Review
Alphabets Sublime is a collection of interviews with 20 artists and writers by George Myers, Jr., book editor for The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), as well as critic, fiction author, and bookwork artist. Subtitled Contemporary Artists on Collage and Visual Literature, this book is "not a history but a 'slice of life' of the art of the 80s that touches on assemblage, intermedia, visual literature, Fluxus, dada, and bookworks as objets d'art" (quoted from the book's back cover). In his introductory essay, Myers states that "collage is the culmination of the world," and that "visual literature is the culmination of the word." The book's dialogic format allows the reader to infer an informal yet journalistic give-and-take between artist and interviewer. Myers' questions focus on matters of technique, artistic intention, and on views held by the artists of the social, political, cultural, and artistic climates within which the works are made. Myers has attempted to provide a sense of the great diversity of current modes of alternative publishing, modes which range from one-of-a-kind artist's books and booklike objects (some of which may be walked through or worn like costumes) to more traditional limited-edition press runs. The emphasis is on expanding our notions of language as a visual structure of signs, on the relations between literary and visual works of art, on the redefmition of the art/ world nexus, as well as on the alternatives available to contemporary artist/writers for producing and distributing their works. All of the artists interviewed have settled in Robert Rauschenberg's oft-quoted "gap between art and life," and each has attempted to fill that gap. This book demonstrates that the one is swiftly becoming the other. -- From Independent Publisher
