This text ispart two of Julio Plaza’s essay on the “artist’s book.” The author addresses the “anti-artistic book” as well—an innovative conception based on an analytic line of art and on the systematic practice of technological media. Plaza draws ties between conceptualism in different media and its construction process, which—he argues—is largely symbolic. He discusses the nature of conceptual art, questioning its functionality and discourse and delving into its origins in the seventies when artists’ books were first understood as objects. Artists’ books have made use of different typologies over the course of the twentieth century, among them the illustrated book, the poem-book, the book-object, the book-document, the conceptual book, the multimedia book, and what he calls the “anti-book.”

This essay, which was published in two parts [for the other part, see in the ICAA digital archive (doc. no. 1111238)], is fundamental to establishing the conceptual contours of the “artist’s book”—culmination of an artistic process that began in Brazil in the sixties. The premise of the journal Arte em São Paulo was to provide art with an autonomous venue while also meddling in the art circuit. The publication’s first editor was artist Luiz Paulo Baravelli, a post later held by journalist Lisette Lagnado. Thirty-seven issues of the journal were published before 1987. Multimedia artist, professor, and theorist Julio Plaza (1938–2003) was an important figure in Brazilian conceptual and digital art; he is also known for his work in the graphic design of a number of concrete poems. Along with poet Augusto de Campos, he produced book/objects like Poemóbiles (1974) and the Caixa Preta (1975). He taught in the Departamento de Multiméios do Instituto de Artes da UNIcamp (in Campinas) and in the Departamento de Artes Plásticas of the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA/USP). He organized Arte pelo Telefone: Videotexto (São Paulo: Museu da Imagem e do Som, 1982), a groundbreaking exhibition in video text in Brazil. He directed the special room for new media at the 17th São Paulo Biennial in 1983, the moment when digital art was emerging in the country. Plaza wrote his doctoral thesis—later published in book form—on inter-semiotic translation by which literary texts are transplanted in visual and sound codes. Professor Walter Zanini—director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (USP) from 1963 to 1978—wrote two texts on Plaza’s work, the first on the show Poéticas Visuais [see in the archive “As novas possibilidades = The new possibilities” (doc. no 1110585), and the second, “Primeiros tempos da arte/tecnologia no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111029), pertinent to the text addressed here. For further reading, see also in the archive the following texts by Julio Plaza: “77: quase-apresentação” (doc. no. 1110719), “Arte e interatividade: autor-obra-recepção” (doc. no. 1111093), “Arte e videotexto” (doc. no. 1111090), “Busca da dimensão mais firme para a realidade” (doc. no. 1110750), “Câmara obscura” (doc. no. 1110718), “Imagemega” (doc. no. 1111133), “Info foto: grafias” (doc. no. 1111091), “Mail-art: arte em sincronia = Mail-art: art in synchrony” (doc. no. 1110592), “Manifiesto pro integración” (doc. no. 1110751), “Nem oito, nem oitenta: oi, tô aí” (doc. no. 1111270), “Poéticas visuais = Visual poems” (doc. no. 1110587), and “Transcriar” (doc. no. 1111237)].