DRUCKER, Johanna 1952-

PERSONAL: Born May 30, 1952, in Philadelphia, PA; daughter of Boris (a cartoonist) and Barbara Drucker; married Thomas Bradley Freeman (an artist), May 17, 1991 (divorced, June, 2004). Education: California College of Arts and Crafts, B.F.A. (printing), 1973; University of California—Berkeley, M.F.A. (visual studies), 1982, Ph.D. (interdisciplinary studies), 1986. Hobbies and other interests: Printing.

ADDRESSES: Home—110 Warren Ln., Charlottesville, VA 22904. Office—142 Cabell Hall, P.O. Box 400866, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4866. Agent—Steve Clay, Granary Books, 307 Seventh Ave., Suite 1401, New York, NY 10001. E-mail—jrd8e@virginia.edu; jabbooks@earthlink.net.

CAREER: Educator and author. University of Texas—Dallas, assistant professor, 1986-88; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, faculty fellow in art history, 1988-89; Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor of modern art, 1989-94; Yale University, New Haven, CT, associate professor of contemporary art, 1994-98; State University of New York—Purchase College, Binghamton, NY, professor of art history, 1998-99; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, Robertson Professor of Media Studies, director of media studies, 1999—; cofounder, Speculative Computing Lab, 1999. Feminist Art and Art History Conference, coordinator, 1995-96; work represented in special collections in the United States and abroad, including Museum of Modern Art Library, Getty Center for the Humanities, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Sackner Archive of Visual Poetry, Franklin Furnace Archive, and Library of Congress.

MEMBER: College Art Association of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Merit Scholar, 1969; Regents' Fellowship, University of California—Berkeley, 1980-81, 1981-82, 1983-84; Fulbright fellow, 1984-85; Harvard Mellon Faculty fellow, Harvard University, 1988-89; humanities research grant, University of California—Berkeley, 1991; Getty Foundation fellow, 1992-93; Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Award for junior faculty teaching, Columbia University, 1994; Djerassi Foundation artists residency, 1998.

WRITINGS:

Dark, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1972.

As No Storm, Rebis Press (Oakland, CA), 1975.

Twenty-Six '76 Let Hers, Chased Press (Berkeley, CA), 1976.

From A to Z: Our An (Collective Specifics) An Impartial Bibliography: Incidents in a Non-Relationship, or, How I Came to Not Know Who Is: The Politics of Language, Chased Press (Berkeley, CA), 1977.

Fragile, Chased Press (Berkeley, CA), 1977.

Surprise Party, Chased Press (Berkeley, CA), 1977.

Selected Writing, 1971, Chased Press (Berkeley, CA), 1977.

Experience of the Medium, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1978.

Netherland: How (so) Far, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1978.

Kidz, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1979.

Jane Goes Out w' the Scouts, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1980.

'S Crap 'S Ample, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1980.

Italy, Figures (Berkeley, CA), 1980.

Dolls of the Spirit, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1981.

It Happens Pretty Fast, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1982.

Tongues, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1982.

Just As, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1983.

Against Fiction, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1983.

Spectacle, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1984.

Through Light and the Alphabet, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Emily McVarish) Sample Dialogue, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1989.

The Word Made Flesh, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1989.

Simulant Portrait, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1990.

The History of the/My Wor(l)d: Fragments of a Testimonial to History, Some Lived and Realized Moments Open to Claims of Memory, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Brad Freeman) Otherspace: Martian Ty/opography, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1993.

Books: 1970 to 1994, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1994.

Theorizing Modernism: Visual Art and the Critical Tradition, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1994.

Narratology: Historical Romance, Sweet Romance, Science Fiction, Romantic Suspense, Supernatural, Horror, Sensual Romance, Adventure, Thriller, Glitz, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1994.

Three Early Fictions, Potes and Poets Press (Berkeley, CA), 1994.

The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination, Thames and Hudson (New York, NY), 1995.

The Century of Artists' Books, Granary Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Dark Decade (fiction), Detour Press (Detroit, MI), 1995.

