Over the past week, our class has viewed many works that use type to convey messages that go beyond the words themselves. At what point do words cease to function as simply words and take on the qualities of signs and symbols? Words have often been considered distinct from images, but some artists attempt to blur
this distinction.
Typography produces an emotional response independent of the words themselves. The shape of a letter affects how one reads the words and alters the message. It can be as individual as a signature.
One of the artists we first observed inclass explores innovative ways of presenting words to take on new meaning. Jenny Holzer was formally trained in printmaking and her material is solely text-based. The work that she has received much attention for is her projections.
She writes phrases (or more recently, has been borrowing writing from other authors and poets) and uses projectors to shoot them onto surfaces such as buildings and rivers, transforming into surfaces. In an average context, the words could be considered ordinary or banal. Once they are inflated to phenomenal proportions, however, they penetrate the physical world, inhabiting it with other humans.
The words take on their own personality and demand notice. It is difficult to observe them passively, especially when they tower o
ver you often at more than 6 stories high. Reading is no longer a personal experience, like reading a book is. It becomes a shared experience.
Street art operates on roughly the same principles. Instead of confined to the exclusivity of a gallery space, street art is accessible to everyone, which alters the meaning of the work. While Jenny Holzer chooses to alter the meaning of her words by manipulating their size, other artists obsess with manipulating the font to create a new message. In an interview on Art21, Margaret Kilgallen comments that her art is influenced by old typography from the 15th and 16th century history books.
Her work looks like old hand-painted signs from the the first half of the 20's century, serif letters painted in a limited color palette that are flowing while simultaneously stiff and concrete.
The type she uses is as individualized as a signature, all done by hand so the writing is never monotonous. The work of her husband, Barry McGee, is similar in its use of type to create a nostalgic representation of a lost era. They use type not as words, but as signs.
Both Kilgallen and McGee's work reminds me of two other artists that I have seen: Faith Ringgold and Ralph Fasanella. These artists were represented by an art gallery I used to work at called ACA Galleries in New York City, where I used to live.
They were represented by the gallery, which specialized in American folk art. The similarities I see are inthe warm, earthy colors and the rigid shapes of the figures.
The line in drawing is similar to a type: It, too, lays down rigidly, but in a unique way. No one line is ever the same as another. In lecture on Thursday, Professor Laura Vandenburgh from the Department of Art presented a lecture on drawing. Many of the examples that she showed used text in the work. Some of the works were hybrids of text and image, swirling around one another, mutually dependent on one another. Since that lecture, my conception of what constitutes drawing has expanded immensely. My working definition is no longer defined as writing implement on paper. Rather, drawing is a conceptual idea of how line interacts with surface. In drawing, it is rigid; there is never a sense of completeness. The line can be manipulated and altered ad infinitum. With type, the line can be mutated into a shape that no longer resembles a letter; it takes on the characteristics of a sign.
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