Chasing the Rainbow and Boekie Woekie: The Artist's Book as a Medium Made of Motion

The “artist’s book” has been an expanding field of creative practice since the 1960s. Critical writing in the late 20th century attempted to define how the newly conceptualized practice was distinct from historical ways in which artists had been engaged with the book form. Now that the “artist’s book” is a firmly established idea, critical writing has moved toward interrogating its parameters and exploring methodologies tailored to the unique characteristics of the book as a medium.This thesis proposes movement as the defining distinctive characteristic of the artist’s book: movement on the page surface, movement through a book’s pages, and movement of the book among readers through distribution. Through detailed analysis of the bookwork Chasing the Rainbow, by Rúna Thorkelsdóttir, and of the artists’ bookstore Boekie Woekie, I explore what a methodology based in theories of movement, such as Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, can bring to the study of artists’ books.