ARTIST BOOK issued in folio size newspaper format.
The Argentinian artist Mirtha Dermisache (1940-2012) wrote her first book in 1967, 500 pages in length and not a single word. “I started writing,” she said in a 2011 interview, “and the result was something unreadable.” This sounds to me overly modest. Her skill is for distracting the onlooker’s impulse to read.
In her Diarios series, the artist copies out the daily newspaper, turning an organ of information into a rectangular array of shapes and forms, preserving the architecture of the newspaper but losing the informational remit. Though we learn nothing from the newspaper about the events it records, we can gauge a lot about Dermisache’s state of mind on the day she does the copying: concentration reflected in small, precise characters; tiredness in lazy loops; enthusiasm in large characters…” The artist's works in a "communication format".

The artist Martha Wilson chose this item as her favorite artist book item in the library of MOMA New York she wrote.
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"Mirtha Dermisache, Diario No. 1: ano 1 was published in Argentina in 1972, during the years when people were being “disappeared” by the government. It is a tabloid publication which appears to be covered with meaningless gibberish, or perhaps graffiti or calligraphy practice. It made it past the censors because they did not understand that Mirtha was drawing a portrait of the nonsense that passed for news in government-controlled newspapers. Consequently, this work stands as a visual protest of Argentina’s oppressive political regime"

-- Martha Wilson




THIS COPY IS SIGNED BY THE ARTIST IN FANTASTIC STYLE - ALMOST IN THE SAME STYLE AS THE TEXT OF THE NEWSPAPER. AN IMPORTANT ARTIST BOOK