Stefan Heinz Bartkowiak
* 1939
lives and works in Hamburg (Germany)
info@forumbookart.de
www.forumbookart.de

Artdirector & editor
Founder and publisher of „The compendium: Bartkowiaks forum bookart“

Statement

International Contemporary Bookart – One of the Most Versatile Adventures of Our Day There is no big alluring advertising sign hanging on the gates to the wonderland of contemporary bookart. Where is this colorful, broad, and so completely different world of letterpress imprints, artists’ and painters’ books, and book objects to be found? And why is it as difficult to locate as a needle in a haystack? Asking in the bookshop on the corner will be to no avail; and in those gigantic book department stores with practically every subject area and all the titles of all the publishers, works of contemporary bookart are not to be found. Even in art galleries, works of contemporary bookart are rarely represented. Then we can try the libraries. Only a very few city, university, and museum libraries have archives where we might have luck. However, national and state libraries undertake much effort to fill their rare book collections with works of contemporary bookart. There we can find what we’re looking for, though we cannot lend such works out of the library but may only view them in the reading room. Works of international contemporary bookart can be found in a few bookart galleries, especially in small and usually regional specialized exhibitions, and of course at the world’s biggest book fair in Frankfurt am Main, where more than 100 book-artists and publishers annually present their works in stock and their new imprints. Their rarity is a result of the fact that these works are not produced in an industrial process, but are individually made page by page, book by book, by hand. If we are dealing with so-called letterpress printing, the works are still today set by hand in the traditional Gutenberg technique and printed on letterpresses. Thorough preparation is required for printing and is quite time intensive. From the idea and draft, it can often take a year or more before the book can be printed. Thus, small and even miniature series emerge whose individual copies are each, upon closer examination, unique. That is why the books are numbered and, like any other true work of art, signed by their creators. These books never make it onto the bestseller lists if only because they are only known to a small group of collectors. And the entire printing has sometimes already been sold before the book is finished. Scene insiders know “their” book-artists and often subscribe to their works.

Letterpress imprints, then, are rarities. This applies all the more to painters’ and artists’ books, for they are completely unique, single copies, and thus comparable to paintings and sculptures. The world of international contemporary bookart is not only as varied as the world of contemporary art, but also – quite literally – significantly more varied.

If you encounter the magical world of bookart without any precise expectations and prejudices, but with a mixture of curiosity, desire for adventure, and a willingness to take risks, it is comparable to a room from which many doors lead into other rooms. Behind those doors is not only the Olympus of long deceased authors, but also that of living ones, meeting rooms for conspiring ‘black’ artists, pompous banquet halls full of exquisite editions, alchemy labs as experimental fields, vaulted rooms and workshops from the age of lead, calligraphy niches, and high-tech retreats. If you open the door with the label “materials”, first comes a giant room with paper, the tried and proven bearer of everything printed and written. But here, too, a labyrinth leads on into other chambers: hand-made paper and the widest variety of materials, such as cloth, leather, Plexiglas, metal, and ceramic play a role in the creative work. This all contributes to the endless variety of such works.

The contents of a book are normally determined by its author; here, however, each text is interpreted by the book-artist in his own special manner, illustrated, transformed, and sometimes even playfully destroyed. This usually occurs with utmost seriousness, but also with the greatest pleasure. The game has only one single rule: each book-artist should venture to his own limits – and beyond. In the worldwide arena of contemporary bookart, everyone shows what he can do, and it can be observed how globalization is rapidly spreading this knowledge from one continent to the other. Thus, the medium book is developing worldwide in ever newer and more surprising ways. And there is no end in sight. On the contrary. In the mass of industrially produced books as a mass-product, individually created artistic and handcraft works created are steadily gaining in value. And value in this sense cannot simply be calculated in cash, but lies in the special power of expression revealed only to those willing to delve into the adventure of bookart. In the future, contemporary letterpress imprints, artists’ books, painters’ books, and book-objects will surely bear witness to and reveal many aspects of our epoch which no other medium can convey more beautifully, palpably, or sensually. Heinz Stefan Bartkowiak, publisher of the Yearbook of Contemporary Bookart »Bartkowiaks forum book art«

Stefan Heinz Bartkowiak