Arnar 2011

Arnar, Anna Sigrídur. The Book as instrument: Stéphane Mallarmé, The Artist's Book, and the Transformation of Print Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

"the book functioned for Mallarme as a strategic site to engage a modern public" (1)

livre de peintre / livre d'artiste (painter's or artist's book), and livre d'avant-garde (avant-garde or experimental book) -- M was instrumental in shaping the possibilities of these emergent genres

through late essays, Un coup, and unpublished notes for performance of Le Livr, "the poet radically redefined the experience of reading by exploiting the textual, visual, and temporal elements of the book. Implicitly, the reader must adopt new modalities for processing visual and verbal information, but above all, each reader participates in establishing the modality most appropriate to his or her needs, constituting what M called notre compréhension multiple (our multiple comprehension). Such a vision of reading recognized varies levels of engagement, and therefore, in M's hands, the book is not simply an exquisitely rendered container or precious relic but a catalyst for redefining the relationship between the book and its reader." (2)

"As I demonstrate, not only was M among the first literary figures in France to tap into the expanding network of original printmaking to publish his own books, but he adopted this network's developing strategies of distribution and promotion, including specific practices that were at that time exclusive to printmaking, such as hand signing and numbering limited editions." -- his work not simply harbinger of live de painter but "entrepreneurial alternatives for an artist and writer facing hostile rejection from the Salon and literary publishing houses, respectively" (3)