Chris Evans, 2006, airbrush painting, 78 x 107 cm

The book has been said (or thought) to have been rendered obsolete by a sequen­tial series of technological innovations and informational novelties on many occasions: every so often an ambush-like mirage of “new technologies” seems to spell the End of the Age of the Book. In our current time, this mirage has often been construed as a messianic manifestation of digital, i.e. immaterial culture: surely the advent of the computer, of e-books, the Internet, palm tops, and Blackberries would usher in (it was hoped) the End Times of the Paper era. Much like “History,” “Man,” “Ideology,” the “Enlightenment,” and — most tellingly, perhaps —“Art,” the book has been declared dead many times over, most often precisely because of its (perceived and/or real) obsolescence.

–“Art Books Now: Six Theses,” Dieter Roelstraete, Dot Dot Dot #12, 2006