The following posts are from an Internet list or whatever it’s called that I’m on that consists of friends in the arts of Richard Kostelanetz.   The posts are a few concerning a thread Richard began with the question, “Who else is working with distinction at the apex of book art and literature?”

I replied, “To me your question is in a sub-category of the larger category of who is writing about otherstream art of any kind. My impression, and I haven’t researched it, is: no one visible but you, Kosti. Okay, even I can see that I’m exaggerating, but not by much. An excellent subject for a PhD dissertation would be an answer to this. With a comparison of the short list of found names with the long list of the knownstream experts like Vendler and Bloom. Which reminds me that to be fair I’d have to say that Perloff has written about the otherstream. But not about any part of it she can’t connect to Wittgenstein–i.e., the parts that count.”

Later, Alexis Bhagat had a more informed reply, which I’m re-posting here because of its possible usefulness to those interested, like I, in becoming more knowledgeable about Book Art:

Dear Richard, What does “distinction” mean in this question?  Paul Chan has considered himself a devotee or descendant of William Blake.  See “They make books in an expanded field” at badlandsunlimited.com

This year at CAA there was a session (go here) about book art, called “it is what it is,” organized by Tony White, special collections librarian at MICA.  His opening talk charted the development of the “book art” field and the phenomenal growth of the “art book fairs” over the past four years.

lucy mulrony, the special collections librarian at syracuse, gave a very tight art historical talk, geneology and with a canon, too. she could probably answer your question, or would try. she did mention tom phillips, but did not mention warren lehrer. (Go here.)

i’m actually not sure why you single out Warren Lehrer from other graphic storytellers… there are so many amazing graphic storytellers these days, making zines and books.)  the most compelling talk in the panel was by Barbara Tannenbaum (see , who is the curator of photography at the Cleveland Museum.. she is an old VSW character, i believe. (maybe someone else on this thread knows?) > anyway, barbara’s talk argued that book art has nothing to do with literature these days because the breathing pulsing heart of book art today is self-published photobooks. > > this is something that your friend Paul Soulellis would have agreed with a year ago but maybe he is now at the “apex” you’re looking for, with his libraryoftheprintedweb. this is a project that came out of his Chancebooks. his experiments in designing beautiful little books out of Wikipedia pages; he started doing these in may 2013

–in the spring of 2013, ken goldsmith was busy chatting up his “printing out the internet” which took place somehow at MoMA in summer of 2013? (i didn’t see what they did at MoMA… nor do i see it on their website… does anyone here know?)  “printingouttheinternet” lives on, and ken has a team at Kunsthalle Dusselforf printing out articles from JSTOR in a tribute to programmer Aaron Schwartz this year. those are some immediate thoughts.

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