Top Ten

"For the first time, the complete last ten years of Artforum top ten lists has been compiled into a book. However, TopTen, published by No Input Books, 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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