Established | 1976 |
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Location | 231 Eleventh Avenue New York, NY 10001 |
Coordinates | 40°45′03″N74°00′23″W / 40.750941°N 74.006448°W |
Type | Distributor Publisher Exhibitor |
Founder |
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Website | printedmatter |
Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit grant-supported bookstore, artist organization, and arts space which publishes and distributes artists' books. [1] It is currently located at 231 11th Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.
Printed Matter, Inc. was founded by a loose consortium of artists, critics, and publishers—including Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Carol Androcchio, Amy Baker (Sandback), Edit DeAk, Mike Glier, Nancy Linn, Walter Robinson, Ingrid Sischy, Pat Steir, Mimi Wheeler, Robin White and Irena von Zahn[ failed verification ]—in 1976 as a for-profit art space in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. The original concept arose from Sol LeWitt's desire for artists to take over the means of production of their variously serious, unique, and oddball artist's books (alternatively known as "bookworks" or "book art"). At the time, these artist's books were viewed as inconsequential and used by dealers as free promotional materials, instead of being regarded as art. [2]
Lucy Lippard cites International General, an independent publisher of artists' books run by artist Seth Siegelaub, as a model for Printed Matter Inc. [3]
Printed Matter is one of the first organizations dedicated to creating and distributing artists' books, incorporating self-publishing, small press publishing, and artist networks and collectives. [4] Historically there was no lack of publishers of these works, but there was a real need for distributors; Printed Matter functions as both a distribution agency as well as a publisher of artists' books. [5] Printed Matter focused heavily on the distribution of these artists' books because it could simultaneously broaden the reach of art outside museums and allow artists to "control their own production." [2]
The works published by Printed Matter are editioned and are conceived by artists as artworks. However, due to mass-producing they can be sold at affordable prices (currently around $5-$50), as they are meant to spread the accessibility of art. [2] [6]
Printed Matter also serves as a support system for avant-garde artists as well as a place of community, often balancing its role as publisher, exhibition space, retail space, and community center of the downtown arts scene. [7] [8]
In 1976 writer and editor Ingrid Sischy was hired by Sol LeWitt and the board of directors as the inaugural director of Printed Matter, Inc. By 1978 she was successful in applying for and being granted 501(c)(3) corporate non-profit status, and Printed Matter Inc officially became a non-profit organization with a focus on artist publications. [7] [9]
Materials on view at Printed Matter are either discovered through a submission process or arrive via a network of artists, distributors, and publishers. Because of the non-traditional approach to curating content, the inventory of Printed Matter is very diverse, representing the long tail concept of offerings. The mail order catalog model of fulfillment is how Printed Matter maintains a global reach to its worldwide customer base, which includes libraries, archives, and museums, as well as academic institutions and individuals. [6] The collected works are organized by artist's name, with special sections organized by genre i.e. zines, audio works, periodicals, or publisher. Each summer the inventory is assessed from top to bottom resulting in a comprehensive backlist and updated archive being ready for perusal in the Fall season. [6]
Printed Matter also curates artists' window installations in the front window that engage the public beyond the prospect of buying and selling books. [3] [8]
Artist AA Bronson served as executive director of Printed Matter from 2004-2010 and during that time created and directed the NY Art Book Fair. Started in 2006, [10] the NY Art Book Fair hosts over 200 independent presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, artists, and publishers. [11] [12] The LA Art Book Fair was started in 2013. [13] The NY Art Book Fair and LA Art Book Fair are now both presented by Printed Matter. [14] [15] After Bronson's departure, Phil Aarons, who is on the board of Printed Matter, and Jordan Nassar help to put together the book fairs. From 2010-2017, the late Shannon Michael Cane was instrumental to the success of the fairs. [16] [17]
In collaboration with Artspace, Aspen Art Museum, and Centro University, Printed Matter created The Curated Shelf that displays and sells artists' books. The Curated Shelf includes artists' books from the 1970s to current day that range a variety of different themes and styles. [18]
Artists' books are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects.
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.
Eva Hesse was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 1960s.
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, the Artforum logo is a bold and condensed iteration of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font, a feat for an American publication to have considering how challenging it was to obtain fonts favored by the Swiss school via local European foundries in the 1960s. Artforum is published by Artforum Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Media Corporation. Currently, the magazine is without editorial leadership.
AA Bronson is an artist. He was a founding member of the artists' group General Idea, was president and director of Printed Matter, Inc., and started the NY Art Book Fair and the LA Art Book Fair.
