Although examples of books created as works of art can be found throughout history, from illuminated manuscripts to the books of William Blake, the art form as a widely practiced medium was born in the twentieth century, with approaches to artist’s-book publishing established early in the century. Luxury editions, called livres d’artistes, (literally “artists’ books,” but specifically denoting deluxe editions with original prints) were produced by established art dealers to promote the work of artists they represented, with the books often encased in deluxe bindings.

Meanwhile, avant-garde artists and writers, particularly in Russia, produced artistically adventurous works under their own auspices, less concerned with production values and focused more on the book as a hybrid art form. Paris was a major center for the production of livres d’artistes, while in Russia, daring experimentation with the form of the book itself set a standard for innovation. Today, more artists than ever are making books, following paths established more than 100 years ago.

In Paris, the early twentieth century was a time when artists of all disciplines frequented the same cafes and salons. Artists and poets had a strong affinity—eager to collaborate, they found the book to be an opportune medium. The extent of these creative partnerships, particularly in France but common also in Russia, may have been unprecedented. Work preserved in the Logan Collection captures the spirit and momentum of successive cultural movements created by artists and writers.

Two visionary Parisian art dealers provided an early impetus for what would soon become a widely practiced art form.

Born in 1866, Ambroise Vollard established his first gallery in 1893 and began publishing livres d’artistes in 1900 with the debut of Parallèlement (Bonnard/Verlaine). One of the most successful gallerists of his time, he took a particular interest in livres d’artistes, producing editions with many of the great artists of the era, including Auguste Rodin, Raoul Dufy, Odilon Redon, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, and others. He published twenty-four titles in all, leaving twenty-seven more projects in progress at his death, in 1939.

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, born in 1884, was known for his prescient early support of the Cubist work of Picasso and Georges Braque, as well as his insightful appreciation of little-known writers of the avant-garde. The first livre d'artiste under his imprint, L’enchanteur pourissant (1909), was Guillaume Apollinaire’s first book, and featured André Derain’s first book illustrations. Subsequent artist/author pairings under Kahnweiler’s imprint included Max Jacob with Picasso and Apollinaire with Dufy, both in 1911.

Published the same year as his Surrealist Manifesto, in Les pas perdus Breton captured the insurgent, high-energy spirit of Surrealism in its earliest stages. “Those seeking a kind of cult pilgrimage to nowhere but the opposite of where one is,” writes critic and historian Mary Ann Caws, “would have found the ‘leave everything’ model alluring, even before—perhaps especially before—what one was leaving everything for had been clearly defined.”

Dlia Golosa is one of the great marriages of radical design and poetry. Designer El Lissitzky transformed Mayakovsky’s popular poems of revolution into typographic images, then created a book structure with tabbed icons so that any poem could be accessed directly.

Gertrude Stein once said that Picasso “had a certain way of writing his thoughts” in his art making, a remark particularly apt for his work in Le chant des morts. The bold forms cradle the handwritten poems of the poet Pierre Reverdy almost as in an illuminated manuscript.

By the late twentieth century, the artist’s book had arrived in the mainstream. In the United States, artist’s book presses such as Gemini G. E. L. in Los Angeles, Universal Limited Art Editions in New York, and Arion Press in San Francisco were carrying forward the livre d’artiste tradition in editions with blue-chip artists. At the same time, community book arts centers emerged in New York, Minneapolis, Washington, and San Francisco to teach craft technique, and colleges and art schools began offering degrees in artist’s-book production.

In a time when, for many people, digital screens are replacing the traditional book for day-to-day reading, the artist’s book has become a kind of apotheosis of the book form, bringing reading into the realm of art—just as Vollard and Kahnweiler had intended back in Paris more than a century ago.

As the only works of art that must be handled to be fully experienced, artists’ books present a challenge for an institution charged with their conservation and display. The current project addresses this challenge by making contents of, and related information about, selected books from the collection available online using the capabilities of digital media. The project aims to raise the accessibility of the collection and create greater public understanding and awareness of what critic and historian Johanna Drucker has called “the quintessential twentieth-century art form.” This project intends to make significant works by many of the most important artists of the century available for public access in their entirety for the first time.

Major support for this project comes from:

The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation
The Reva and David Logan Foundation

Over a period of twenty years, the Chicago collectors Reva and David Logan built one of the great private collections of artists’ books, and in 1998 donated that collection to the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, home of works on paper at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

With more than 400 carefully assembled titles, the Logan Collection contains many of the most important works in the genre, with significant artists’ books representing virtually every major art movement dating from the beginnings of the livre d’artiste in the late nineteenth century. Augmented by important works already held by the Achenbach Foundation, the Logan gift established the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as stewards of one of the most historically significant collections of artists’ books in the United States.