Ferdinand Kriwet Stars: 3

Stars is a three-volume encyclopedia of alphabetically organized images that was first published in 1971. In the 1960s, author and artist Ferdinand Kriwet, who was initially inspired by concrete poetry and its interest in the visual quality of linguistic signs, became an important catalyst for a new approach to the book as a literary medium: a way of reading that does not rely on a linear progression but rather a rapid springing back and forth between the pages of the book and the texts and images on them. In Stars he demonstrates the possibility of treating images as words and putting them in alphabetical order. The re-publication of Stars provides renewed access to Kriwet's seminal work, which for a long time has only been available, at considerable cost, in antiquarian book catalogues.