It was about a decade ago when hard and soft-cover books were on the "soon to be extinct" list. Kindles and other tablets that carried a digital or e-book platform, like so many things Amazon has transformed or "disrupted" in its time on earth, were killing off what we have come to consider the analog version.
Yet around the same time, millennials began to say "not so fast," and effectively helped save the day with their nostalgia for things their parents had put aside, like the vinyl LP, and the typewriter, and film cameras. They reminded people why they liked books and how the blue light their electronic devices were emitting was disrupting our sleep. The printed and bound book -- dogeared with notes in the margin -- survived.
It was also around this time that artwork using books as material for sculptures, collage, and multimedia pieces became regular sights at all levels of art fairs in Miami and New York. Not that books hadn't been addressed or utilized before or after, but it seemed as if the expected demise of them, and the need to memorialize them, became part of the zeitgeist.
For decades there have been artists' books, where the book form is treated as an art object by the artist. But this was different. Pre-existing books were being co-opted as found objects to make artwork.
Now, an exhibition at the Southampton Arts Center offers its own homage to the book, examining the way contemporary artists have used books as "surface, structure, found object, philosophical and literary guide," according to the curator, Christina Strassfield, the director of the center.
She has taken a broad and freeform approach, using work she has seen over the years in the studios of area artists and those beyond. Many of these works have been made during the past couple of years, but there are plenty of older works too. Some are actual books, but others take books and printed matter as a theme or are byproducts of books.
Having the most "on the nose" approach, Paul Vogel, a book binder by trade, plays with the idea of technology's triumph over the printed page, or any page for that matter, in his "O.E.D" series, the first of which is a group of actual bound volumes in red leather, cloth, and gold. In a separate vitrine, three similar-looking bindings are boxes that hide a Kindle, CD-ROMs, and external storage drives. In this work from 2014, the artist demonstrates prescience in suggesting that these electronic alternatives would face their own obsolescence. The bound volumes, requiring a bit more time than the rapid response of a search bar, are cumbersome and space hogging, but the care with which they were bound makes them objects of beauty, helping to guarantee their survival.
Hadley Vogel, his daughter and an artist, has her own creative and unusual book-inspired constructions on view, on which she collaborated with other artists.
On what might be the opposite end of the spectrum is Barbara Slate. Known for her contributions to comic book series like Barbie, Archie, and Betty and Veronica, she is also a graphic novelist whose latest book, "Mirror Test," is taken from Cassidy Hutchinson's congressional testimony. As part of the installation, panels she made for the book have an immediate graphic appeal. Once the viewer realizes what is being portrayed, it is even more riveting. The actual book and her rendition of the Mueller report in graphic novel form are also on display.
Randall Rosenthal's uncanny true-to-life painted wood carvings of books and other printed matter, which often seem so singular when viewed in other contexts, feel very at home in this company. A stack of Surfer magazines complete with address labels look ready to be picked up and leafed through, if they weren't under a vitrine. Also displayed is a wholly realistic carved three-ring binder scrapbook, rings open to a spread of Ernest Hemingway images apparently taped in with old cellophane tape, all rendered by the artist's hand. The only hint that all of this is an illusion constructed of carved wood, acrylic, and ink is that the artist has left the wood grain visible on the paper sheets that hold the images.
Mr. Rosenthal's aim is not merely to replicate something perfectly, but to also represent it truthfully. In his piece "Almanac" (Poor Randall's Almanac is embossed on the cover), the old tome's pages are worn and stained with the passage of time. The book itself is warped, its cover raised unevenly and its spine indented and possibly broken in places. Two Post-it notes, also the invention of the artist, are evident. A blue one appears to hang off the bottom like a tag, and a faded yellow one is rendered as if it is affixed to the cover, reminding the user that the tide tables are on page 336. Those uninitiated in Mr. Rosenthal's art will spend a good portion of their time in the exhibition trying to understand just how far the artist's visual deception goes.
With 33 artists, there is a lot to see, including Donald Lipski's show-stealing pieces made from books, unusual in their precision. Joe Pintauro is represented by printed books of his poetry with illustrations by Corita Kent and gatefold books of his photographs, which might be surprising to those who knew him only as a playwright. Christa Maiwald has examples of children's book mockups she was inspired to make in 1993. And a collection of Mary Ellen Bartley's photographs of the library at Grey Gardens makes an expected yet still revelatory appearance.
There are banned books, books that seem to explode from a wall, a book bench, and all manner of interpretations of various types of books and themes related to them. There is so much material to see and read in these works that it's best to get down there and start, long before the show closes on May 4. You will want to come back for more.
