an exhibition in The National and University Library of Iceland in collaboration with Reykjavik Arts Festival.

An exhibition on the book art of Michel Butor and twelve artists was opened on Monday the 26th of May in collaboration with Reykjavik Arts Festival. Michel Butor is one of the best known writers who dramatically changed the novel in France around 1960 within the „nouveau roman“ movement. Butor stopped writing novels in the sixties. Since then he has written numerous essays, poetry, travel accounts and all sorts of experimentary texts. For decades he has focused on texts for book art, has created a large number of such works with many artists and given lectures. Thus one can say that his literary life was devided in two phases, on one hand his life as a „nouveau roman“ author and on the other hand as a writer of book art texts along with other writings. The exhibition´s curators are Ólafur Engilbertsson and Bernard Alligand, who selected for the exhibition works by twelve book artists that have collaborated with Butor. They are, along with Alligand himself: Maxime Godard, Graziella Borghesi, Bertrand Dorny, Anne Walker, Youl, Joël Leick, Julius Balthazar, Mylene Besson, Pierre LeLoup, Anne Slacik and Georges Badin.

The projects´ initiative came from the writer Sigurður Pálsson who has created book art with Bernard Alligand. Their first joint work was exhibited in the National and University Library in 2007.

Students of Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, Jóhann Ludwig Torfason and Jón Proppé at The University of Iceland and Iceland Academy of the Arts created book art which is a part of the exhibition.

The exhibition is the collaboration of The National and University Library of Iceland, Iceland Academy of the Arts, The University of Iceland, the French Embassy, Alliance Française and Reykjavik Arts Festival.  It will be open until the 29th of August.