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Artists sometimes physically transform the traditional codex—the familiar format of pages bound to a spine.
Pages can be reshaped, folded, cut, extended, or combined with completely different materials.
The result may resemble sculpture more than an ordinary book.
Yet the original concept of the book remains important.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts describes artists' books as works that reinvent the familiar codex format through different media, techniques, and structures.
This creates an unusual object that can belong simultaneously to book culture and visual art.
The question becomes surprisingly difficult: is it something you read, something you look at, or both?
© National Museum of Women in the Arts