Harold Rosenberg
ART BOOKS, BOOK ART, ART
In Paris a new series of art books has appeared under
the rubric of Cahiers du Musee de Poche. Thus Malraux'
museum of the imagination has been supplemented by one of the
pocket. In our time, apparently, art must
be
made portable enough
to
be
packed into the head or stuffed into clothing.
How else could one keep pace with its frantic expansion?
Each
year
more
art
is dug out of different times and places, to say noth–
ing of the increasing generation of new works on all continents. The
total
"museum" grows ever larger; no one is equal to tracking its
contents across its global dimensions; the only solution
is
to render
them into forms that permit their simultaneous delivery every–
where. Without the transmutation of substances, even the profes–
sionals would soon
be
hopelessly out of touch.
Moreover, as the world of art keeps swelling, so, too, does the
art
world. Through cultural programs in all nations, additional
legIIlents of society discover in
art
pleasures not unrelated to the
picture stories and treasures of childhood. While the actual audi–
ence of paintings and sculptures
is
still pitifully small, and may
even
be
shrinking, the potential audience of
art,
or at least of
the
art
idea, includes nothing less than the whole of humanity, from
bishops to inmates of prison therapy wards.
The
art
in an
art
book is a collection of substitute
images.
As
"objects" these are, of course, less than satisfactory: the picture
plates lack the scale, materiality, surface, aging, environment, etc.,
of
their originals-their color, even at the very best, is, inevitably,
off.
