As I clear my accumulations, I came upon this and its issues.
I have mused upon work that uses words and wondered. What set of definitions makes a letter, or collection of such, art? Any number of people have used lettering in art media since the nineteenth century, so it’s not a new thing. In most of the cases that come to mind, the words and letters have been freighted additions to a larger context. But there are those who have combined phrases, words and letters with various display technologies: light boxes, LEDs, projections, decals etc. Where these efforts fit in the continuum is a lively topic.
I was tempted to wet a toe and tried a sequence of transition words from “yea” to “nay” – curious to look upon it and to see if figured foam could simulate a brass plaque. My first challenge was to create the sequence, which I blew, as “tea”, “tee” and “pee” are not necessary. Then it was the type face, which I tried to keep simple. I was and am ambivalent about the outcome.
How to characterize this experiment… Art? Whimsy? What?
A literary Totem Pole!
It seems that word-based art, even where words predominate, could fall anywhere along a line from traditional (illuminated initial capitals) to conceptual (e.g. William Powhida as discussed by Sunil, note artist’s comment). At present I’m trying to understand the role of words and letters incorporated as minor elements in a painting. More later…
Oops, I meant to include an example of conceptual calligraphy by Scott Kim on figure ground.
Steve:
Whose painting are these letters a minor element of?
Birgit:
Gotta think about the totem pole idea. It’s easy for me to see a dipole maybe.
Jay,
I feel like I’ve seen other similar examples, but the works I’m currently looking at are the encaustic paintings of Sara Mast, which contain single letters, numbers, and occasional words. I take them basically as symbolic representatives of human culture, and especially fragmentary remnants of culture.
Jasper Johns sometimes used numbers as major design elements, but I’m not too familiar with their possible significance.
Jay,
I’m one of those people who are irritated by words (real or meaningless or apparently but not truly meaningless or meaningful) in art. My left brain wallows hopelessly in the meanings of the text, leaving all the visual stuff to hang by itself. I find words that I can’t read particularly maddening, which saves you in this case!
I like this bit as a totem, and perhaps as an adjunct to Melanie’s query in her comment about knowledge “the frailness of knowledge, the oscillation of knowing and not knowing, and how knowing shapes belief and influences action. What do we know, and what can we — or should we — do with our knowledge?”
That’s the way I feel about your totem. That and that I should see the irony — you could have left out tea and pea and pee, but that would definitely have diminished the impact of the subject.
Alas, looking at this particular rendition of your visual talent renders me silly.
June:
The oscillation of Ahab’s sea. Whatever that might mean.
The “oscillation of knowing and not knowing” could be supplemented with an oscillation of meaning. We could come up with a stout list of possible interpretations of Yea and Nay and find that they interact with each other in endless patterns. This is for me to art what knowing and not knowing is to the rest.