Shakespeare in the Artist’s Book: Sequence, Series, and Adaptation

Harry Graf Kessler’s Hamlet (1930), Arne Wolf’s Hamlet II:2 (1991), and the collaborative work The Bad Quarto (2015) use Hamlet to explore the possibilities of the artist’s book. In these works, a “Shakespeare text” functions as a tool for artistic experimentation. The resulting postmodern bricolage has implications for both the literary canon and the art form it represents. The artist’s book, linked with a well-known name, becomes something of an insouciant challenge to canonicity, while the presence of Shakespearean text lends legitimacy to the work. Spatial play and materiality forge the text and redefine what “text” is, and the use of Shakespeare in the artist’s book brings new meaning and vigor to our concept of “Shakespeare”. Concern with sequencing and correlation looms large in these works as well. The artists who create these works challenge the codex’s privileging of series: the forward movement of the series yields to the multivalent pleasures of sequence. White space becomes a visual silence that privileges the space in which text and images appear. The results are new forms of Hamlet that change our perception of Shakespeare’s version of the story.