Artist Books and Art Catalogues

Art books and artist’s books reflect a unique kind of collectionism. Who collects them worries not only about getting the ones he doesn’t own, but also looks for a way of redefining a line in the history of art. Because of that, there is often no point in differentiating artist’s books from exhibition’s catalogs, general catalogs from important monographs, and vintage magazines from illustrated books.

In this whole setting there are books that made the history of art. There are catalogs that are famous for being extremely rare and only printed in a few copies, others, even if printed in big quantities, are still considered milestones, as they are the first catalogs conceived by an artist, yet others have been created directly by the artist who took part in the graphic design.

Sometimes books contain unreleased poems, while sometimes it’s the poems that are enlighten by an unprecedented art vision, some of which contain manual interventions, multiples of graphics that make the edition unique. Sometimes it happens that the work of the photographer that gave substance to the artistic vision is what makes an edition exclusive, or oftentimes the critic or the curator is the one who crystallized for the first time the right interpretation of the work of an artist.