The Century of Artists' Books

This book offers a visual and thematic journey through avant-garde, concrete, visual, and experimental poetics as they appeared in ephemeral little magazines and small press publications from the 1960s onward. This book serves as an exhibition catalog for After Words: Visual and Experimental Poetry in Little Magazines and Small Presses, 1960–2025 from April 23rd to July 26, 2025, at The Grolier Club exhibition in New York City.

Small presses include: 7 Flowers Press, Agentzia, Anabasis, Asylum’s Press, Ayizan Press, Beach Books Texts & Documents, Beau Geste Press, blewointmentpress, Burning Press, C Press, Chax Press, Coach House Press, Edition Hansjörg Mayer, Edizioni Geiger, Expanded Media Editions, Fleye Press, Goliard Press, Grabhorn-Hoyem, Granary Books, Druckwerk, Hawk’s Well Press, Heiner Friedrich, The Hermetic Press, Hermetic Gallery, John Martin, Joseph Melzer Verlag, Kickshaws, Kontexts Publications, Letter Edged in Black Press, Luna Bisonte Productions, Membrane Press, Milano: East 128, New Wilderness Foundation, Nietzsche’s Brolly, Nova News, Open Book, Openings Press, PANic Press, Phenomenon Press, Poltroon Press, Renegade Press, Roaring Fork Press, Scorribanda Productions, Seedorn Verlag, Seripress, Siglio Press, Station Hill, Tarasque Press, Tetrad Press, Visual Poetry Workshop National Poetry Society of London, Wild Hawthorn Press, and Xexoxial Editions.

Little magazines include: “before your very eyes!”, A: An Envelope Magazine of Visual Poetry, Abracadabra, Alcheringa, Anti-Isolation, Approches, AQ, Assembling, Blank Tape, Bulletin From Nothing, Cenizas, Diagonal Cero, E pod, Fruit Cup, Ganglia, Geiger, Gnaoua, Industrial Sabotage, Interstate, Journeyman, Kaldron, Klacto 23, Kontakte, Kontexts, Kroklok, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, Libellus, Life Begins with Love, Lines, Lost and Found Times, Lost Paper, Mini, New Wilderness Letter, Pages, Poor.Old.Tired.Horse., Rawz, Revue OU, Rhinozeros, Sammelband Futura, Schmuck, Shi Shi: Concrete & Visual Poetry, Signal, Soft Need, Sondern, Spanish Fleye, Stereo Headphones, Taproot Reviews, The Acts: The Shelf Life, The Difficulties, The Improbable, The Insect Trust Gazette, The Marrahwanna Quarterly, The San Francisco Earthquake, The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage, Toothpick Lisbon & the Orcas Islands, Unarmed: Adventurous Poetry Journal, UNI/vers(;), WhiteWalls, Xerolage, and xtant.

The Weight of the Concrete explores the legacy of the Turinese artist and publisher Ezio Gribaudo (1929–2022), examining his multifaceted oeuvre at the confluence of image and language. This publication, named after Il Peso del Concreto (1968)—a seminal work that featured Gribaudo’s early graphic creations alongside an anthology of concrete poetry edited by the poet Adriano Spatola (1941–88)—places Gribaudo’s work in conversation with approximately forty artists and poets from different generations, all of whom similarly engage with explorations of text, form, and visual expression.

Reflecting the editorial premise of Il Peso del Concreto, The Weight of the Concrete revisits the influential anthology, including archive material that documents its production, and reimagines it, pairing Gribaudo’s graphic work with a new selection of historical and contemporary concrete and experimental poetry.

At the heart of the volume is Gribaudo’s emblematic Logogrifi series, developed from the 1960s onward. The Logogrifi reveal his deep engagement with the art of bookmaking and fascination with industrial printing processes, relief matrices, typefaces, and language games.

