BAR Issue 1: A New Book Art Criticism

Book Art Review (BAR) is a semiannual magazine dedicated to providing a forum for critical writing about book art and artist books.

Book Art Review publishes two issues per year, with the first issue launching in Fall 2021. We want to raise the bar for book art criticism! BAR is our plan to make book art criticism more visible and more valuable, and to engage with a diverse group of writers and readers. Our launching manifesto calls for “New Book Art Criticism,” and in building that, our magazine will showcase a new kind of writing about artist books, one that focuses on the material, paginated, object qualities of the book.

Issue 1:

Features

• “Why Criticism: A Conversation Between BAR Founders Megan N. Liberty, Corina Reynolds, & David Solo” by the BAR Team
• “The History of Criticism of the Book with Some Observations for Future” by Deirdre Lawrence
• “How Does the Artist Book?” by Kinohi Nishikawa 
• Interview: Devin N. Morris by Jenna Wortham

Reviews

• Phoebe Cripps on Margaret Salmon’s K is for Kato
• Nicole Kaack on Leandro Katz’s Self Hipnosis
• Ollie Gapper on Awoiska van der Molen’s Living Mountain
• Meghan Forbes on Milada Součková’s Mluvící pásmo
• Tausif Noor on Soumya Sankar Bose’s Where the Birds Never Sing