Notes on the Publisher as AuteurAuthor(s): Debra Bricker BalkenSource: Art Journal, Vol. 52, No. 4, Interactions between Artists and Writers (Winter, 1993),pp. 70-71Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777627 .

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70

Notes on the Publisher as Auteur

Debra Bricker Balken

he case of the book publisher who engineers collab- orations between artists and writers presents a cu- rious inversion of individuality. With the pairing of

two figures' work, a dominant creative voice disappears. Or does it? While no overbearing ego is apparent in works such as My Pretty Pony (fig. 1), a collaboration by Barbara Kruger and Stephen King, or Haibun by Judith Shea and John Ashbery, a singular presence still seems to prevail. Invisible or decentered, it is concealed by the duality of image and text, artist and writer, and exists in the role of the publisher. The following random notes elaborate on the publisher as an auteur,1 someone who is the governing aesthetic and eco- nomic force behind a project.

1. The publisher links his/her authority with ideas of

ingenuity and self-expression. Gervais Jassaud, who oper- ates Collectif Gendration, a Paris-based collaborative book series, has asserted "I am as much a collaborator as I am a

publisher. I choose the text and 'marry' the author with the artist.... I create the concept of the book."2 Similar claims about method and artistic ownership have been made by other publishers. For example, Walter Hamady of the Perish- able Press has stated: "Usually I put the partnerships to-

gether. The policy for me is, if I like it, I'll do it. No er Airy You Dite bullshit."3 The procedure of matching artist with writer is considered instinctual, then, a kind of creative

enterprise, or as Steve Clay of Granary Books describes it in a

comparable way, "a reflection of my taste."'4 2. Frequently, the artist and writer who are coupled

through collaboration never meet on a project (an arrange- ment that seems peculiar only to book works). As a result, a

dialogue between the self and the other becomes symbolic and elliptical rather than direct. A pure exchange of ideas fails to take place. The weight of each personality is never

fully felt. Many publishers have found this situation desir- able. Jassaud has said, "I do not bring together artist and author who would obviously make the best symbiosis but ones who would make the strongest confrontation (fight)."5 Some sort of rupture between language and picture rather than

synthesis is sought. The unity of feeling embedded in the various drawings that have grown out of collaborations be- tween friends such as Archie Rand and John Yau and Philip Guston and Clark Coolidge, all of whom have similar aes- thetic positions, is missing in most of these contrived proj- ects. If any fusion of identity takes place between artist and

writer, it is through the intermediary of the publisher, who is an integral if not the pivotal part of the project.

3. The "aesthetic of indeterminacy,"6 a phrase Steve

Clay has used to describe the visual effect of the various books he has published, is antithetical to illustration. In Nods, a collaboration between Barbara Fahner and John Cage, no mimetic or clear relationship exists between image and text. Because the pictorial forms-in this instance, a mix of organic abstract shapes, some of which are based on the body-are not derived from the prose, the emphasis of the book is on invention, on the origination of new forms. The conventional design and organization of the book according to a serial structure is sometimes fractured and disrupted through imaginative devices, such as varying and staggering the size and progression of pages, as in Nods. Even when a linear format is kept in a book, as in My Pretty Pony, a sense of discontinuity occurs through the overlay of image and text.

4. The collaborative process is read by some pub- lishers as symptomatic of the demise of the centrality of the artist and writer in late-twentieth-century culture. Jassaud has noted that the ideas of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida are behind his thinking on this issue.7 The death of the "Author-God,"" a phenomenon that Barthes has allied with the diminishment of individuality along with his other realizations about the waning of the modern period, has

shaped Jassaud's view about the limits of subjectivity. May Castleberry, who is the founder and editor of the "Artists and Writers Series" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, gets to this position through different sources: she credits The Third Mind by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin as an influence. A similar type of demotion of the "all-powerful author, the geometrist [sic] who clings to his inspiration as

coming from divine inspiration informs the book.9 While

Burroughs and Gysin posit a radical type of collaboration, which involves the shredding and reconfiguration of two authors' texts to effect a total union of identities (something none of the collaborative teams in the Whitney series have

practiced), what attracted Castleberry about this process is the emphasis placed on the construction of a new, albeit

synthetic and anonymous, voice.10 Like Jassaud, Hamady, Clay, and others, she insists upon the necessity and indis-

pensability of her role in each project. The third mind, in all its ambiguity, then, is a multilayered space, a blend of

conflicting texts and images that also contains the voice of the publisher. On a metaphoric level, this third mind is not a

nameless author or artist but the project "facilitator," as Clay calls himself, or the publisher.