In this new edition, the editors take the opportunity to revisit Gribaudo’s pioneering work, examining previously overlooked dimensions—gendered, geographical, and technological—and exploring contemporary associations beyond the original context. The book also includes essays that elucidate the poetic and political interplay between image, language, and materiality.

This publication is released following Ezio Gribaudo – The Weight of the Concrete, an exhibition held at the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz, Austria (2023–24), and at the Museion—Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy (2024).

Edited by Tom Engels and Lilou Vidal
Published by Axis Axis and Grazer Kunstverein

Contributions by Anni Albers, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Irma Blank, Al Cartio, Paula Claire, CAConrad, Natalie Czech, Betty Danon, Constance DeJong, Mirtha Dermisache, Johanna Drucker, Bryana Fritz, Ilse Garnier, Liliane Giraudon, Susan Howe, Alison Knowles, Katalin Ladik, Liliane Lijn, Hanne Lippard, Sara Magenheimer, Françoise Mairey, Nadia Marcus, Giulia Niccolai, Alice Notley, Ewa Partum, sadé powell, N. H. Pritchard, Cia Rinne, Neide Dias de Sá, Giovanna Sandri, Mary Ellen Solt, Alice Theobald, Colleen Thibaudeau, Patrizia Vicinelli, Pascal Vonlanthen, Hannah Weiner, and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

Essays by Alex Balgiu, Tom Engels, Nadia Marcus, Luca Lo Pinto, Mónica de la Torre, and Lilou Vidal

The English translation of Zdanevich's Dadaist autobiographical lecture in Paris in 1922, where he adopts the name Iliazda. In this entertaining lecture, the achievements of the avant-garde is presented as a combination of zaum, polymorphous sexuality, aleatory forms and scatological interpretation of culture.

The second volume of the bie bao series presents a eulogy entitled Iliazda at the Birthday Party, a pseudo-autobiographical lecture delivered by Ilya Zdanevich in Paris in 1922. It reports on Zdanevich's artistic and political adventures up until then. Along with an autobiography full of self-admiration, in this lecture Zdanevich gives an interpretation of his zaum dramas inspired by Freudianism, and humorously describes a colourful image of the Russian microcosm in Montparnasse. 

Additionally, this second volume also includes Iliazd's letter to Ardengo Soffici from 1964, where one can read, in the most unambiguous terms, about Zdanevich's positions against war, imperialism, and all forms of nationalism. Subtitled 50 Years of Russian Futurism, the letter to Soffici presents us with an altogether new Zdanevich—a "fellow traveller" in both leftist and avant-garde circles. As well as the extended introduction and extensive annotations, the texts are further contextualised with Johanna Drucker's visual presentation of the birth of the Iliazd cult.

The bie bao series will include eight publications, covering many layers of Zdanevich's rich theoretical and artistic output. Each volume consists of a bio-bibliographical introduction, a commentary, a translation with annotations, and artistic intervention.

Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich, 1894-1975) was a Russian poet, designer, typographer, theoretician, art critic, and publisher, close to the avant-garde circles and one of the promoters of Futurism in Russia, author of a poetic work, drama written in zaum abstract poetic trans-sense or "transrational" language, and novels.

The book (Re)claiming presents ways in which various queer and feminist communities and initiatives in the Netherlands have (re)claimed the triangle—along with other symbols, words and stories—and in doing so take up an empowering position in a hostile society.

Besides a collection of buttons, archival materials featured in this book include short statements and flyers by queer groups such as SUHO, Sjalhomo, Roze Front, Roze Driehoek, Roze Gebaar, Van Doofpot tot Mankepoot, Interpot/ILIS, Lesbisch Archief Amsterdam, Strange Fruit Vrouwen and Groep Zwarte Vrouwen Nijmegen, as well as a text by Karin Daan, the designer of the Homomonument in Amsterdam. With this selection, this book brings together queer, trans, crip, feminist, Jewish and Black perspectives on (re)claiming as an activist strategy.

