;

Where does writing begin?

;

Where does painting begin?

; ;

Henri MichauxPar la Voie des Rythmes

Jackson Pollock

Carlfriedrich ClausE

Pierre SoulagesE -

Eleni Zouni Where does writing begin? Where does painting begin?

Henri MichauxPar la Voie des Rythmes

Jackson PollockPlates

Carlfriedrich ClausPlates

Pierre SoulagesPlates

LetterformsGreek letters - compositions

Eleni Zouni The letterforms creation Posters

Selected Bibligraphy

Contents

6-8

15-1721-29

3235-45

4851-61

64-6569-77

79

8095-137

139

9-11

18-1921-29

3335-45

4951-61

66-6769-77

79

8195-137

139

;

Where does writing begin? Where does painting begin?

;

6 - . , ;

, .

,

,

, .

-

. ,

, .

. .

.

,

-

. ,

, .

,

, , ,

.

. .

. ,

, , , -

-

.

, ,

.

.

, -

. ,

.

, . -

.

, ,

,

.

. -

,

.

- .J.Pollock, H. Mishaux, HFClaus,P.Soulages

o ,

-

, , ,

, ,

, , , .

,

, -

,

, , .

Doodling .

7 . .

, ,

.

.

, ,

, , , , -

, , , ,

, , -

.

. ,

, ,

. -

. , .

. ,

.

. .

, .

, -

, ,

.

-

, , .

, .

.

.

.

, , -

.

-

,

.

-

-

.

, ,

. (

, ).

, .

.

Sound, symbol and writing. Letters represent sounds to various degrees of accuracy

Jackson Pollock, Untitled 1950, ink on paper

8. ,

.

.

, .

. ,

.

. .

.

-, -

.

. . . -

, .

.

.

, , -

, .

. -

. .

. ,

, .

, ,

. ,

, , -

.

, .

,

. -

.

,

.

.

Research using letters that slant to different degrees proves

that the mind thinks partly in images.

.

La Colombe poignarde et le jet deau (The Bleeding-Heart Dove and the Fountain). Calligram by Guillaume Apollinaire

9Design is an obsession: perhaps the most overwhelming obsession the human mind can experience.But does it really concern the mind alone?

The visible world is an unfailing stimulus, constantly exciting our instinctual

need to grasp the nature of every object the eye constructs.

The desire to clarify the meaning of mental impressions compels us to pick

up the pencil. And then, all of a sudden, a strange and sometimes violent

dialogue begins between impression and memory; between the hands past

experience and performance in the present.

Concept and tool become engaged in a process of exchange from which

eventually emerge, more or less successfully, landscapes and moments of

life.

A few drops of ink, a piece of paper and the synergy of time and action are

all it takes.

The design is what breathes beneath the brilliance of color. Giacometti

used to say that the design is everything.

Language is the first level at which experience becomes formulated. We learn

to name the world around us by attaching words to the things we perceive

in it, each culture creating reality in its many forms and transformations

through language.

Reality survives in that distant horizon of the world of things that words can

never reach, or in the territory between things and words.

Poetry is the discourse produced when we have learned not to forget that

there is a world filled with words, where we can connect not with what these

words may say, but with that which they cannot express.

In language there is poetry at the tip of the pencil lead theres the design.

The design is poetry.

By definition, the design shares a common quality with language both present

the same animated flow, both exist in a constant state of flux.

When looking at a design we tend to pore over each detail, attempting to retrace

the designers gestures and experiencing a sense of profound pleasure as we

reconnect with our own memories of past action.

We have all at one time or another drawn distracted lines, scribbled illegible signs

and doodles in our moments of absent-mindedness, or while on the phone.

. 3100 .

Egyptian hieroglyphs (3100 BC)

Letter in the Wind, Woodcut by Japanese artist Torii Kiyohiro (1751-1764)

, ( 1751-1764)

10

There is a world of graphic action to be found in every one of our memories.

When looking at a design we can sense the text inhabiting the image like a

ghostly apparition.