The Current Line, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor, with K. David Jackson and Eric Vos) Experimental, Visual, Concrete: Avant-Garde Poetry since the 1960s, Rodopi (Atlanta, GA), 1996.

(Essays, with William H. Gass) The Dual Muse: The Writer as Artist, the Artist as Writer, introduction by Cornelia Homburg, John Benjamins Publishing (Philadelphia, PA), 1997.

Prove before Laying, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 1997.

Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing, and Visual Poetics, Granary Books (New York, NY), 1998.

The Next Word: Text and/as Image and/as Design and/as Meaning, Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY), 1998.

(With Brad Freeman) Nova Reperta, JAB Books (Charlottesville, VA), 1999.

(With Brad Freeman) Emerging Sentience, JAB Books (Charlottesville, VA), 2000.

Night Crawlers on the Web, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 2000.

Quantum, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Susan Bee) A Girl's Life, Granary Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Damaged Spring, Druckwerk (New York, NY), 2003.

Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

Also author of Dark, the Bat Elf, 1972, and Experience of the Medium, 1978. Contributor to Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter, by Margaret Re, University of Maryland (Baltimore, MD), 2002. Author of "unique books," one-print editions, including Light and the Pork Pie, 1974, Rite Soft Passage, 1975, Mind Massage, 1985, Yellow Dog, 1986, Bookscape, 1988, Heavy Breathing, 1991, and Crisis Romance, 1991. Work represented in anthologies, including The Line in Postmodern Poetry, edited by Robert Frank and Henry Sayre, University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 1988. Contributor to periodicals, including Central Park, Black Ice, Stifled Yawn, Generator, and ArtPapers. Member of editorial board, Art Journal and Journal of Artists' Books.

SIDELIGHTS: Johanna Drucker once told CA: "Because I write both creative prose and work in a scholarly or critical mode, I am keenly aware of the differences between the restraints put on language that must be responsible to external references and language that is allowed to develop freely from a personal, highly subjective perspective. Each mode feeds the other for me. Research in the field of typography, design, alphabet history, or the visual arts often charges the imaginative spark plugs, racing the synaptic networks with the excitement of previously unthought possibilities.

"The alphabet exerted an early fascination over me, because of the contradiction I perceived between its finitude as a system and its potential for infinite combination and expression. The visual forms seemed fraught with power and character, if not explicit meaning. The elegant 'K' and 'R' and the imposing 'W' and 'M' with their massive presence, for instance, contrasted with the matronly 'B' and the boring but stable 'H.' Later I became involved in letterpress printing and came to enjoy language as a physical form that I could hold in my hands. From that experience, the graphic potential of format as an aspect of meaning took on new value in my creative work.

"The great prose writers from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries remain models for me, from Denis Diderot to George Eliot, Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Thomas Mann. As a scholar I have been drawn to the thoughtfully creative work of Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Schapiro, and Sigmund Freud. In a more contemporary frame I am drawn to popular writing—mysteries, science fiction, and tabloid language—while retaining my admiration for the subtle lucidity of Raymond Williams, the intensity of Susan Howe, the personal vision of H.D., and the flexible, eclectic precision of Charles Bernstein.

"I want my work—whether critical or creative—to have a certain immediacy in the language itself—an evident awareness of the material qualities of words, the generative impact of images, and the communicative potential of text. Some language massages the brain, some phrases or sentences slap the reader into consciousness, and some rhythms lull the perceiving intelligence into tranquility, and so on. As far as I am concerned, the textures of prose should be as varied and as specific as those of a geographical terrain, each as particular to itself, as richly revealing of its own character and qualities. In addition, the consciousness that illumines the field of letters on the page should be as various as the moods of the atmosphere—as ephemeral, as durable, as reliable, as fleeting, and as sublime. In the tenuous space between abstract self-involvement and communicative urgency, I write to make sense of the world and my experience of it."

