When you see the picture above, would you look into the letters and read between the lines to figure out what on earth it means? For me, it just makes no sense, but I actually really appreciate the way these letters are arranged. This is a work by Carl Andre, an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. The picture suggests a form of chanting.
This is how the article When How It Looks Matters More Than What It Says in The New York Times teaches me to approach art in a distinct way. The article introduces a provoking show named “Drawing Time, Reading Time” at the Drawing Center. The author examines the nine works at the center and explores the relationship between form and content of a artwork. “Asemic”, a word for mark-making that resembles writing but actually has no linguistic meaning, is highlighted in the article.
An intriguing exhibition called “Dickinson/ Walser: Pencil Sketches” displays handwritten manuscripts by two famous writers: Emily Dickinson and Robert Walser. Dickinson wrote her draft on torn scraps of paper and the insides of cut-open envelop. Her draft is described as a “grocery lists made by a hurried domestic.” Walser’s wrote his context in antique German on small rectangles of paper and cardboard in tiny letters difficult to read by our naked eyes.” According to Ken Johnson, their writings exemplify some “kind of writing meant to be legible not by others primarily but by the person who produced it.”
“Dickinson/ Walser: Pencil Sketches” by Emily Dickinson and Robert Walser
Nina Papaconstantinou creates a kind of minimalist, visual drone by hand copying onto single sheets all the pages of whole books using blue carbon paper to transfer her handwriting.
The Lost Island by Nina Papakonstantinou
In 1993, Sean Landers hand wrote on 451 yellow pages an entertaining, autobiographical account of his trials and tribulations as an artist and a pursuer of sexual, romantic and other gratifications. It’s titled “[sic].”
“[sic]” by Sean Landers
Some exhibitions do have some legibility and are not totally “asemic,” but their ways of ordering texts still make the style outshine the content. Deb Sokolow’s “Chapter 13. Oswald and Your Cousin Irving,” a poster-size drawing, consists of neatl made letters as wells a photographic images that tells a remarkable story of John F. Kennedy and it’s aftermath.
“Chapter 13. Oswald and Your Cousin Irving” by Deb Sokolow
“Not to be confused with mystic or surrealistic automatic writing, which is supposed to tap into unconscious depths, asemic writing in art highlights the relationship between ‘the written word’s communicative transparency on the one hand and visual art’s material opacity on the other,’” as the organizer of both exhibitions and the DrawingCenter’s curator, Claire Gilman, puts it in her exhibition catalog essay. From this point, Gilman also questions the nature of meaning itself: “Is it some kind of transcendental substance that may or may not be incarnated in some physical form? Is the relationship between meaning and material form like the relationship between your body and your soul?”
The concept of “asemic art” brought up by the article is really riveting. I think I am exposed to a new form of art which emphasizes more on forms than content. These works are not surrealistic; they contain the thoughts of their authors if we really explore text and their historical background. However, there is no necessity to do so because the texts are produced for the authors themselves. Instead of meaningless work on analyzing, why don’t we sit down, take a sip of wine, and enjoy how words themselves could be expressed as a form of art.
Personally, I believe the artworks I saw before were always mysterious and difficult to understand, but I enjoyed most of them. Whether or not I know about the purpose, history, or context of the art work weighs much less than how I was struck by the intense feelings provoked by the work, no matter the feeling is visual, auditory or tactile. “I don’t know what this picture is about; but it just looks awesome, and I like it.” This is how I perceive an artwork at the first second. After some analysis, I realize I just like the style of the work. But what is the style? I do not know. Perhaps this is the magic of art.
Art is also about individualism, from the stances of both the observers and the creators. Emily and Walser didn’t write their scripts for us; they expressed their thoughts somehow in their own ways which are appreciated by contemporary artwork curators. As observers, we are entitled to interpret an artwork however we want. The most important statement I learned from our Arts in New York seminar so far is that “Art could be anything.”
Johnson, Ken. “When How It Looks Matters More Than What It Says.” When How It Looks Matters More Than What It Says. The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/arts/design/drawing-time-reading-time-at-the-drawing-center.html?_r=0>.
This article was interesting, mostly because I actually did sit there and try to see images in the arranged gatherings of random letters, but to no avail. I’ve seen exhibits like these before somewhere, in some sort of art museum, but I never really paid attention because I feel like words are their own art form and if you forsake the letters for simply a visual experience, something is missing–but that’s a personal feeling.
Mainly, it’s just fascinating to see the arrangements of letters, to have to stretch the imagination to create an image association where previously we would simply see words. I liked that you pointed out the individualistic perspective of artists and also brought out the ideas of the imagination stretch and individual interpretation. Very nicely structured.
I agree with your generalization “art could be anything”! I guess presentation is another form of art. How these artists presented their writing was a separate entity in itself. Just like how museum curators are not only business people: they do not seem to have anything to do with art, they are just the middle man, but curators are also artists. Sometimes artists give their works to curators and let them figure out how to display the pieces, and deciding how to present the works is an art.
This is really cool and interesting. I’ve always seen writing and composing as art, but this takes it all to a whole new level. I’ve never really considered the art behind how exactly a piece was written, on what, or in what order. It’s actually quite intriguing to be able to look at people’s first drafts because everyone has different styles.
I think it’s definitely unique to be able to create nonsense words and simply arrange them as something, instead of truly putting a meaning behind them. Personally, I like looking at the arrangement of the first draft, and being able to apply meaning to the words. This adds a new dimension to an interesting book, which is pretty cool. Otherwise, creating nonsense words for symmetry is definitely art, but it’s also quite a jarring concept for me, interesting topic.
This article was really interesting because I never thought about how handwriting could be a work of art. We always pay attention to the meanings behind the words and often forget that the way the words look also have meaning. I feel like when people think of the word art they usually think of paintings or sculptures. They wouldn’t think of pieces of paper with written words on it. I think this is an interesting but cool topic.
Wow, I find the arrangement of the words really aesthetically pleasing. I have encountered several poets who decided not only to play around with words, but with images as well. To me, those poems are more memorable because they help the reader visualize what is being said. However, very often it can take away from the meaning of the poem, seeing as it provides the reader with only on view, while there may be many interpretations to the poem. If however, the poets do it deliberately, there are several hidden meanings behind the words that form pictures.
At the recent and still-running “Applied Design” exhibit at the MoMA, there is a work on exhibit which is the entire source-code of the game “Tetris” in a very unique way, similar to the asemic works depicted above. It is written with different colors and seems to flow off the wall. It’s interesting because computer code itself usually serves no function outside of an actual computer, but it was turned into an artistic rendering, which I find brilliant. You can’t play it, you can’t really decipher it (unless you’re a programmer, and even then, you’d need a computer in front of you to put the code into action), but it just looks really nice.
I’m surprised at the disconnect between the visual appeal of the words and the words themselves. I would expect that at least to some extent the content of the words would reflect the meaning of the words visual appearance. I’m surprised that the article never made mention of any artist making this connection. Otherwise, this type of art seems at least to me to be a bit superficial, it kind of reminds me of expressionism in its lack of meaning.