Oftentimes artists designs rest on a combination of language and image, which

is the core reason for their potency.

The gestures we may visualize when examining a design are acts recorded in

the ledger of time.

Gestures are elements of preverbal communication that serve to complement

articulated language.

The design itself is not only a tangible record of thought and a register of its

intentions, but also something in which we may intuitively recognize the signs

and traces of certain primordial physical motions, whose meaning is deeply

engraved in the contemporary gesture.

It is a story that goes way back in time.

The design has a fundamental role in the circulation of thoughts and ideas. It

is a way to know what one thinks.

Gestural painting and the automatic graphic sign.

J. Pollock, H. Michaux, CF. Claus, P. Soulages.

As the gaze follows the trajectories of lines, the choreography of points and

signs across space, the shapes born of the artists gestures, one sees that every

brushstroke and graphic sign and single drop of color stretches out freely over

the works surface, acquiring a life of its own, demarcating its own space, in

a process that has a beginning, middle and end just like anything else that is

time-bound.

In the elements that come together to form these works one can visualize the

body of the artist as it participates in the creative process, its state of alertness,

the rhythm of its dance-like movements, all contributing to launch this peculiar

dynamics through space and onto the canvas where it becomes impressed.

This is a dynamics that may forever remain unfathomed, though it is the very

source of the appeal held by gestural graphism: the random event that gives

birth to well-structured compositions with an identifiable beginning, middle

and end, through the bodys controlled, rhythmical motions.

These compositions become a visual testament of the space/context necessary

for human communication.

What is communicated can be simple or complicated, dark or bright, ugly or

beautiful, loud or quiet, violent or peaceful, empty or full, colorless or colorful,

evoking joy or grief, undermining, overlapping, but always playing with the

notions of time and space, leaving marks and traces to be discovered by the

observer/passerby that is to come.

Writing was developed by humans as a result of this need to create a record of

Nature and of the nature of

Patterns, signs and images convey messages that acquire the quality of symbol

through circulation and repeated use.

The symbol is the visible shape that evokes what is being symbolized.

The symbol equals a suggestive representation as opposed to a realistic one. It

can reflect more or less accurately what one feels or thinks.

It can be a rallying or driving force; it can unite or divide people.

Symbols arranged in space in a rational order present the image of a well

articulated system: writing.

Writing has a long history and its development has been a slow and intricate

process. What makes a particular form of writing stand out and ensures its

survival is not so much its ability to represent a given language as the power,

prestige and vitality of the culture using it.

The writing systems used by most cultures today have their roots in early

alphabets or systems of characters like the Chinese ideograms, though these

contain several almost indecipherable signs.

Chinese characters have perhaps the longest history of continuous use than any

other form of written language, living or dead.

The Chinese culture was the first to develop calligraphy.

Writing in China was considered a form of painting and artistic design.

Later, painting itself would be considered a form of writing and calligraphy

would come to be classified as one of the major art forms.

Chinese writing urges the reader not so much to seek abstract entities behind

visible signs as to investigate the representations, recurrences and relationships

between phenomena that are signs and signs that are phenomena.

It forces the mind to think while following a development of lines quite different

to that typical of other alphabets, which seem to rest on a combination of a

handful of signs without any intrinsic value in themselves.

Greek-Latin characters have been in use for over two millennia. These writing

systems could eventually become extinct, sharing the fate of others before

them.

(1500-1000 ..)

Egyptian plaque dating from the New Kingdom era (1500-1000 BC).

11

Points move to create lines and lines to create shapes. The interplay of shapes

across space creates more shapes that become pictographs suggesting objects

and beings when inspired by the need to communicate information or convey a

certain message.

Their combination expresses an idea (cuneiform, ideogram), while multiple such

combinations give rise to associations: the resulting context of signs begins to

take on an array of meanings.

Signs refer to word sounds in spoken language as do designs. Abstract and

concrete notions may be read in all directions.

