Book Art: The Coupland 50 and the Hirschhorn 37

[Dave Monroe]

Douglas Coupland is as much of a visual artist as he is a writer. With
his book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture Coupland
engraved his name on popular culture by tagging the post baby-boomer
generation. Books; however, are more than words for Coupland.

Coupland's latest book piece is titled Fifty Books I Have Read More
than Once. Coupland takes the covers from the 50 books he has read
more than once and glues them to the ends of wooden blocks, the length
of which is determined by the books importance to Coupland. The
installation is on view at the Simon Fraser University Gallery in
Vancouver until October 20th.

Coupland has said that his "big issue with the book world is that only
rarely does anybody address the physicality of books, as if to do so
is somehow an insult to 'words'"

Coupland understands the materiality of the book and it's life outside
the text. He acknowledges the inherent inability of most of those that
operate in the new book world (publishers, bookstores that sell new
books, most writers and the army of journalists, reviewers and others
who follow the trade) to get beyond the "words."

Fifty Books I Have Read More than Once is a sculptural Lego-like piece
defined by Coupland's textual influences yet represented by the images
that adorned the cover or dust jackets of these books. The essence of
the physicality of the book, the binding, is pasted front and center.
It leads the piece. A book is more than the sum of its words. The
piece provides "a methodology that would allow viewers to visualize
the structure of their own bibliographic histories - no two of which
are ever identical."

Great stuff.

The Copeland 50 includes books by Warhol, Pynchon, Jenny Holzer, Patty
Hearst, David Leavitt and 2 by Joan Didion....

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/bookpatrol/archives/122398.asp?from=blog_last3