Clive Phillpot asked 23 collectors of artist books in addition to himself to select mass produced, inexpensive artists' books from 1950 onward to the present for this exhibition. He also asked each to write an essay explaining his choices. Each of the collectors is listed under contributors. Books by Dieter Roth, Tom Phillips and Ulises Carrion were the most popular cited by the collectors. Sackner's essay follows. When I received the request from Clive Phillpot to provide a list of artists' books - inexpensive books authored by artists that utilize mass-production printing technology - with examples from 1950 to date, I thought that the task would be simple. I would search my database under the classification Artist Book and be finished in a few hours. Here I am one week later writing the essay on the artists' books that I selected from our collection. This is because our database has a single entry for artists' books that includes one of a kind to press runs of thousands. I had no easy way to pull out books utilizing mass production printing but was able to exclude unique books and those with runs up to 10 copies. I was stilled faced with reviewing books above 10 copies and cost considerations. I first tackled the definition of inexpensive book and concluded that $35 or less defined "inexpensive" since many trade editions sell for this amount. I arbitrarily decided that mass production meant a run of 500 copies or more. Next I needed a definition for an artist book. The first part of definition appears obvious - a book composed by an artist. Most of us think that visual artists are the only artistic talent making images but writers, poets, performers, and experimental music composers also make images sometimes with visuals, more often with words and less frequently with diagrams. Further, some visual artists such as the conceptual and language artists use words almost exclusively as the media for their images. Therefore, I concluded that an artist, writer, poet, performer or experimental music composer could compose an artist book that through the images, words, diagrams, or musical notations provides an unusual, visually appealing presentation. This definition excludes books with fine typography dealing with conventional fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I then changed my database classification for Artist Book according to the number of copies, e.g., Artist Book (mass production) includes books with runs of 500 copies or more, Artist Book (limited edition) from 11 to 499 copies and Artist Book from 1 to 10 copies. For those books from a press not self-published with any tirage recorded, I assumed that the number of copies exceeded 500. I grouped the selected books into the following categories: 1) verbal/visual integration, e.g., concrete poetry, visual poetry, sound poetry, rebus, conceptual art, and pictograph books (16 books); 2) unusual shaped books or bindings (6 books); 3) diarist (4 books); 4) experimental calligraphy (3 books); 5) experimental fiction (2 books); 6) flip pages book (1 book); 7) illustrated book (1 book). Tom Phillips' A Humument and Klaus Peter Dienst' Dictionaire Grapho-Grammatico are examples of altering the pages of another author's book to produce new verbal meanings and an exciting visual appearance. Basinski, Beining, Haack, Miskowski, and Noel's books deal with sound, visual, concrete and typewriter poetry. Vassilakis's sequence "nu" explores arrangements of the letter 'n' that Sackner interprets in Kabbalistic terms in an afterword. Rothenberg's Morally Superior Products, a feminist take on media advertising and de Charmoy's "The True Life Of Sweeney Todd," a revisionist interpretation, are presented as multiple picture poems. De Cointet's "Esphador Ledet Ko Uluner!" is printed in the form of a novel but all its words are made-up and unintelligible. Gudehus presents pictograms as rebuses to convey the text of Genesis. Natalia LL in an exhibition catalogue intersperses permutations of her name with titillating facial photographs arranged in a grid of young women eating bananas and other food. Stamaty's "Who Needs Donuts?" is a zany children's book with very detailed, sophisticated verbal/visual drawings that might be lost on the young. Pesset's "Le Gribouilloir," a book for adults from an outsider artist has hints of Stamaty's virtuosity in its sensibility. Jody Zellen's "City of Nightmares" uses photo-collages to depict the pathos of contemporary urban life. Drescher's "Tales from the Crib" for children on raising a family is shaped like a two-dimensional baby bottle but its contents of surrealistic-like images and scraggly handwriting have appeal to adults as well. Gomez-Pena, Chagoya, and Rice's "Codex Espangliensis" combines performance poetry, visual/verbal, collages and innovative typography that deal with the colonial conquest, cultural transformations, linguistic admixtures, and economic interdependences that formed the Americas. It is a reprint of a limited edition book that is bound as an ancient codex whose pages can be navigated as one continuous frieze. Laxson's "[HO + GO]2 =" is her take on the impact of a nuclear explosion in visual poetic calligraphic terms. Lin's "Shririm (Songs)" is an unusually shaped book rendered with elegant Hebrew constructivist typography. Ann Tyler's "Lubb Dub" documents the misuse of the media leading to the murder of a gay man brought about by exposure to Jenny Jones' American television show. It is presented with unconventionally shaped and tunnel pages. Stairs' "Boundless" is a book object that cannot be opened owing to a spiral spine completely encircling the edges of the pages of the circular book. Beard's "Beyond the End of the World" provides a reproduction of the author's diaries and journals made in Africa during his photographic adventures. Goldsmith's "Fidget" records every body movement his body made on June 16, 1997 from 10 AM to 11 PM. Crandall's "Violent Crime" expresses the feeling in powerful concrete poetic terms that she had after her husband attempted to murder her. Vicuna's "Instan" reflects her artwork that deals with installations from thread and weavings. Lalou's "Je T'Aime" presents calligraphic variations of the phrase I Love You along with translations into 148 languages. Midda's "In and Out of the Garden" reproduces watercolors that celebrate myriad forms of gardens, flowers, vegetables, and herbs. This is accompanied by Midda's elegant calligraphy. Messager in "Mes Ouvrages" presents calligraphic, shaped poems with photographs of the body. Danielewski's "House of Leaves" is postmodernist fiction about a movie of a house whose inner dimensions are larger than its outer dimensions. The daring layout would not be expected from a mainstream publisher nor would many book artists consider it an artist book. But if you only had limited funds to purchase a few books, this would get my highest recommendation for its plot and visual pleasure. I could also say the same thing about Federman's "Double or Nothing," a hilarious, concrete poetic novel about a young immigrant's discovery of things American that is printed in the form of the typewritten manuscript. Nederland's "Distress Signals" is a flip pages book that depicts the word HELP rising and falling from the edge of the pages. Topor's "Je t'aime" consists of an amusing listing of phrases that might be spoken during sexual intercourse accompanied by surrealistic erotic images. Although I spent more time on this project than expected, it was worthwhile since it forced me to crystallize my thoughts on the artist book that improved the content of our database. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.