Quite apart from the meaning they may hold across different periods of time,

they form examples of concrete poetry or optic poems.

Concrete poetry brings together in a single space two systems of perception,

the linguistic and the visual and with them the relationships between language

and image, painting and written word. Optic poems are an art form situated

somewhere between poetry and design; between the word and the image.

This form of poetry maximizes on the advantages of non-verbal communication

but without abandoning language.

It opens up an optico-linguistic field of action, where the visual and verbal dimensions

are simultaneously perceived and recognized.

Every word is an abstract drawing in itself. Surface and volume at once: it covers a

specific surface on the paper and equals a specific volume of sound when spoken.

Every word carries in it the weight of the language that invented it.

Every word evokes images and emotions.

Every word is open to a number of different interpretations, depending on era

and circumstance, personal experience and inclination.

The word is the visible manifestation of an idea. The time of books seems to

have passed. Some have even tried to transfer ancient poetry to vinyl and CD.

Yet this poetry was written for books. The technical medium used each time

creates poetry and the poet alike.

The computer, vinyl record and television must seek out their own type of

poetry. The word that is being recited has only a tangential effect on the reader,

while the word that is being perceived and accepted as image triggers a series of

mental and emotional responses. The more sensitive our mental and emotional

world is, the sharper and deeper are these responses.

Readers must shake off their passivity and force the body and mind to work;

reclaim a role that has long been challenged.

They must immerse themselves in their inner world, whence the self will slowly

reemerge as a living source of creativity.

. ( , 15 .)

Latin manuscript (Western Europe, mid-fifteenth century AD)

, 17 .

Islamic calligraphy, Iran, Seventeenth century AD

(1700 . )

The Phaestos Disk (circa 1700 BC)

..

.

.

Henri MichauxJackson PollockCarlfriedrich ClausPierre Soulages

Henri Michaux.

16

Namur 1899

Paris 1984

Henri Michaux

1899 .

1919

, . , ,

.

1922 Lautramont.

Paul Klee, Max Ernst Giorgio de Chirico

1925

. 1927 1937

.

Phantomisms. ,

,

. 1950 Michaux

-

, ,

. -

1956 La Hune. , 1957,

(Palais des Beaux-

Arts) Michaux,

Daniel Cordier 1959.

-

. -

. Michaux .

, ,

Documenta 1959 1964,

Einaudi 1960.

Michaux figurative , -

.

,

.

.

Henri Michaux 1984 85 .

, .

.

, .

, , , ,

. -

,

.

, -

. ,

.

. -

, -

.

.

, . .

. -

17

H. Michaux

.

, , .

. .

. (1929)

, .

.

( , ),

, .

, -

, ,

. -

, ,

,

. ( , ,

.)

. (1929)

. , , .

. (1929)

.

. , ,

, -

, , . -

,

;

, , ...

, homo sapiens, -

. , , ! -

, , -

,

, ,

, . , ...

. (1929)

. -

. .

. ,

. ,

,

.

Mon Roi ( ), La nuit remue ( ,

1935)

.

La Nuit des Bulgares ( ), Un certain Plume

( Plume 1938)

18

Namur 1899

Paris 1984

The French writer, painter and graphic artist Henri Michaux was born in

the Belgian town of Namur in 1899 and spent his childhood in Brussels.

He wanted to become a priest, but followed his fathers wish and began to

study medicine in 1919, but soon abandoned this plan and signed on as

a seaman.

After reading works by Lautramont he began writing in 1922. His

acquaintance with Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, whom he

met in Paris in 1925, inspired him to first painting and drawing attempts.

Between 1927 and 1937 he travelled through South America and Asia.

Afterwards Michaux sketched and painted his Phantomisms.

He had his first exhibitions in Parisian galleries, followed by important shows

abroad. In the mid 1950s Michaux began experimenting with hallucinatory

drugs, particularly with mescaline, letting his experiences inspire his

writing, painting and drawing. These works were first exhibited in 1956

at the Galerie La Hune in Paris. Then there was a large exhibition at the

Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in December 1957 and a retrospective

exhibition organised by Daniel Cordier in Frankfurt/Main in March 1959.

