These cards are an example of a myriorama; a set of interchangable pieces depicting a landscape. Constant and repeated features in the foreground and/or the horizon support different pastural scenes in the middleground. From myriad, an indefinately great number, and 'entertainments' such as panoramas and dioramas, the holder of the cards is able to change around the pieces, creating their own landscape. The designer would start with one landscape, which would then be cut into 16, 24, or 36 individual slices.

Interactive myriorama at http://billdouglas.ex.ac.uk/eve/di/69238.htm

Curiosity Cabinet for the Wexner Center for the Arts - Mark Dion

Apart from the interest of the classification systems used and presented by Dion in the plan for a proposed piece, one of the main things that intrigues me about this image is its own layout; separate from that which it represents. Although we see the area from above in the top illustration (a circular room, which according to the authors of Mark Dion, published by Phaidon, separates the viewers from inspecting the cabinets at close range by means of a 'protective railing') when presented like this, alongside a horizontal view of the cabinets the two vantagepoints combine to form the shape an observatory. I presume this was deliberate; it serves both to present the idea and function with its own connotations - especially when surrounded by the images of paintings and books from the Bodleian Library, and the first image, a photograph from an original Cabinet of Curiosities; a wunderkammer; a wonder-room.

This referencing of where it has come from reminds me a little of the repeated motifs in Pierre Huyghe's Billboards presented earlier. Also the presentations of art history by Andrew Lanyon and Cornelius Galle.

Details.

Dion's cabinets, organized according to Aristotle's classifications of species, when presented like this: each bookshelf encased in its own white box, remind me of the different playing cards of the myriorama, able to be rearranged at will, and still almost make sense visually. To these however, although change would visually acceptable, the entirely concept would be corrupted.

Rene Magritte - Words and Images

Originally published in La Revolution Surrealiste in 1929. Found in Conceptual Art by Tony Godfrey, Phaidon.

I don't know how these were originally presented; all that the book says is that the top image is a detail and the words are translated from the French. Given that the words are not only those that appear in the images I would be intrigued to see how they were written, whether printed or handwritten. I wonder how the presentation and scale in comparison to the originals varies; its seems to impossible to tell with the reproduction of these line drawings - information that might help, that you might find in other mediums in unavailable. The lines however, are very fine; it seems likely they have been reduced. Still the meaning is still clear on not dependant on its scale - their simplicity and minimal information makes them more versatile and apt to display in a book. This seems very different from the experience of viewing a painting, for example, via the mediation of printing.

Decorator Maligin - from an Album by Ilya Kabakov

Detail.

In the introduction to Kabakov's albums in a book on him the author describes his 'albums' as words that sit in no particular genre, they 'belong in a space between a few types of art . . . from literature (primarily Russian), albums have taken narrative, plot, the existence of a hero, and most importantly, the direct inclusion of another person's text* or that written by the author . . . ' One stated element from 'fine arts' is 'this genre has the ability to withstand made on works of that type: to hold attention on itself, to be an object of contemplation, to possess appropriate compositional features.' He continues after a moment: ' From cinema, the album takes the use of connections between frames . . .' and ' theatre - not a modern theatre where the action takes place in the dark so that the attention of the viewer can be be even more firmly held, but rather an old theatre on a square, where in full light the viewer is unrestrained in his watching of the action and simultaneously in his evaluation of it.'

Kabakov's Albums are presented on music stands, each drawing or scrap takes a separate page, each is the same size. When presented, always only to small groups of people at a time, the viewers are able to handle them, inspecting at their own speed, in the preferred and chosen order.

Quotes and images from Ilya Kabakov, The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, Amei Wallach, Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1996.

*This comment reminds me of a couple of books, where the subject's are authors or editors themselves; Satre's Nausea, and Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.