Most of these materials were researched at IHLIA LGBTI Heritage in Amsterdam, with additions found at the International Institute of Social History and the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV-Atria) in Amsterdam, and LAN Lesbisch Archief Nijmegen.

distinguish the limit from the edge is an intergenerational dialogue between Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Jimmy Robert. Their connection emerges through the intersection of text and image between selected work from Cha’s oeuvre and Robert’s practice that share the formal strategies of the fold.

Robert’s work utilizes paper as a sculptural material, and his hand sometimes appears to shape the page. For Cha, the fold is present in her compositions enmeshing language through strategies of visual poetry, as in L’Image Concrete feuille L’Objet Abstrait (1976),  and Untitled (après tu parti) (1976) which are both previously unpublished. The possibility of overlaying one’s work with the other, emphasised by the book’s spiral-bound double spine, and reverse fold-outs, forges an intimacy, a shared sensibility, and an encounter with the corporeal. In conversation with editor Jacob Korczynski, Robert refers to Fred Moten’s In The Break, stating, ‘Suddenly time falters. Words don’t go there. And if words don’t go there, then what does?’ 

distinguish the limit from the edge is commissioned by Book Works, edited by Jacob Korczynski and designed by Wolfe Hall. The book is published in association with Participant Inc. with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts Management Services, after the exhibition:

flipping through pages keeping a record of time: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha & Jimmy Robert curated by Jacob Korczynski at Participant Inc., 6 September – 3 November, 2024, supported by a Fall 2020 Curatorial Research Fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

This eponymously titled publication by fierce pussy brings together thirty-nine of the legendary art collective’s posters, from works made in the urgent early days of the AIDS crisis to present-day advocacy for Queer and Trans rights. In keeping with fierce pussy’s activism in public spaces, the publication is designed to allow readers to tear out any of the posters to share, wheatpaste, scan, photocopy, and distribute or to easily open the book to any page to hang it on a wall. Combining calls for political and social action, proud reclamations of derogatory language, and pointed questions, the posters in fierce pussy address pressing sociopolitical issues in the group’s distinctive voice.

Emerging during a decade steeped in the AIDS crisis and LGBTQ+ activism, fierce pussy brought Queer identity directly into the streets in a manner characterized by the urgency of those years. In recent years they have expanded to also present their work in galleries and museums, while continuing to intervene in the public space, always working with an economy of means and a collective ethos of inclusion and solidarity.

This publication was originally published by Printed Matter in 2008 to coincide with a retrospective exhibition of the collective’s work. This new expanded edition includes twenty-five additional posters.

fierce pussy is an art collective formed in New York City in 1991. Originally composed of a fluid and often-shifting cadre of dykes, the collective was active through 1994. In 2008, the four core founding members Nancy Brooks Brody (1962–2023), Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka began working together again. Adamantly low-tech and low-budget, fierce pussy has always relied on modest resources: old typewriters, found photographs, and their own baby pictures. In the early days, much of the work was produced using materials and resources they had on hand and the equipment at their day jobs. This publication exemplifies the ethos of the group—to share their work and messaging with the masses.

Managing Editor: Jules Spector
Designers: Garrick Gott and Bryce Wilner

In 1972 Bernadette Mayer began this project as an aid to psychological counseling, writing in parallel journals so that, as she wrote in one (in bed, on subways, at parties, etc.), her psychiatrist read the other. Using colored pens to “color-code emotions,” she recorded dreams, events, memories, and reflections in a language at once free-ranging and precise—a work that creates its own poetics. She sought “a workable code, or shorthand, for the transcription of every event, every motion, every transition” of her own mind and to “perform this process of translation” on herself in the interest of evolving an innovative, inquiring language. STUDYING HUNGER JOURNALS registers this intention within a body of poetry John Ashbery has called “magnificent.”

In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled, and beat, The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them.  

Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today's activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration, and long-overdue reassessment, of the coalition's inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.