Series of Picture Books About Art of the 20th Century

The theme of the current visual study is the construction of artist's books. Artist's book is a book, positioned as an artistic statement. These books are produced in small print editions or as unique objects, often with the help of hand-printed technologies. On the contrary, the book in its traditional sense, first of all, is a source of information, so it has a larger edition, automated production system and unified form. As an object of study, foreign books were selected from the middle of the 20th century to the present day, which were considered in terms of their design: what message it carries in itself, how it affects the scenario of reading a book and interaction with it, and also changes the familiar notion of the book as a form. Objects that completely lost all the attributes of the familiar understanding of the "book", but still considered by some authors as an artist's book: books performances, land art, sculptures based on books, etc. - were not considered in this study . The visual study includes 13 chapters, each of them is devoted to one of the design types. Construction is not just a mode of existence, but a part of the author’s concept. The external form of the book or the way the reader interacts with it (or both) carry a message in themselves, complementing the internal content. In some cases, this message can play a major role, pushing the value of the content of the book into the background. In the course of the study, an analysis was made of how the artist's book artists use each of the selected designs, making assumptions what metaphors and messages they can carry. Thus, it can be assumed that in the modern world the book gradually turns from a source of information into an art object, which changes our concept of the book as a form and pushes the boundaries of the concept. Perhaps this is the future of the book, as the world is gradually moving to electronic media.