"As both an art historian and a book artist, Drucker brings a unique combination of historical knowledge and practical experience to her writing," explained Buzz Spector in a review of Drucker's The Century of Artists' Books for Art Journal. The Century of Artists' Books is a comprehensive analysis of the development of artists' books, meaning books that are considered works of art. In the book's fourteen chapters, Drucker groups artists' books into the following themes: idea and form, democratic multiple, rare object, visual form, verbal exploration, sequence, agent of social change, conceptual space, and document.

The first four chapters of The Century of Artists' Books present a history of artists' books and identifies the social and philosophical issues associated with them. Spector remarked that Drucker's "'dual-citizenship' as historian and practitioner emphatically enriches the analysis of the works in these chapters, which deal with the book as both a physical structure and a mode of communication." Writing in Afterimage, Tom Trusky also felt that Drucker's background gave her a good foundation from which to write this book, saying "Drucker's first-hand experiences in printing, and her collaborations with printer/bookmaker Brad Freeman, provide her with a practical expertise we can trust as she explains the mysteries of 'split fountains,' 'stripping,' and 'overprinting,' as well as the economics of production." Trusky also observed, "One of the most irritating features of artists' books has been their unavailability.... Most people have not seen most artists' books and, therefore, have not been able to appreciate what they have not seen." Trusky felt that The Century of Artists'Books makes these books accessible.

In an interview by Steven Heller published in Print, Drucker admitted that while theory has a place in the study of art, it does not "make somebody better at creating a printed page, a Web page, an object, or anything else." She continued, "People who work from a theoretical perspective, whether it's in design or the visual arts, often do very stilted, self-conscious work that ultimately is only an illustration of the theoretical position."

Drucker contemplates the negative effect of theory on the interpretation of the futurist, Dadaist, and Cubist artists of the early twentieth century in The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923. These artists used typography in new and exciting ways that blended visual art and literature, so that their boundaries were less distinct. Drucker contends that the introduction of New Criticism and high modernism separated the genres to the extent that interpreting the art was no longer possible. She reviews significant theories in the book and analyzes the work of four artists: Ilia Zdanevich, Filippo Marinetti, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Tristan Tzara. In a review of the book for the British Journal of Aesthetics, Hugh Bredlin explained that although these four artists "were representative of the avant-garde at the start of the century, they drew on the earlier achievements of William Morris' arts and crafts movement, and on prior developments in commercial graphics and poster design. They were not themselves typographic artists, but they used typography as a method of innovation in poetry." Bredlin felt that Drucker's discussion of why experimental poetry fell out of favor "is not weighty enough" but concluded that the book "explores an important and hitherto neglected part of our intellectual history."

Drucker again contemplates the blurring of the boundaries of text and image in The Next Word: Text and/as Image and/as Design and/as Meaning. "One recoils from the heft of such an unwieldy title not to mention the reciprocity among these broad categories (as the title implies)," remarked Nola Tully in Afterimage, who went on to explain, "Drucker makes the point that cultural changes and technological advances have helped to blur the lines that once defined mediums and genres. She suggests it is the job of the viewer to maintain a distinction between these boundaries through looking, reading, and creating meaning." Tully felt that this juxtaposition of genres is a major strength of The Next Word.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Afterimage, July-August, 1997, Tom Trusky, review of The Century of Artists' Books, p. 19; January-February, 1999, Nola Tully, review of The Next Word: Text and/as Image and/as Design and/as Meaning, p. 17.

Art Journal, fall, 1997, Buzz Spector, review of The Century of Artists' Books, p. 95.

Bloomsbury Review, January, 1996, review of The Alphabetic Labyrinth, p. 13; November-December, 2002, review of The Century of Artists' Books.

British Journal of Aesthetics, Hugh Bredlin, review of The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923, pp. 198-200.

Library Journal, June 15, 1996, Paula Frosch, review of The Century of Artists' Books, p. 61.

Print, November-December, 1997, Steven Heller, "Johanna Drucker: Art and Design Theorist," p. 30.

School Arts, March, 2002, Kent Anderson, review of The Alphabetic Labyrinth, pp. 53-55.

ONLINE

Electronic Poetry Center,http://www.epc.buffalo.edu/ (August 27, 2004), Johanna Drucker, "A Chronology of Books from 1970 to 1994."