A book has been left on a wall, open to the elements, near where I live: Tilly Bagshawe’s Adored (2005), the story of Sienna McMahon, granddaughter of movie legend Duke McMahon, who grows up amid scandal. ‘Sex. Greed. Ambition. Welcome to Hollywood.’
Marcel Duchamp's Unhappy Readymade (1919) is another example of a book left outside, open to the elements. Duchamp created Unhappy Readymade as a wedding gift for his sister Suzanne. He instructed her to hang a Euclidean geometry book on strings in the balcony of her rue Condamine’s Paris apartment, and to expose the ‘knowledge’ in the book to the test of the elements: wind, sun, and rain (and by that, also challenge Euclidean geometry, on its three dimensions). 'The wind had to go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages,' as Duchamp told Pierre Cabanne (in Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, 1987, p. 61). Time and weather had indeed taken their toll on Unhappy Readymade, and the book eroded completely. Although it is suggested that it was later found, hung from a clothesline, at Professor Amalfitano’s backyard in Mexico (Roberto Bolaño, 2666).
The American artist, Ed Ruscha is seen by many as one of the progenitors of the artist’s book as a form in its own right. In his book of interviews, wittily titled, ‘Leave Any Information at the Signal’, Ruscha playfully imagines a character called the Information Man who will sidle up to you and dispense arbitrary facts: “The information man is someone who comes up to you and begins telling you stories and related facts about a particular subject in your life. He came up to me and said, ‘Of all the books of yours that are out in public, only 171 are placed face up with nothing covering them; 2026 are in vertical positions in libraries, and 2715 are under books in stacks. The most weight on a single book is sixty-eight pounds, and that is in the city of Cologne, Germany, in a bookstore. Fifty-eight have been lost; fourteen have been totally destroyed by water or fire; two-hundred sixteen books could be considered badly worn. Three hundred and nineteen books are in positions between forty and fifty degrees. Eighteen of the books have been deliberately thrown away or destroyed. Fifty-three books have never been opened, most of these being newly purchased and put aside momentarily.
“’Of the approximately 5000 books of Ed Ruscha that have been purchased, only 32 have been used in a directly functional manner. Thirteen of these have been used as weights for paper or other small things, seven have been used as swatters to kill small insects such as flies and mosquitos, two were used as a device to nudge open a door, six have been used to transport foods like peanuts to a coffee table, and four have been used to nudge wall pictures to their correct levels. Two hundred and twenty-one people have smelled pages of the books. Three of the books have been in continual motion since their purchase; all three of these are on a boat near Seattle, Washington.’
Marcel Duchamp's Unhappy Readymade (1919) is another example of a book left outside, open to the elements. Duchamp created Unhappy Readymade as a wedding gift for his sister Suzanne. He instructed her to hang a Euclidean geometry book on strings in the balcony of her rue Condamine’s Paris apartment, and to expose the ‘knowledge’ in the book to the test of the elements: wind, sun, and rain (and by that, also challenge Euclidean geometry, on its three dimensions). 'The wind had to go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages,' as Duchamp told Pierre Cabanne (in Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, 1987, p. 61). Time and weather had indeed taken their toll on Unhappy Readymade, and the book eroded completely. Although it is suggested that it was later found, hung from a clothesline, at Professor Amalfitano’s backyard in Mexico (Roberto Bolaño, 2666).
The American artist, Ed Ruscha is seen by many as one of the progenitors of the artist’s book as a form in its own right. In his book of interviews, wittily titled, ‘Leave Any Information at the Signal’, Ruscha playfully imagines a character called the Information Man who will sidle up to you and dispense arbitrary facts: “The information man is someone who comes up to you and begins telling you stories and related facts about a particular subject in your life. He came up to me and said, ‘Of all the books of yours that are out in public, only 171 are placed face up with nothing covering them; 2026 are in vertical positions in libraries, and 2715 are under books in stacks. The most weight on a single book is sixty-eight pounds, and that is in the city of Cologne, Germany, in a bookstore. Fifty-eight have been lost; fourteen have been totally destroyed by water or fire; two-hundred sixteen books could be considered badly worn. Three hundred and nineteen books are in positions between forty and fifty degrees. Eighteen of the books have been deliberately thrown away or destroyed. Fifty-three books have never been opened, most of these being newly purchased and put aside momentarily.
“’Of the approximately 5000 books of Ed Ruscha that have been purchased, only 32 have been used in a directly functional manner. Thirteen of these have been used as weights for paper or other small things, seven have been used as swatters to kill small insects such as flies and mosquitos, two were used as a device to nudge open a door, six have been used to transport foods like peanuts to a coffee table, and four have been used to nudge wall pictures to their correct levels. Two hundred and twenty-one people have smelled pages of the books. Three of the books have been in continual motion since their purchase; all three of these are on a boat near Seattle, Washington.’
Now, wouldn’t it be nice to know these things?"