Artist Book Comparison Research Paper

The artists’ book has been an import part of the publishing industry. The original idea was brought forward by British artist, printmaker, and poet William Blake, who states that artists’ book is meant to integrate text and visuals on each page (Doston, 2017). While producing this kind of publication, Blake thinks that he can have a full control over the final results and he could be his own publisher (Turner, 1996). After this innovation, with the development of print technology and typography, artists’ book become popular in the publishing industry and it improves by artists continuously. After comparing different aspects of a historical example and a contemporary example of artists’ book, there are many similarities and differences show up. Both of them have similar audience and publication characteristics. Compared to the historical artists’ book example, the contemporary artists’ book is less text-based and become interactive to readers.
There are different purposes for the artists’ book. it could be made for showing artists’ inspiration and opinions. It can also be a way to present the craft technology. Because of its expensive cost, it can also be a symbol of wealth or a memorial piece based on an existing book. Besides purpose, the content of artists’ books can be various. Some of them are made to show

They are all handmade books, which cost a lot of time and human resources. Therefore, both of them only have a very limited number of copies due to their money and time cost. The publishing frequency is low. As a result of that, artists’ books are usually much expensive than normal publication and hard to purchase due to its cost and limited copies. Waste Incant only has 150 copies and it costs about $300. The Door in the Wall and Other Stories, which is published over 100 years ago, can cost over $9500 and it only has 300 copies with full