Abstract
IN A SHORT ARTICLE ON THE PREVALENCE OF ART BOOKS, Harold Rosenberg wondered if the art book typifies the breakdown of the organic experience of art by substituting a document in its place. If it is true that even the best hand-tinted reproductions in art books are merely poor facsimiles, is it also the case that these reproductions mischaracterize works to such an extent that damage is being done to the visual arts, generally? Anyway, what happens to the essence of the work of art when the work as object is depicted by plates and transformed into text (description, explanation, interpretation)? Naturally such questions presuppose that the experience of the work of art is degraded when it devolves into a practice of mere reading.' The artists' book-which is not to be confused with art books-poses a challenge to this presupposition by playing with the aesthetic transformation of art into document and document into art. Still, Rosenberg might remind us that the better artist books are those that make the transforma-
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