artists books and After

Early in her career, accomplished contemporary art curator Dianne Perry Vanderlip organized the exhibition artists books at Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, in 1973. In coining the phrase "artists books," she unintentionally created the name for a new genre of contemporary art, now in its fiftieth year. However, not many artists, art historians, or critics are aware of the Vanderlip catalog, how it came to be, who loaned works to the exhibition, and the important concepts included in the catalog's two essays-artists books regarded as fine art, and as democratic multiples. Several important books by oft-cited authors neither discussed, nor included, index entries for either Vanderlip or her catalog. These unintentional omissions inadvertently created a significant gap in the literature, impacting successive scholarship about artists books. The 1970s was a formative decade during which definitions for publications by visual artists were in flux. The impact of the exhibition's title, artists books, was an inflection point, after which the phrase quickly became indelible as successive generations of artists took ownership of it to describe their books.