5. The reader is also let in and given a role in the

WINTER 1993

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aickedheat If you ddn't kepyeye on yourpretty pny it would jump the fencean b out of sight and you'dhave 14D take yourropebridleand go afe it, a trp that weasometme short but w as at o trnyour boes ito a rcknonetheless

Grada ad ArthrOgodhd cetd. Heasspposd

hadn'tmindedalthoughhethoughthe would earageth teeth of a ma-maybe een of a woma-who wouddcl i that pat the ae oftwelve) and theothers a fairchnc t hde Chvey had stllbenloking for a plac when Arhu sgo got tosit, tunedarund, and "caught him out" as hewas trying to squim-a astTeot n-behnd a pile of apple crates

"It wasnt fair," Gradpa ai. You didnt do no bitchng about it and tat wa s r t eaueam an never doe no bitc ing thy call it bitchigbeaus it ain't for men or even boys smart enough to kow bettr and brave enough to do beter. Just the same it wasn't fair I can saythat now beause you

dd't sayitthen."

FIG. 1 Barbara Kruger and Stephen King, My Pretty Pony, 1988, book. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

collaborative process (as is the bookbinder, the typesetter, and anyone else who has a hand in the production of the

book). With the restructuring of the book through varying means, such as disposing of a narrative or serial format, different expectations are brought to bear on the reader. His/ her involvement with unfolding/refolding pages or absorbing image and text concurrently intensifies the already innately temporal act of reading. It also makes for more creative interaction with the book, hence the reader as collaborator (or as Barthes and Burroughs and Gysin have it, the reader as

author). 6. Because the publisher does not privilege a single or

monolithic talent, the book cannot be marketed according to the autonomy of the author or artist. The binary arrangement of text and image disrupts the clear and straightforward identities of painting and writing. Moreover, other marketing strategies generally used to empower the individual author or

artist, such as building on the originality of their lives and outlooks," have no bearing here. How does the collaborative book project acquire visibility, then? It becomes part of a

body of work or a series that is identified with the publisher. For the most part, these collaborations are either exhibited or discussed in the context of a particular press such as Collec- tif Generation or the Perishable Press, revealing a certain

unity of material and aesthetic interests. On the surface, many of the books associated with an individual publisher look somewhat alike (this is particularly true of the two

presses mentioned). Sometimes the same kinds of paper, typeface, and binding are employed, all of which conveys a distinct aesthetic sensibility. In other cases, such as the

Whitney "Artists and Writers Series," cohesion is achieved

ideologically: the writers and authors paired through collab- oration here are all professionally accomplished and have a

public stature. Whatever the tactic, the publisher's prefer- ence, or "taste," as Clay has said, is present in some form. In

fact, it is this "taste," the publisher's individuality, that is the

primary ingredient used to market these books. 7. Castleberry has worried that the books from her

series are too "precious and overproduced."'12 "There is the constant danger to make a monument," she adds. But these books are all object oriented. They are, in fact, monuments.

They are conceived as commodities and sold in the market. However collaborative activities confound the modernist

myths of uniqueness, authenticity, and the sovereignty of the

solitary artist or author, these projects are rarefied (the editions are usually quite limited) and sometimes extraordin-

ary. They are also costly and meant for an inside or spe- cialized audience. As such, they preserve all of the economic

aspects of modernism. Jassaud has declared that he has a

larger agenda than the pleasure he derives from the orches- tration and products of his collaborations: "I want to leave a

testimony of our time, even if this route is not easy busi- nesswise."13 Entangled in this yearning is a need for recogni- tion and historic affirmation. With it also comes the assump- tion of insight, originality, and even genius. The publisher emerges as an auteur. Notes 1. The title of this article is indebted to Andrew Sarris's landmark essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962," Film Culture 27 (Winter 1962-63): 1-18. 2. Gervais Jassaud, unpublished lecture, Beverly Hills Public Library, May 2, 1991. 3. Walter Hamady, letter to the author, July 15, 1992. 4. Steve Clay, interview with the author, New York, April 16, 1992. 5. Jassaud, lecture, see n. 2 above. 6. Clay, interview, see n. 4 above. 7. Jassaud, lecture, see n. 2 above. 8. Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image, Music, Text (New York:

Noonday Press, 1977), 146. 9. William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, The Third Mind (New York: Viking Press, 1978), 18. 10. May Castleberry, interview with the author, New York, April 15, 1992. 11. This observation comes from Barthes, "Death of the Author," 144. 12. Castleberry, interview, see n. 10 above. 13. Jassaud, lecture, see n. 2 above.

DEBRA BRICKER BALKEN is guest editor of this issue.

ART JOURNAL

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