Blood on Paper - the Art of the Book

About

At a time when the notion of the book is challenged by the advent of the screen and computer, this exhibition aims to show the extraordinary ways in which the book has been treated by leading artists of today and the recent past. Blood on Paper will focus on new and contemporary work, and on books where the artist has been the driving force in conception and design. The past twenty years have seen outstanding work by some of the most influential and respected artists of our time. The exhibition selects books which reveal both the creative process and the soul of the artist in question. Some are iconic works which established the genre of the livre d'artiste after the Second World War; others are surprises from artists who are best known for their work with other sorts of material. Formats and production methods vary enormously. Some works show the virtuosity of traditional ‘hot metal' printing techniques, others take the commercially-produced book as the starting point of their statements, yet others produce stunning large-scale installations and sculptures. Seen together, these artists' books show a truly astonishing inventiveness, many on display to the public for the first time. Artists represented range from Matisse, Picasso and Braque to Anselm Kiefer, Anish Kapoor and Georg Baselitz. Almost all notable artists of the 20th and 21st centuries have produced books, or works that refer to books: those represented will also include Balthus, Louise Bourgeois, Daniel Buren, Anthony Caro, Eduardo Chillida, Francesco Clemente, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Sol Lewitt, Richard Long , Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg and many others whose names are synonymous with art today.