Comment on Art: Sharing the 'Particular Significance’ of books at CJM

Not because of the way it’s organized (right now the books are sorted by the astrological signs of their donors — a bit of humor to temper the earnestness). Not even because it’s set up in a gallery space at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (the cold concrete floors have been covered with carpet to help disguise this fact). Each book was donated to Josh Greene, a San Francisco conceptual artist, each taken from the shelves of strangers and friends, each with some story that runs deeper than the one the author intended to tell. Some of those stories are outlined in quick notes tucked within margins; others are left for you to discern yourself. The gallery has been made soft and comfortable, transformed with pillows, an open invitation to settle in. There’s a second collection of books, called “Read by Famous” — a second piece of art, technically, though the whole room blends and moves and works as one. Read by Famous came first, a couple years back, an offshoot of an abandoned plan to start a boutique publishing business. Have a dinner party, I’ll bring the wine, everybody will bring a couple books. [...] they came from many places — office book drives, museum outreach, pleas over e-mail and on Facebook. The exhibit forces us to consider the difference between a book donated by a grandmother in Oakland and one donated by a movie star, to examine our relationship with the printed-and-bound word. Greene pulls a paperback from the shelves. Really though, all of that is incidental to the note written there in a hurried handwriting with a black ballpoint pen: Almost 30 years later her words continue to hold a power that eclipses the actual story within the book. “The simplicity and the humbleness of these as objects is important for me to highlight,” Greene says. On one shelf, there are two competing love stories donated by a Gemini born in 1972. A Sagittarius wrote a short note (or is it a poem?) at the center of a blank page: “This has been/ lovingly read by/ lots of people.” The photographer Catherine Opie included a photograph (a horizon full of blues; sky on top, ocean on bottom, an island in the distance) and a short note (“From the Blue of Distance”) with her copy of “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit. “I loved this book,” Philip Seymour Hoffman wrote in a copy of “Death Be Not Proud” by John Gunther, just below the final lines from the poem of the same name. There’s a copy of “Just Kids” by Patti Smith (donated by a Cancer), a copy of “Capital” by Karl Marx (one of the strays found outside the Albany Library), a copy of “James and the Giant Peach” by Roald Dahl (“I like this book because it’s fiction”). “I was drawn to this book in part because of the immeasurable bond between father and son in face of immense hardship,” one of the Aquarians wrote in quick, messy script. Sophie Calle, the French writer, photographer and artist, sent Greene a copy of “Où s’embrasser à Paris” by Thierry Soufflard (“The Best Places to Kiss in Paris,” according to the English translation.) On the cover’s flip side, she wrote “Pg.