Doug Beube: Breaking the Codex
Introduction by David Revere McFadden,
Chief Curator, Museum of Art and Design
Edited by Marian Cohn
Book Design by Florio Design
Etc. Etc. The Iconoclastic Museum Press
Brooklyn, NY
9 x 12 x 1 in.
2011
(To purchase, please Contact the Artist)
“The 600 extraordinary and genre-defining sculptural bookworks and collages created by Doug Beube over three prolific decades explore his preoccupations—collage, the use of organic materials, the altering of found books and photography. Calling himself a “biblioclast,” Beube’s rehabilitated books mark a culmination of this art form, his imaginative visions reshaping books into forms that mirror their implied content, evoking the playful construct of language. This visually lush hardcover volume of 220 pages with over 275 illustrations collects not only the highlights of Beube’s oeuvre in a comprehensive retrospective, but provides his viewpoint on them through individually detailed photographs of the works, often emphasizing aspects not immediately, as well as his running commentary on their backstory, their contexts, concepts, forms, materials, and methods.
Further illumination is provided in essays by a series of writers, scholars, critics, curators, collectors, and fellow artists who are working in, or investigating, the book as art medium, discussing Beube’s poignant and varied creations from a historical, cinematic, or aesthetic perspective, or about idiosyncratic aspects that have captured their attention—the organic books, the carved books, the map pieces, and so forth. The essays and contributions are from Betty Bright, Allan Chasanoff, Byron Clercx, Marian Cohn, Karin de Weille, William Ganis, Judith Hoffberg, Diana Linden, David Revere McFadden, Diane Mullin, Sara Reisman, Buzz Spector, and Garrett Stewart.”
Adrianne Casey
Channel Photographics and Global Printing Sources
San Raphael, CA
2011