His ink drawings evoke scriptural elements and calligraphic symbols

which are a seismographic reflection of the artists inner emotions. The

two systems of word-language and sign-language pervade each other. Henri

Michauxs impressive oeuvre attracted much international recognition. He

exhibited works at the documenta in Kassel in 1959 and 1964; he was

awarded the Einaudi-Prize at the Biennale in Venice in 1960. In 1965 he

won the National Prize of Literature, which he refused to accept.

Henri Michauxs paintings always remained figurative, in-spite of all

tendency towards abstraction. The artists intention was not to flee from

the world, but to expand the world by changing the awareness. The real

world was to be enhanced by additional levels of perception.

Henri Michaux died in Paris in 1984 at the age of 85.

A man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal has put

together this travel journal. But at the moment of signing he is suddenly

afraid. So he casts the first stone. Here.

Preface to Ecuador (1929)

No, I have already said it elsewhere. This earth has had all the exoticism

washed out of it. If in a hundred years we have not established contact

with some other planet (but we will), or, next best, with the earths interior,

humanity is finished. There is no longer a means of living, we explode, we

go to war, we perpetrate evil of all sorts; we are, in a word, incapable of

remaining any longer on this rind. We are in mortal pain; both from the

dimensions as they now stand, and from the lack of any future dimension

to which we can turn, now that our tour of the earth has been done to death.

(These opinions, I know, are quite sufficient to have me looked down upon

as a mind of the fourth order.)

Ecuador (1929)

It is almost an intellectual tradition to pay heed to the insane. In my case

those that I most respect are the morons.

Ecuador (1929)

A mind of a certain size can feel only exasperation toward a city. Nothing

can drive me more fully into despair. The walls first of all, and even then

all the rest is only so many horrid images of selfishness, mistrust, stupidity,

and narrow-mindedness. No need to memorize the Napoleonic code. Just

look at a city and you have it. Each time I come back from the country, just

as I am starting to congratulate myself on my calmness, there breaks out

a furor, a rage... And I come upon my mark, homo sapiens, the acquisitive

wolf. Cities, architectures, how I loathe you! Great surfaces of vaults, vaults

cemented into the earth, vaults set out in compartments, forming vaults

to eat in, vaults for sex, vaults on the watch, ready to open fire. How sad,

sad...

Ecuador (1929)

In my night, I besiege my King. I rise up steadily and I wring his neck. He

regathers his strength, I come back at him, and wring his neck another

time. I shake him, shake him like an old prune tree, and his crown trembles

on his head. But nevertheless, he is my King, I know it and he knows it, and

it is quite certain that I am at his service.

Mon Roi, in La nuit remue (1935)

It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.

La Nuit des Bulgares in Plume (1938)

19

It looks like writing, but we cant quite read it.

I call works like this asemic writing.

Asemic writing seems to be a gigantic, unexplored territory.

Asemic writing has been made by poets, writers, painters, calligraphers,

children, and scribblers, all around the world. Most people make asemic

writing at some time, possibly when testing a new pen.

Educators talk about children going through distinct stages of mock

letters, pseudowriting and so on, when theyre learning to write. Many of

us made asemic writing before we were able to write words.

Looking at asemic writing does something to us. Some examples have

pictograms or ideograms, which suggest a meaning through their shape.

Others take us for a ride along their curves. We like some, we dislike

others.

They tend to have no fixed meaning. Their meaning is open. Every viewer

can arrive at a personal, absolutely correct interpretation.

ASEMIC

Henri Michaux Narration (excerpt) 1927

Par la voie des Rythmes

Jackson Pollock.

32

1912-56

Jackson Pollock 1929

Art Students League .

1930 -

(Regionalism) -

(Orozco, Rivera Siqueros) .

1940 .

1947 Pollock drip painting ( drip and

splash style) .

