The catalogue book "Blank. Raw. Illegible. Artists' Books as Statements (1960-2022)" is published on the occasion of the likewise titled exhibition at the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren. It is dedicated to the artistic phenomenon of blank books in an international context since 1960. The concept of making the empty, the illegible, and the non-imageable the content of books, which runs counter to the conventional understanding of the function and content of a book, has developed a rich artistic practice with diverse aspects. It reveals that communication and language consist of negotiation, agreement, refusal, and difference, work with humor, irony, and also speechlessness, and deal with beginnings and endings, imagination and reference, freedom of expression and censorship.