Iconic books are texts revered as objects of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight. In religious and secular rituals around the globe, people carry, show, wave, touch and kiss books and other texts, as well as read them. This blog chronicles such events and activities. (For more about iconic books, see the links to the Iconic Books Project at left.)

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Nancy Natale's "Iconic Books"


Easthampton artist Nancy Natale has shared pictures of her series of encaustics, titled "Iconic Books."

I began this work thinking about the way memory loss takes away content and eventually even removes form, but then I realized that books themselves are becoming artifacts and iconic forms as digital media takes over content. No matter how much easier it is to read on Kindle, nothing will take the place of a real book in the hand - the smell, the feel, all the surfaces of the cover to be explored, and the physical interaction with the pages. This physicality of the book as object can't be duplicated electronically. We're talking dimensionality here, not pixels.

1 comment:

Nancy Natale said...

Hi Jim,
Thanks so much for posting my work. Your blog is very interesting to me and I intend to spend more time reading your wide-ranging posts.

I am continuing to make artworks which treat books as icons. The pieces I am making now use deconstructed found books. I'll be posting images on my blog soon.

Best,
Nancy