One from the archives: Ann Hamilton--Corpus

These are a collection of flickr photos I casually usurped from different folks to show how museum goers actually experienced one of the most successful art installations I have ever witnessed, Ann Hamilton's Corpus at Mass MOCA in 2003. A football field-sized room. Stacks of onionskin paper held up high, mechanically releasing one leaf at a time, drifting down. Large bullhorns shifting around the space, moving slowly up and down, speaking in a robotic voice. Figures (us!) shuffling through white crackly mounds of paper. Windows letting in pink light.

Literally 7 million 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper fell over the course of the installation.

"Gallerygoers apparently get the idea, spending around 20 minutes with ''Corpus,'' 19 minutes longer than people typically spend with one work of art"--NYTimes

Photo 1 from flickr user kellan, photo 2 from takomabibelot, photo 3 from shanevsevil, photo 4 from travisqclark, photo 5 from nogang

Noriko Ambe

There have been quite alot of artists lately who alter books through cutting. I like this series by Noriko Ambe because it not only seems to be about the look of the pieces but takes the cutting a step further into self-investigation. This altering of Ed Ruscha's book illustrates, to me, an artist who is both acknowledging the historical significance of Ed Ruscha's work in the book format as well as challenging it. You can see more of her work here.

Her work is also on view right now with other "cutters" at the Bellevue Arts Museum as part of an exhibition called The Book Borrowers: Contemporary Artists Transforming the Book.

Brian Belott

I love this work by Brian Belott. See more of his work here

All I need in life are page by page shots of artist's books on the web. That's really what does it for me.

Founding Father's Altered Text

When I heard this Fresh Air episode about religion and the Founding Fathers, I was blown away to hear about Thomas Jefferson physically cutting out passages from the Bible and pasting them into a new blank book--recreating the text as to how he thought it should read. Many book artists do exactly this. Their medium is book and text. Jefferson's Bible reminded me first of the most well-known example of what is called an "altered text": A Humument by Tom Philips. In that work, the artist drew on and blocked out words in a victorian novel so that a new narrative emerged.

I went on a hunt to find images of the Jefferson Bible and was AGAIN blown away to see these stunning pictures from Alexandria Searls, a photographer who beautifully captures Jefferson's actual cut-up Bibles which are preserved (thank goodness) at his home in Monticello. I haven't found any images yet of the book in which he pasted the passages, though I believe he did publish his version of the Bible which you can now purchase via Amazon. of course.

You can see the full exhibit of Alexandria Searls' photographs of the cut-up Bible at the Monticello website. Alexandria graciously allowed me to publish a few here on the blog.

Just came across this other blog post on more cut-up texts http://blog.whitneyannetrettien.com/2009/03/thomas-jefferons-cut-up-bible.html. cool.