Experiments with books

MUNCH Publishing explores what an art book can be.

To fulfil our ambition to reach more readers and more diverse readerships, we explore new ways of creating art books. Maybe more people would be interested in Edvard Munch's relationship with nature if the novelist Ali Smith wrote about it – as she does in Trembling Earth (2024)? Would they look at Munch’s painting Andreas Munch Studying Anatomy in a new way if Cathrine Krøger, a nurse, was writing about it? She will do just that, in one of the books we’re publishing in 2025. And what if we let a graphic novelist respond to one of Munch's prose poems, as Jeanine el Khawand did in Only an instant (2021)?

As well as experiments in content, we at MUNCH Publishing are keen to explore the expressive possibilities of the book. Among other things, we play with alternative bindings, different paper stocks and ways of cutting book pages. A good example is Living Lines (2021), in which five contemporary artists reflect on Edvard Munch's drawings in relation to their own artistry. The book looks almost like a sculpture when the light falls on the cover, which resembles a rough sheet of drawing paper.

MUNCH Publishing’s keenness to experiment with genres, styles and formats is evident across the entire list. It is probably most visible in the books we publish in connection with the interdisciplinary festival Text at MUNCH, which takes place at the museum every two years. The latest of these publications, Streif av fellesskap (2023), brings together contributions by visual artist Lars Korff Lofthus, performance collective 71BODIES, writers Oliver Lovrenski and Priya Bains and a number of other artists. In essence, this is a publication with a broad scope that speaks with multiple voices.

MUNCH Publishing’s keenness to experiment with genres, styles and formats is evident across the entire list. It is probably most visible in the books we publish in connection with the interdisciplinary festival Text at MUNCH, which takes place at the museum every two years. The latest of these publications, Streif av fellesskap (2023), brings together contributions by visual artist Lars Korff Lofthus, performance collective 71BODIES, writers Oliver Lovrenski and Priya Bains and a number of other artists. In essence, this is a publication with a broad scope that speaks with multiple voices.