, , ,

, . -

, ,

, .

,

action painting ( ),

,

, -

.

1960 Pollock -

20 .

. . ,

.

, ,

, ,

, .

,

. , -

Pollock . ,

:

. -Paul Valry

, -

, ,

. ,

.

.

...

, ,

, .

, , . -

, -

. ,

, .

,

. , -

, ...

, ,

, , .

, -

,

-

. , -

. -

.

-

O ,

, -

. , , -

,

, , .

33

New York 1912 - 56

He beggan to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students League, New

York.

1930 He worked in the manner of the Regionalists,being influenced also

by the Mexican muralist painters, ( Orozco, Rivera, Siqueros) and by certain

aspects of Surrealism.

1940 Painting in a completely abstract manner

1947 Drip and splash style for which he is best known. Instead of using

the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured

and dripped his paint from a can. Instead of using brushes he manipulated

it with sticks, trowels or knives, sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by

an admixture of sand, broken glass or other foreign matter.This manner of

Action painting Had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that

it was by artists and critics alike to result in a direct expression or revelation

of the unconscious moods of the artist.

By the -60 s he was generally recognized as the most important figure ,in

the most important movement of this century in American painting.

I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing; that is,

its direct. I dont work from drawings, I dont make sketches and drawings

and color sketches into a final painting.

On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer , more a part of the painting

,since this way I can walkaround it ,work from the four sides and be literally

in the painting.

The modern artist , it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world

in other words- expressing the energy, the motion and other inner forces.

To make a mark or trace a single line upon a surface immediately transforms

that surface , energizes its neutrality Dividing the space of its field , a line

releases the allusive or generative charge of the surface ancient Chinese

calligraphers spoke of generative paper.

I know that if I have made contribution, it is primarily in my drawing..

Instead of using outlines, instead of making shapes or setting of shapes ,my

drawing declares the space

The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical

means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph.

The modern artist, it seems to me ,is working and expressing an inner world-

in other words- expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.

But the hand is very indirectly governed by the eye. Many relays come in

between; notably that of memory. Every glance at the model, every line

traced by the eye at once becomes a recorded memory, and it is from

this record that the hand will have to derive its law of movement on the

paper. The artist approaches, withdraws, leans over.His whole body

behaving like an instrument of the eye, becoming entirely a means for

aiming, pointing,controlling, reducing the focus.

From this watershed, his final graphics went their way down to a more

fragmentary state in which staccato tempi become semaphores of the erratic

return of repressed presences seeping through from below. Some sheets

indeed arose like residues or after-images from paper placed beneath

other drawings. Formlessness contents with the tug of long-forgotten

geometric ordonnances. As the papers absorbency confounds surface and

space,so indeterminacy and, sometimes ,opacity ,rule. Previously, flow

was the keynote of Pollocks draftsmanship; now it ends in the ominous

spread of blots. They are the final punctuation marks in the handwriting of

the self. -Paul Valery.

Plates

Untitled. 1939-40. Colored pencils on paper ( 38,1x27,9cm)

Drawing with Two Signatures. 1941. Gouache and pen and ink on paper ( 57,3x58,6cm)

38

Untitled. 1942-44 .Oil brush, spatter,pen and ink on paper (51,1x33,7cm)

Untitled. 1939-40. Colored pencils on paper ( 38,1x27,9cm)

Untitled, 1951. Black and colored inks on Japanese paper (62,9x99,1cm)

Untitled. 1945. Oil brush, oil and gouache on paper ((26x24cm)

42

Number 14,. 1948. Enamel on paper ((57,8x78,7cm)

Untitled. 1946. Brush,spatter,black and

colored inks, pastel,gouache,and wash on

paper (57,2x78,7cm)

Untitled. 1944. Gouache,ink,and wash on paper (57,2x77,8cm)

Number 15,1948: Red,Gray,White,Yellow,1948 Enamel on paper (56,5x77,5cm)

Carlfriedrich Claus.

