Reflections on the Illustrated Book

Abstract

A product of post-modernism, the avant-garde illustrated book, or the "livre detourné," shares this era’s preoccupation with the absence of traditional generic distinctions and its questioning or reading conventions. This is evidenced in the indeterminacy of the text (is it to be read or to be seen?) and its relationships to illustrative elements, as well as in its shape. The "deviant" book, as exemplified by Lohr and Kristofori, has the status of an object and is thus perceived more in relation to three-dimensional artifacts than to paintings which have traditionally served as models for illustrated books. As exemplified by the Kickshaws Press productions, where typography dominates, the text is read, and unread, through the letters that give, take and lose shape as the book progresses. This tension between text and typography, which replaces drawn or painted images, reinforces the underlying significance of the text as écriture, thrusting it into the mise-en-abyme of sui-referentiality from which more pictorial illustration — particularly that which seconds metaphoric or symbolic interpretations in the text — gives the illusion of escape.