The Book : a Space of Creation (XIXth-XXIth Centuries) – LEC

The book : a Space of Creation (XIXth-XXIth Centuries)

This proposal contains a programme of research on creation taking the form of books made to be seen, read and exhibited since the XIXth Century.
It focuses on books where the text to be read is also meant to be seen (iconotexts, spatialised texts, with specific typographical arrangements, etc.) as well as on books where the text is in a dialogue with the visual image. Thus it will study books currently classified as livres de dialogue (between an artist and a writer), artists’books, graphical books.
Different approaches will be combined and researchers in different domains (literature, sylistics, history of art, esthetics, book production) will engage in a dialogue, together with creators and book professionals.
The subject of the programme is the relation between writing and image, between the readable and the visible in the book, and the new forms it has adopted since the XIXth Century. More specifically it questions the relations between scriptural and figural modes of composition, between the text, writing in its graphic dimension (the tracing of the hand-written line, or of the letter itself) and the visual image (the drawing). It studies the manner one influences the other in the moment of creation (the production of the work by the artist(s)) as well as in the reception of the book. What is withdrawn from, but also what is added to, these books made to be seen, read and exhibited?
The programme aims to work not only on the linguistic specificities of the text, but also on the semiotic specificities of the image since the two modes of creation will be conceived of as engaged in a relationship of accompaniment, conjunction or disjunction, which goes well beyond a relationship of illustration.
This project thus also aims at stressing differences between the illustrated book and the new and different types of books it gave rise to, studying a corpus comprising the XIXth and XXth Centuries as well as very recent works, in the French as well as European domain. The approach will therefore be both synchronic and diachronic. The program aims to create a typology of works based on the different aspects of the creative process as well as the social-cultural context(s) that contributed to the emergence of new forms.
Creation will be considered not only from the point of view of modes of composition but also in relation with the medium chosen or the different actors in the process of production and realisation of the work as well as its distribution and conservation (typographers, publishers, gallery owners, curators). Conversely, the book will be taken as an indicator of new ways of reading and seeing created by the new media and places of distribution.

The new spaces of creation associated to the production of new forms of books form the main line of study pursued during the four years of this research programme.