The Printed Book: Medium and Object of Artification
Join us on Tuesday, August 13 at 6.30pm for an in-person event at Center for Book Arts, The Printed Book: Medium and Object of Artification a lecture by Graphic Designer, Scholar, and Artist, Hagen Verleger.
About the program
The dichotomy between design and art has been repeatedly challenged, not only in product design but also in graphic design. Such a blurring of disciplinary boundaries is particularly evident in the field of book design: often so-called processes of ‘artification’ (i.e. the transformation of non-art into art) have been essentially mediated by the book. At the same time, the book itself—as a form—has experienced its own artification. This lecture traces the specific double role of the printed book as both medium and object of artification by examining a monograph on the work of textile artist Sheila Hicks, copies of which oscillate curiously between being a basic commodity and a work of art.
About Hagen Verleger
Hagen Verleger is a book designer, artist, and researcher based in Berlin. In addition to commissioned design work for cultural institutions and publishing houses, his research and artistic practice explores themes such as power structures within institutions, collective mode(l)s of authorship, and materially embedded ideologies. In 2017/2018, he was artist-in-residence at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and in 2021 artist-in-residence at RAVI in Liège, Belgium. In 2020, he was a research fellow at both the German Literature Archive in Marbach, and at Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf. As a lecturer at art academies in Germany and abroad, he teaches graduate-level seminars on book design and on critical graphic design histories.
Anonymous, “Les deux ne font qu’un” / “The Two Are But One” (France, late 18th century)
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