Books
Book Thoughts: An Introduction
A complex web of ideas and motives underlie the making of my books. Walking into a reconstruction of Adolf Wolfli’s insane asylum cell at Documenta 5 in 1972 with four-foot high stacks of his drawings flanking the door, I was struck by the beauty of the idea of compressing one’s life’s work into a couple of stacks. And why not document a life’s thoughts through images and words using, for example, one-of-a-kind Medieval illuminated manuscripts as models? Stitched and bound volumes, however, permitted the viewing of only two pages at a time. Accordion books had pages that could be turned as a standard book, opened and wall-mounted as a scroll, extended on a platform, or placed as an accordion on pedestals where the book becomes sculptural and architectural.
