Top Ten

"Artforum magazine began featuring a monthly top ten column in November 1990. At that time it was called 'Real Life Rock,' and was edited solely by Greil Marcus. Not until 1997 did Artforum start experimenting with the rotating guest artist/editor top ten list. By 1998 it was a permanent fixture in the magazine, and for many people, the first page they turned to upon receiving the newest issue. Of particular interest were the annual end-of-year reviews, which routinely featured 20+ contributors ranking their own top tens in the categories of music, art, and film.

For the first time, the complete last ten years of top ten lists has been compiled into a book. However, TopTen, published by No Input Books, edited by James Hoff, and designed by Jeremy Mickel, is more than simply a reprint of the magazine. As a conceptual artist piece, TopTen finds precedent in Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, and Marcel Broodthaer's A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance. Broodthaer's process for A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance relied on blacking out text by Mallarmé to create a visual poem. In TopTen, the images are blacked out to uncover and isolate language and by doing so, reducing a ten year visual history to text; to an oral history.

The DIY quality of the patchwork Please Kill Me, which gave equal attention to bands well- and unknown, informs the production quality of the book. The cover is a glossy magazine stock, but the interior pages are black and white bitmapped copy paper. TopTen is equal parts artist book and reference book. The blacked out images become an abstract design and conceptual object, and the who's who of contributors and listings make it essential knowledge for anyone interested in contemporary art and pop culture. Printed in a limited edition of 200, TopTen was an instant hit at the 2008 Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair."

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