Artists' books, which once allowed artists to avoid meddlesome institutions and galleries in producing and distributing artistic work, today have a paradoxical existence. On the one hand, there are the extremely rare founding books, termed 'first edition' or 'original', and, on the other hand, there are 'facsimile' editions, which entered the artist's book realm to counteract the scarcity of the originals by offering re-enactments and reinterpretations of famous titles.
This essay underlines a curiosity for practices of appropriation by artists and publishers, and aims to expose methods and discourses in the production of facsimile artists' books.
Rob van Leijsen (born 1983 in Tilburg, The Netherlands, lives and works in
Geneva) is a multidisciplinary
graphic
designer. His practice focuses mainly on cultural projects, notably
in the fields of publishing design and research. He is currently head of
his his own graphic design studio in Geneva, in parallel to his teaching
position in the visual communication department at
HEAD – Geneva. In 2012,
he obtains his master's degree “Design, Orientation, Spaces and
Communication” at the HEAD – Geneva with the project
Art Handling in
Oblivion, an exhibition catalogue bringing together five
art
collections that were stolen during various wars. This book is
published by Edition Fink (Zürich) in 2014 and was awarded as one of the
“Most Beautiful Swiss Books” of 2014. The book also received an honorary
diploma at the competition “Best Book Design from all over the World” in
Leipzig in 2015. In 2016 he founded Dabook with Demian Conrad. Dabook is a
publishing house which aims to promote
Swiss
design.
