“ Irma Boom
pays careful attention to word choice. The Dutch designer, one of the world’s
pre-eminent bookmakers, is loath to say “client” and refers to her projects as
“commissions.” She also doesn’t call herself an artist.
Never mind
that Ms. Boom, 56, was once in a group exhibition at the Pompidou Center, or
that many of her books are in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. Her belief
that she is not an artist could be a matter of culture — a product of her
“Dutch rigor,” as the architect Rem Koolhaas, a close friend and collaborator,
said.
But there
are many who would at least consider Ms. Boom’s books works of art. Among them
were the jurors of the Johannes Vermeer Award, the Dutch state prize for the
arts, which she won in 2014. “Her books transcend the level of mere information
carriers,” the jury’s report stated. “They are small or larger objects to admire,
tempting us to read them with close attention.” She received 100,000 euros to
put toward a “special project,” as the prize stipulates. “I cannot simply go
and shop at Prada,” Ms. Boom said.
So Ms. Boom
has used the prize for the quixotic, endless undertaking of creating a library
of what she called “only the books that are experimental.” Above her studio
here, the recently opened library is made up almost entirely of books from the
1600s and 1700s, and the 1960s and ’70s. “
Those eras
are when bookmaking wasn’t held back by conventions, Ms. Boom said, and when books
“breathed freedom” in content and form. (Many of today’s e-books, by contrast,
represent a “provisional low point” in the art of bookmaking, writes Mr.
Koolhaas in the catalog “Irma Boom: The Architecture of the Book.”) Her library
includes poetry collections, as well as exhibition catalogs that experimented
with form — a book bound with bolts, for example, or contained within what
seems like a three-ring binder.
The books
may be centuries old, but Ms. Boom would argue that the form is more effective
and relevant than ever. “Information is edited and put in a specific sequence,
printed and bound,” she said. “The result of this effort is the freezing of
time and information, which is a means of reflection.”
Compare
books with photographs or paintings, she added. “An image is serving as a
reference of time and place,” she said. “The flux inherent in the internet
doesn’t allow you that kind of time. The printed book is final and thus
unchangeable.”
“Creation
begins with a concept. (“It always has to have a concept,” Ms. Boom likes to
say.) She then carries out her vision not with software, but with models —
handmade, drastically scaled down versions of her projects that she uses to
test ideas and materials. The final result often looks as if it
could never have been designed on a computer. In a catalog she made of the
artist Sheila Hicks’s woven artwork, for example, the edges of the pages,
soaked and sawed, echo the edges — the selvage — of Ms. Hicks’s art.
Nina Stritzler-Levine, who directs the Bard
Graduate Center and organized Ms. Hicks’s show “Weaving as Metaphor” there
10 years ago, said that the book “stretched my mind.”
Ms. Boom considers the catalog her “manifesto
for the book.”
It caught the eye of MoMA, which after that
began collecting Ms. Boom’s oeuvre. Paola Antonelli, a curator at the
museum who collaborated with Ms. Boom on the catalog for the 2008 exhibition “Design
and the Elastic Mind,” said that her books are “very important as objects” and
could never exist electronically. “There’s a physicality that’s amazing,” Ms.
Antonelli added. “It’s always a physical object with something that makes it
unforgettable.”
Some of her
own projects have made their way to the library, including another rarity: a
book for Chanel that has no ink. “It’s the ultimate book,” Ms. Boom said. “It
only works in its physical form.” As a PDF, it would be just white pages.
The book is
the story of Chanel No.5 — which, as the first synthetic fragrance in a
radically simple bottle, was considered avant-garde in its time. Because
perfume is impossible to see once applied, Ms. Boom said, “I wanted to make a
book with content not printed.” The text and images are embossed on soft paper;
it is surprisingly readable. “
Ms. Boom
continues to add to the library, which she said would never be complete. There
are discoveries still to be made, many of them at auctions and antiquarian
bookstores. She often finds unexpected design innovations from centuries ago.
“Sometimes you think you invented something,” she added, “but it’s already been
done.”
Eventually,
Ms. Boom said, her library will become a haven for book lovers who want a space
to appreciate and study the books — no white gloves needed. In a way harking
back to her art school days with Mr. Kuipers, she also wants to invite people
to discuss what she called the “phenomenon” of the book. “I wouldn’t call it a
salon because that makes it so bourgeois.” (Again, careful word choice.) “It’s
a library.”
"I respect the
traditional book, but I don’t want to let myself be limited by it. I want to
develop further both the meaning and importance of the book, as well as its
limits. In the insights and structures which originated in new media, the
medium of the book has a new impetus. It is important that I can experiment
freely without fear of failure, in order to maintain the vitality of the book
and above all to take it further. I research the limits of the possibilities of
the form, and I don’t allow myself to be restrained by technology.
These
sentences are the start of almost every lecture that I give at conferences.
Often, I am the only one who takes objects, books, with them. I feel exactly
like a dinosaur in a place where everyone wants to be just very modern.
A week ago, I
was in London at a conference on the topic of Extinction. I was challenged to
defend the book, which I do not think the book needs at all. Whether it still
has a right to exist. I suggested that, precisely in this age of the Internet,
haste and superficiality, the book brings delay and depth. That’s just one of
the great qualities of the book.
Making books
means composing text, images and information in a bound form. Freezing content,
in contrast with the flux of the Internet, whereby a document is created which
in turn gives rise to reflection and encourages further investigation.
I also believe
that the biggest threat to books is the fact that people hardly read anymore,
or at least much less. A development that may be influenced by the Internet.
But the same Internet has also created new trends in the printed book: from a
linear structure to a book you can browse through, just like a website.
Will the book
survive? We are at the beginning of the renaissance of the book!
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