48

4 1930, Annaberg - 22 M 1998, Chemnitz

, . -90

,

.

, -

, _50.

. -

, -

, .

1949

1951 ,

(- ).

,

, -

. ,

.

1958 ( | -

). , , -

, ,

.

, B-

, , A 13

. -

. , ,

, , ,

.

1960 Franz Mon -

, , -

.

,

Dada ,

, ,

-20

1961 - .

- , -

.

4

1962 -

, , , .

1965 - . -

1969 - -80 -

.

1971

1985 .

:

, ,

.

-

.

,

, , ,

, .

1991 . -

Griffelkunstmidglieder.

1992 -

Graf-Kessler 5-

.

Georg Baselitz, Van Hedendaagse .

Hand - Handeln. 1987

49

4 August 1930, Annaberg - 22 Mai 1998, Chemnitz

Carlfriedrich Claus was a German artist, author and philosopher. In the

1990s he worked on Visual Poetry, exploring the borders between lyrics

and graphic arts.

The most accurate autobiography, by virtue of being unintentional and

instantaneous, is to be found in my work from the beginning of the 50s.

Compromise and reciprocal influences from the Language Pages. An

experimental existence through experimental work: the conditions in which

it is accomplished are transcended in and by means of the outcome.

1949 Claus takes an interest in linguistics and especially phonetics.

1951 He writes naturalist-symbolist poetry in free verse and makes his

first attempts at experimental poetry (sound-image). A broken wrist forces

him to learn to write with his left hand, which will have a decisive role in

his experimentations with the written word, as well as in later work on his

language pages and on exposing the unconscious. He creates a series of

abstract drawings titled Automatic Journal as Physical Exercises.

1958 He experiments with deconstructing language (Individual Sounds

/ Individual Letters). Using a typewriter he creates word fields and then

shifts the order of pages to produce Phase Models introducing into his

work the dimension of time. He produces numerous texts and designs

inspired by the structures of minerals and plants. His work from this period

includes Rocky Terrain, Swamp, Erecting and Demolishing a Figure

in 13 Stages. Hand-made designs feature cycles of interwoven structures.

Also important are the cycles and layers of phrases, words and sounds that

appear in his optic poems.

1960 He publishes a review of Franz Mons Articulations titled Visible

and Audible Phases of Comprehensive Processes. In it he describes his

own theoretical background and practical experience, which seems to have

less of an affinity with a revival of Dadaist phonetic poetry than with sound

processes typical of the mantras of Lamaism, totemic rituals, Shamanism

and avant-garde music of the 20s.

1961 He begins to study Paracelsus, whose alchemical writings and pre-

materialist philosophy of nature and society will substantially influence his

work. At the same time he begins to explore Tibetan art, especially painting.

He creates Double-sided experimental acts of writing on two sheets of

transparent paper (4 sides).

1962 His hand-made graphic work begins to incorporate pictograms,

representing eyes, hands and fingers.

1965 A Study of Comprehension. The high-relief of corrugated paper

becomes here an increasingly dynamic and adequate constituent element

of the embodiment of thought and speech.

1969 Antireflective Meditation contains the germ of concerns that would

dominate his work in the 80s, such as the preoccupation with physical

action that is evident in his karate designs of the same period.

1971 Studies of the Movements of Thought and of Fingers.

1985 He develops his basic ideas regarding Aggregate K. The scope of

his preoccupations and experimentations at the time includes the alchemical

moment of mediation between mind and matter, the problem of interaction

and Lao Tzu Taoism; Karate as a spiritual principle and physical exercise for

attaining self-awareness with a view to awakening latent psychosomatic skills

and the existence of an unconscious body language. More importantly, his

work during this period is inspired by the emotive experience of Shamanism

regarding the nonverbal, non-vocal communication of the living body with

itself; of man with the animals and plants.

1991 He is elected a member of Berlins Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie

der Knste) and receives the Griffelkunstmidglieder award for graphic

design.

