Is publishing art books always a labour of love?

It’s Frieze Week, 2018: I’m working on the front desk of a well-known gallery in central London. It’s hosting the launch of photographer Juerger Teller’s latest book; a compendium of typically playful photographs of mega-curators Hans Ulrich Obrist and Francesco Bonami. The room is full of die-hard Teller fans carrying backpacks full of his previous publications.  They’re queuing up to have them signed by the photographer, known for his raw celebrity, fashion and art photography that is never retouched.

I’m struck: in our increasingly digital-first, social media-saturated world, what draws artists, galleries, and writers to spend time and resources on physical publishing? And why do people buy them? Are art books always a labour of love? Or are there other motivations to support their production?

“I foremost do books for myself, functioning as a kind of archive, while conceptualising my thoughts,” says Juergen Teller. “Unlike exhibitions, you study them on a train, sofa, at your desk, in bed or on the toilet. They can follow you everywhere.” Teller is preparing for a major survey exhibition, ‘i need to live’ at the Grand Palais, Paris, yet (incredibly) he’s also launching five publications on topics ranging from Lithuanian history to handbags and mythmaking – the latter of which he names his “most romantic project” to date.

Over the past three decades, Teller has produced dozens of publications with the German publisher Steidl. Go-sees, a book documenting models visiting his studio in the ‘90s, regularly sells at cult bookshop IDEA, in London’s Dover Street Market, for many multiples of its RRP.

The painter, filmmaker and sculptor Tai Shani also sees publications as central to her practice. Some of her earliest work was published in Buried, a death metal fanzine by Patrick Moran. Like Teller, she considers their portability important. “I like the way books are disseminated; they are affordable, democratic, scanned, copied, stolen; that the blueprints of my works have this very different circulation.”

“I’ve been mildly obsessed with artist books ever since I started stealing exhibition catalogues from the school library when I was an unruly teenager,” laughs Freddie Powell of Ginny on Frederick, who managed the bookshop at White Cube before opening his Smithfield gallery. “I’ve been collecting them ever since. I love the books from Karma and James Fuentes – I think the Americans do books the best, sadly.”

Jonah Freud, co-founder of Reference Point, a library, bookshop and bar at 180 Strand in London, names New York as a key place instigating his enthusiasm for opening a bookshop. “New York bookstores have such a good tradition of artist book culture that I felt London was lacking,” he says, citing places like MAST, Village Books, upstairs at The Strand bookstore, Alabaster Bookshop, Better Read Than Dead, and Printed Matter as key examples.

I ask Freud about the incredible selection of rare books available to sell and he quickly corrects me. “It’s not about selling them but allowing people to look at books for free. Books are often gatekept in libraries and archives, with real barriers to entry for young people. They aren’t places that make you feel comfortable or allow you to be curious. You have to know exactly what you are looking for to be able to look at it. We wanted to create a space that was more democratic and how we understand a library in the traditional sense – a community space.” The venue hosts many regular events, such as the Worms magazine book club hosted by gallerist Rose Easton on Monday nights.

The gallerist Alison Jacques has financially supported the production of significant museum catalogues and artist monographs, including Sheila Hicks for her show at Hepworth Wakefield, as well as Mária Bartuszová and Dorothea Tanning’s respective shows at Tate Modern. “Our role is twofold,” she tells me. “We create and develop an artist’s market but, most importantly, the curatorial trajectory for an artist is what matters and we have a duty to support every opportunity. It’s important for publications to accompany solo exhibitions: ultimately, many more people see the publication globally than the actual exhibition.”

These days, artist books are being resold for high prices on the secondary market, and no museum show worth its salt isn’t accompanied by a fat catalogue. What many don’t realise is that museum publications are often part, or wholly, funded by commercial galleries, patron groups and individual donors. Jacques explains that “museums find themselves in a very difficult situation [with funding] right now and galleries need to step in and help where they can afford to do so. In London in particular, the government’s levelling out policy has resulted in major museums such as the Camden Arts Centre and the Whitechapel having vital Arts Council funding reduced by huge amounts and the effects for them are catastrophic.”

 

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Galleries like Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and Karma have established their own publishing arms and even their own bookshops. “As of this year, we’ve published over 600 titles,” says Harry Thorne, editor at Gagosian. “These range from catalogues to monographs to artist books, from catalogues raisonnés to novellas to other places entirely.” Among them are recent publications on Jim Shaw, Rachel Feinstein, and Richard Wright. “They’re a vital, inquisitive space in which a practice or an assembled body of work can be reconsidered, recomplicated and reframed.”

“With every new publication, regardless of its focus or subject or scope, we ask: what can this book do? How can it take an artistic practice and add to it, grow it? That, for me, is why artist books are important,” Thorne acknowledges. “They’re the thoughts and conversations that continue after a show has run its course. Artist books aren’t simply records of exhibitions, projects, or creative careers; they’re extensions of them. They’re additive.”

 

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It’s 2023. I’m waiting for a friend in the ICA bookshop to see Gray Wielebinski’s exhibition. I look around at the impeccably curated selection of books – newly published and established classics. I get the lump in my stomach that happens every time I go to a bookshop. The specific combination of being overwhelmed with choice, acknowledging there will never be any time to read most offerings, with a sprinkle of guilt about overspending on books when previous purchases lie at home unread. In the corner of my eye, I see my friend Prem Sahib’s new publication That Fire Over There. I quickly purchase it, ignoring everything else on offer. I make a mental note to while away a guilt-free afternoon browsing at Reference Point.