The New York Times has a good article about the New York Art Book Fair and the 60 newcomers introduced to the lineup this year. Anteism being one of them. The exhibitors list is impressive.
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If you harbor even a speck of doubt about the continuing viability of hold-in-your-hand-and-turn-the-pages print publications, check out the New York Art Book Fair this weekend. You’ll find thousands of new books — smart, weird, engrossing, beautiful — that will never be Kindle-compatible. They’ll make you feel good.
The fair, produced by Printed Matter, a venerable local purveyor and producer of books by artists, began in Chelsea in 2006 but this year is at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens. The move meant giving up ready foot traffic for a big gain in floor space. Whether the trade will pay off remains to be seen, but for certain the fair, once a modest event and now quite a grand one, looks great.
More than 200 exhibitors — booksellers, independent publishers, artists, antiquarian dealers — fill three floors of P.S. 1’s cavernous premises with plenty of breathing room: some of the displays look like full-fledged gallery shows. The recession has scared off a few big trade publishers, but they’ve been more than adequately replaced by 60 newcomers from Japan, South Korea, Mexico and elsewhere, many of them low on cash but high on risk tolerance.
Read more of the article on the New York Times website.
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Spur of the moment rant about the Kindle:
The Kindle (a digital ebook reading device) has some important and valid uses, but like the NYT’s mentions there is no way “these” books can be replaced by a digital reader. Partially due to the fact that the people reading these books, love “books”. The digital displays of the kindle look good but they’re still lacking the tactile feel of the pages, smell of fresh print, ease of use and the basic fact that you can’t lend or give away the book as a gift. You can’t display them on your shelf, use them to swat annoying flies, prop open doors or even recycle them. I don’t think that “books” on the kindle should even be called “books”. A large majority of books will inevitably be read on digital readers in the future, but look back in a couple years and laugh when you find a Kindle in your local Value Village thrift store, there’s a long way to go.
Amazon’s Kindle and other digitally downloaded books have taken half the fun out of books, you no longer have to leave your house. I personally enjoy spending time in the bookstore, browsing physical books and talking to the staff. In an era where our communication seems to be getting fed to us through powerful new channels, we have devised one more reason to go with the flow. I welcome the addition of digital readers, I just wish they could work in unison with a stable technology that we have all grown to love, ink on paper.
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