1992 He becomes professor emeritus at the Dresden Academy of Fine

Arts (Hochschule fr Bildende Knste Dresden) and is presented with

the Graf-Kessler award in the context of the German Artists Association

exhibition in Aachen.

He also presents an exhibition in the Van Hedendaagse Museum, Ghent,

together with Georg Baselitz.

Hand - Handeln. Kara- te.1987

Plates

Strahlngen 1979 - 83

Starting Point, 1983

Observation einer Observation:

Fur Klaus Sobolewski .1983

57

Imaginieren im Kindsein; Aurora darin . 1976.

Frage nacht mehr auf Ausbeutung, Macht, Zahmung basiert, sondern auf Solidaritat auch mit der Natur . 1976- 77

58

59

Die Galgen werden grunen . 1976

Frage nach kommunistischer Kosmologie . 1977

Studie: Basilemente. 1979

Studie Basilemente. 1979

Pierre Soulages.

64

1919 ,

Pierre Soulages , .

24 1919 , .

,

. : -

, .

.

Soulages, ,

.

, -

.

Soulages -

,

.

, -

1947 Salon des Indpendants,

(Socit des Artistes Indpendants)

. .

1979 -

.

1987-1994 104 ()

(Sainte Foy) .

, ,

(2001).

1959 2006 Sothebys

1.200.000 .

2007 Fabre

Soulages,

. 1951

2006, -

60,

outrenoir 70

.

Georges Pompidou

( 2009- 2010)

, 2010

.

Brou de noix sur papier. 1948. (65x 50 cm)

65

. . ,

, ,

. -

, -

, ,

. ,

.

,

.

, -

, -

.

-

, ,

, .

, , -

.

.

, ,

, , ,

.

,

, , -

, , -

(tachisme) ,

, , -

, ,

, .

.

,

.

,

, -

.

[]

, , ,

. , ,

Pierre Designe: -

, .

, ,

.

,

. -

, ( ,

-

.) .

, Stphane Mallarm:

, , ,

. ,

.

Peinture.1948-49. Brou de noix sur toile(193,4x129,1cm)

66

Rodez (Aveyron), 1919

Soulages also is known as the painter of black because of his interest in

the colour, ...both a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on

black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens up a mental field all of its

own. He sees light as a matter to work with; striations of the black surface

of his paintings enables him to make the light reflect, allowing the black to

come out from darkness and into brightness, thereby becoming a luminous

colour.

Before World War II, Soulages already had toured museums in Paris seeking

his vocation and after wartime military service, he opened a studio in Paris,

holding his first exhibition at the Salon des Indpendants in 1947. He also

worked as a designer of stage sets.

In 1979 Pierre Soulages was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Letters.

From 1987 to 1994, he produced 104 stained glass windows for the

Romanesque Abbey church Sainte-Foy in Conques (Aveyron, France).

He is the first living artist invited to exhibit at the state Hermitage Museum

of St. Petersburg and later with the Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow (2001).

A composition he created in 1959 sold for 1.200.000 euros at Sothebys

in 2006.

In 2007, the Muse Fabre of Montpellier devoted an entire room to Soulages,

presenting his donation to the city. This donation includes twenty paintings

dating from 1951 to 2006, among which are major works from the 1960s,

two large plus-black works from the 1970s, and several large polyptychs.

A retrospective of his art was held at the Centre National dArt et de Culture

Georges Pompidou from October 2009 to March 2010. In 2010, the Museo

de la Ciudad de Mexico presented a retrospective of Soulages paintings

that also included an interview-video with the painter (Spanish subtitles)

I don t ask anything of the viewer, I present him with a painting: he its

is free and requisite interpreter. This position as viewer depends on and

responds to his overall attitude within the world all the more powerfully

so because he is not put on the spot by this painting, which does not refer

to anything outside itself. My painting commits not only the painter in his

entirety but the viewer too, and with as much force as possible.

