This is a short exploratory piece I'm writing towards a
glossary of terms for my PhD writing. I'm using the word 'tension' to
referee as it were, between the different polarities trying to make
sense of artists; books. The idea of definition is a problematic one,
which hasn't been adequately resolved in over 30 years of argument —
and won't be, in my view, since the field of artists' books is better
seen as a set of activities than as objects, strategies, rather than histories. It's true that some of the history does portray such strategies, but we tend not to take that point away. I think we need a more radical shift in language to make the point clear.

Here is a short piece then, on the tensions in expectations about what the criticism/definition of artists' books is supposed to do, and how to do it.

The first couple of paragraphs are below, with more after the link.

Tension

There are a set of different expectations that people have about critical thought about artists’ books. One is represented by the wish to create rational, distinct forms, categories, nomenclatures and models. The other, which depends to some degree on the former , is represented by a side we might typify as ‘playful’.

Above, I claim that the ‘creative’ polarity is dependent on the ‘critical’ polarity. In truth, I could as easily reverse this. The traditions of critical thought depend upon clear propositions which must be enunciated in order to be tested. In the current case, critical thinking about artists’ books must be, at least to some extent, given clear form, before it can be played with, transgressed, or complained about. Equally, there has to be a bedrock of creative material for critical minds to get to work on. Usually this has meant examining the physical material that artists produce — the art — but it can work on the ethnographic material that introduces further cultural, cognitive and performative considerations into the critical spectrum. The discursive exchange between ‘sides’ could be figured as a circular one. This circle, or spiral, exchanges ‘critical’ and ‘creative’ polarities. Discourse proceeds by critical thought attempting to examine the creative culture, and the artists look to see if they are accommodated by the structures proposed. Some artists see challenging such structures rigorously as their work.  This in turn requires a further critical examination, and so on. Each polarity has its own distinct anxieties about ‘the other side’. Each has its own expectations about the discourse that it worries the other tendency will ramp over, ignore, miss or obscure. I will typify these shortly.

The expectations these two polarities have about critical thought share common aims, for example: the visibility and success of artists’ books; the wish that critical thought will help artists to be more aware of the richness of their chosen form; the aim that what is good about artists’ books should not be lost. (The appropriateness or otherwise of these aims is another subject in itself which I must decline to examine further at present).

The two extremes differ about how the aims are to be served. Both offer creative viewpoints on fashioning relevant, contemporary consciousness about artists’  books. Both, in their way, offer a theoretical basis to analyse the work that is done. ( I will touch on these in the following paragraphs ).
 It is more obvious that a rational, clear approach can move forward by creating distinctions, constructing a conversation about values as it does so. It is less clear that this is in fact a creative process in itself, but that is an observation I will not examine further here.

The other ‘playful’ polarity, would usually arrogate to itself the aspects of creativity and openness, the lacking of which it perceives in the ‘other side’ it offers as criticism. Seldom narrated and seldom shared, there is also a logic to creativity in artist’s books that would, if we could unfold it, offer a theoretical basis for critical thought about the ‘creative/playful/artistic’ side of artists’ books. This would contrast with a ‘historical/cataloguing/theorist’ side. I offer these polarities as a shorthand. It should be understood that they are not intended as an end. Rather, they are a beginning. Starting points, so that the resulting field contains narration from both points of view. The field itself is adequately represented by neither on their own.

The ‘critical’ argument worries that artists, by not producing a clearly-enunciated set of distinctions about what they are doing and how they would  describe their work and its values, are missing out on  the chance to explain themselves to the world. If one wants to be part of the wider art world, they say, it’s important to speak the language. If we want to make our art better, we have to figure out what’s good so that we can say “good-great-greatest”. This view believes that the way forward is to produce more clarity about what is going on. They would also wish to make it clear that they don’t want to produce immutable rules, but that there needs to be some clear description and a lexicon for doing that with.

The ‘creative’ argument believes that the danger of such descriptions is that they create rules, regardless of intentions. Artists making books — or at any rate those who are anxious about the production by thinkers of rigid theoretical structures — prize books’ ability to offer an alternative standpoint. They prize an unexamined, unregulated standpoint that embraces material willy-nilly without too much fuss about whether it is appropriate. If their work is circumscribed by critical thinking, they worry, they will lose this flexibility.
Are either of these (simplified, typical) anxieties justified? Of the aims that they underly, which is the more crucial to the project of artists’ books? The aim of explicating, promulgating and popularising artists’ books in a wider sphere? Or the aim of retaining flexibility, avoiding some sort of ‘expressive accountability’?

One way of proceeding with these questions is to attack the presumptions that underly these anxieties. On the one hand, the presumption that artists are not articulating their thoughts clearly, are not really thinking critically; and on the other, that critical activity negates, cages-up creativity. I have noted already how critical activity is creative, and how artistic activity contains its own logic. Really good critical thinking — groundbreaking theoretical work — is profoundly creative, and the practical, ‘artistic’ work that can spin off from it owes it a debt for producing the cognitive ground it stands on. Conversely, artwork, or even more clearly, artworking, contains its own logic of creativity. I want, in my own research, to work towards part of the material I feel we need to balance these arguments; I want to produce narratives of this logic of creativity. Of course, I am using my own critical creativity to hypothesize towards this, and this is a topic I examine in more depth in my chapter on methodology. (See X.X.X) I hope in so doing to produce a turn of critical thinking that takes up materials derived from under-described aspects of artists’ books’ creative processes.