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.
Lucy Rowland Lippard is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the "dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. She is the author of 21 books on contemporary art and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations.
Artspace, officially Artspace Visual Arts Centre, is an independent, not-for-profit and non-collecting residency-based contemporary art centre. Artspace is housed in the historic Gunnery Building in Woolloomooloo, fronting Sydney Harbour in Sydney, Australia. Devoted to the development of certain new ideas and practices in contemporary art and culture, since the early 1980s Artspace has been building a critical context for Australian and international artists, curators and writers.
Slavs and Tatars is an art collective and "a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia". Founded in 2006 as a collaboration between artists and designers Payam Sharifi and Kasia Korczak, the group’s work is centered on three activities: exhibitions, books and lecture performances.
Catriona Jeffries is an art gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, that has been in operation since 1994. It focuses on the post conceptual art practices which have emerged from Vancouver and the critical relationships between these practices and particular international artists. It is recognized as one of the most important commercial contemporary art galleries in Vancouver, and one of the only ones that has an international reputation.
The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit collective of professionals working with contemporary art. NADA members include galleries, gallery directors, non-profit art spaces, art advisors, curators, writers, museum and other art professionals from around the world. In addition to hosting year-round programming for its members, NADA hosts two art fairs annually: NADA New York and NADA Miami.
Margia Kramer is an American documentary visual artist, writer and activist living in New York. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kramer recontextualized primary texts in a series of pioneering, interdisciplinary multi-media installations, videotapes, self-published books, and writings that focused on feminist, civil rights, civil liberties, censorship, and surveillance issues.
Gene Beery was an American painter and photographer, who has been described as an expressionist, Pop artist, minimalist, and conceptualist over his career of fifty-plus years. He was primarily known for his text-based canvases, based on the concept that words and the ideas they provoke can exist as works of art in themselves. Living and working in New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Beery was at the center of the development of both Pop and Conceptual art. From the 1990s, Beery also worked as a photographer, intimately documenting his family, friends and life in a snapshot style. He lived and worked in Sutter Creek, California until his death on November 19, 2023, at the age of 86.
The NY Art Book Fair is Printed Matter, Inc's annual event, historically held in September or October. The NY Art Book Fair is the world's largest book fair for artists’ books and related publications, featuring over 370 exhibitors from 30 countries, and attended by over 39,000 visitors annually. Originally free, the now ticketed fair presents an active program of exhibitions, talks, workshops, book launches and performances, as well as many off-schedule events hosted by individual publishers.
Cynthia Carlson is an American visual artist, living and working in New York.
Ingrid Barbara Sischy was a South African-born American writer and editor who specialized in covering art, photography, and fashion. She rose to prominence as the editor of Artforum from 1979 to 1988, and was editor-in-chief of Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine from 1989 to 2008. Until her death in 2015, she and her partner Sandra Brant edited the Italian, Spanish and German editions of Vanity Fair.
Charles Gaines is an American artist whose work interrogates the discourse of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently involves the use of systems, predominantly in the form of the grid, often in combination with photography. His work is rooted in Conceptual Art – in dialogue with artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner – and Gaines is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. As one of the only African-American conceptual artists working in the 1970s, a time when political expressionism was a prevailing concern among African-American artists, Gaines was an outlier in his pursuit of abstraction and non-didactic approach to race and politics. There is a strong musical thread running through much of Gaines' work, evident in his repeated use of musical scores as well in his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy, as similar to John Cage and Sol LeWitt.
Clive Phillpot is a specialist on artists' books, essayist, art writer, curator, and a librarian. Phillpot started his library career at the Charing Cross Public Library in London.
Edit DeAk was a Hungarian-born American art critic and writer, co-founder of the journal Art-Rite and the non-profit bookstore and artist book distributor Printed Matter, Inc.
An art book fair is a type of curated art fair or exhibition for the purpose of displaying, selling and networking between artists, art book creators, illustrators, writers, specialty printers, independent publishers and their audience. The parameters of inclusion vary from fair to fair: some only include publications which are themselves considered art objects, limited edition art books, artist multiples or books specifically about an art topic; others are wider to include graphic novels, cultural magazines, zines, creative writing, poetry, and other artist projects. Like other art fairs, an art book fair will not only include works for sale but also artist installations, projects, happenings, workshops, talks, panel discussions or book launches. Recursive fairs may run with a yearly theme or prompt which guides programming.