Honey, Who Shrunk the Art on Paper?
Art on Paper, the leading fine art publication dedicated to prints, drawings, photographs, artist’s books and ephemera, has shifted their publication to a smaller format. From the image above you can see that the latest issue is 6.5 x 8.5″ (note pen for scale). According to the letter from the publishers, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, the reduction in size was motivated by a wish to produce a more “sustainable product”, using less paper and producing a more portable magazine. One could also hazard a guess that in addition to using less trees the smaller size will be cheaper to produce.
They are using the new format to launch another initiative “The Great Poster Project”, which is a series of limited edition, commissioned posters by contemporary art starts, like polly Apfelbaum, whose print Pink Corkbats (pictured) is the first poster to be made available. The posters are only printed in an edition of 50 in three different sized prints, available at different price points. This first print is a digital print with Epson archival ink on matte photo paper. It’s unclear if all the published editions will be digital prints, their is allusion to each work being approached in a unique way by each artist. This seems like a pretty interesting idea, similar to the limited edition objects that come with Parkett.
And lastly, the is a strange 5 page spread of so-called “ADVER-TEASE-MENTS” in the middle of the magazine. They are described as fake advertisements, meant to cause pause with “unlikely poetic juxtapositions”. I’m not really sure what to make of these. They seem to be blatantly mocking the visual-style of advertisements seen in other art magazines, like Art Forum. They go so far as to create mock-ads for specific galleries and artists. I’m not enough of an insider to know the backstory of these adver-tease-ments, but they did cause pause and at times a guffaw or two.
What should we make of all these developments in the pages of the main voice for print in print? To me it seems that the smaller format is a shrewd move and equally importantly, it looks good and feels good to hold. The Great Poster Project raises some questions, but I’ll hold my tongue for now and see if posters get more innovative or compelling in regards to the relationship of form to content. And is the Adver-tease-ments section a gauntlet being dropped? If so will anyone respond in kind? And does the new leaner format allow for a risky editorial stance? We will just have to wait the next issue and see.
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