, painting, metrics, architecture, medicine, biology,

zoology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, etc.,

providing a benet never before imagined in artistic aes-

thetics: enabling their evolution.

Therefore, the artist has fused different images from

areas or elds of knowledge that once existed separately,

combining or transforming them out of a desire to gener-

ate new structures, objects, or, in our case, images. That

is, in the process of aesthetic/plastic creation the ways of

expressing, interpreting and understanding the creative

process are no longer rooted in a specic discipline or

technique, isolated from other disciplines, as used to be

the case. On the contrary, we nd ourselves with the op-

portunity to transgress the limits of technique and, con-

sequently, their respective restrictions. This process of

transgression and transformation enriches the creative

process, broadening creative horizons. Therefore, great

achievements are possible when one makes use of his

knowledge of his area, but while observing its problems

from different points of view, giving him a perspective

that draws on other elds of knowledge.

It is clear that the individual can only transgress the

boundaries of the technical procedures of a particular dis-

cipline if he understands them. With knowledge, he may

be able to solve their internal problems, but this will not

sufce to enrich them. It is only from a different perspec-

tive that he can expand his solution and creation possibil-

ities, making the discipline to which he is dedicated in-

creasingly transdisciplinary, with coexisting fundamental

concepts of hybridisation, contamination, appropriation,

miscegenation, crossing, etc.

The stress on transdisciplinary processes in aesthet-

ic/plastic production reects the frenetic era in which

we live, with a whole avalanche of factors affecting our

lives, socially, technologically, psychologically and onto-

logically, both with regard to contemporary concepts and

techniques and traditional ones.

These processes are generators of elements that are

borrowed, appropriations, contaminations and crosses

between the technical procedures and the aesthetic to be

developed, as they create forums for the coexistence of

known languages, engendering a perception of these ob-

jects totally differentiated from the way we perceive and

relate to traditional media or techniques.

The evolution of the artist’s book / Ewolucja książki artystycznej 9

To conclude, we believe that during periods of con-

ceptual revision, such as the one we nd ourselves living

in today, with transdisciplinary processes, creating a new

aesthetic in the production of artist’s books means being

able to understand and integrate what is understood on

a new artistic level of knowledge and internalization.

It means introducing new congurations, new forms, and

these new creations are born of the internal motivations of

each artist, which will make possible the linking of techni-

cal and technological knowledge with aesthetic joy and the

promotion of transdisciplinary processes in the aesthet

ic/

plastic creation of the artist’s book. The more unique imag-

es are produced, the more their aesthetics and procedures

are explored, the more the artist’s book will be the subject

of construction and deconstruction, these considerations

being the result of deeper reections on transdisciplinarity

and its contribution to the aesthetics of the artist’s book.

Translated by

Dolores Herrador Molina

References /Bibliografia

[1] Durero. Obras maestras de la Albertina, J.M. Mantilla (ed.), Museo

Nacional del Prado, Madrid 2005.

[2] Carrete J., Checa F., Bozal V., El Grabado en España (Siglos XV al

XVIII), Espasa-Calpe S.A. Summa Artis Historia General del Arte,

Madrid 1988.

[3] Nicolescu B., La Transdisciplinariedad. Maniesto, Ediciones Du

Rocher, 1996.

Abstract

This article deals with the aesthetic evolution of the artist’s book in printmaking and its close connection to the graphic procedures resulting from

the printing press and the current transdisciplinarity of the various areas of knowledge. Each stride of technical progress in the eld of graphic arts

spawned a transformation in the aesthetics of the images comprising books, as they served to enhance the graphic quality of the aesthetics presented.

Key words: artist’s book, transdisciplinarity, printmaking, print

Streszczenie

Artykuł dotyczy ewolucji estetycznej książek artystycznych i jej ścisłego związku z procedurami gracznymi oraz obecnej transdyscyplinarności

różnych dziedzin wiedzy. Każdy postęp techniczny w dziedzinie techniki warsztatowej powodował przemianę estetyki obrazów tworzących książkę,

przyczyniając się do poprawy jakości gracznej prezentowanych działań artystycznych.

Słowa kluczowe: książka artystyczna, transdyscyplinarność, graka warsztatowa, druk

Kolaż autorstwa E. Tomczyk

Collage by E. Tomczyk