This was not so much a lack of interest in the image as a boundless

enthusiasm for the qualities peculiar to painting, I preferred the unadorned

force and quality engendered by the interaction of the forms themselves ,

the concrete character which made them a unique , irreplaceable event.

To me, this wash drawing was the revelation that the forms emerging from

brush , ink and paper could create autonomous space, light and rhythm.

As an independent entity from the image, they contributed something else,

they opened up painting to other channels.

The image often needs to lean on the crutch of the world, infinitely more

adapted to the transmission of meaning. Painting has been language and

imitation but also an object of delectation, a search for ideal beauty ,

harmony, realism, expression and much more.

Abstract , it has sometimes been geometrical, sometimes not, with flat

colours devoid of any trace of hand or tool, or on the contrary with colors

much to the fore in the graphic design and touches of gestural or Tachist

painting _ and coming through each of these aspects , pure painting

aspiring towards beauty , means of expression, abstract expressionism ,

communication through symbols , object of meditation etc.

Painting has been endlessly reinvented and must always be reinvented.

Nostalgia , dreams, of returning to times and painting of yesterday are

simulations. I believe painting can discover new forms which correspond

to a truth, a truth of time and of an individual and that it is still capable of

perpetuating the adventure of art.

67

Painting something done by someone who is questioning his relationship

with the world , for someone who, through the painting , thus questions his

relationship with the world. Or , as Pierre_ Designe puts it : The canvas

which refers to nothing refers me to myself and with no deciphering

required and no meaning imposed , it calls upon me to act as meaning.

This is the way that one approaches a work of art , which owes its existence

to those who contemplate it. It implies no hidden meaning , no secret clue

( the secret is revealed beforehand, is at least known by the one hiding it

and can be deciphered). Here we re talking about mystery. I am convinced

that painting is what writing was to Mallarme:

An ancient, very vague yet jealous practice whose sense lies in the mystery

of the heart. Whoever accomplishes it, integrally , withdraws

Peinture. 17 Janvier 1970. (202x 327cm)

68

Plates

Brou de noix sur papier.1947, 1948. 65x50 cm, 65x50 cm.

Gourdon sur verre .1949. 45,5x 76,5 cm.

Peinture. 11 julliet 1965. 190 x300 cm.

Peinture. 1960. 41x33 cm. Peinture. 1960. 41x33 cm.

Peinture. 11 julliet 1965. 190 x300 cm

Peinture. 24 Novembre 1963 . 256 x 202cm

76

Peinture.1e Juin 2006 . 181x162cm

Peinture. 8 Juin 1999 . (243x181cm )

Letterforms

Greek alphabet letters

Compositions

80

.

, , ,

. -

. -

, ,

, ,

.

.

, ,

.

,

, . -

.

, , . -

.

-

.

, ,

.

, -

. -

,

.

.

.

. ,

.

-

,

, .

, -

. visual journaling -

Journal -

,

, -

.

.

, ,

. , -

-

. poster design

.

-

,

,

, .

, ,

, , -

,

-

.

- ,

,

- .

,

-

-.

. -

, ,

-

.

,

, ,

, .

Doodling 4

81

Design reflects the inner dialogue of the designer with themselves. Signs,

lines and patterns are a manifestation of the original idea, of thought as it

emerges in the mind. The automatic gesture of the design reveals peoples

ideas about things, not their perception of them. The design itself is not

only a tangible record of thought and a register of its intentions, but also

something in which we may intuitively recognize the signs and traces of

certain primordial physical motions, whose meaning is deeply engraved in

the contemporary gesture. An excellent example of this is to be found in

the drawings of toddlers. It is the gesture that young children use to write,

to acquire a sense of space to chart it, as it were to explore boundaries

and relationships. Every child around the world has made doodles on a

piece of paper, drawn shapes that approximate the circle, signs and lines

that seem to move around the surface of the drawing to clash or overlap

with each other.

As far as writing is concerned one might say that letters appear almost

like mechanical parts. The motions required to draw letters on a page are

mechanical. Language is one of the primary levels at which experience

becomes formulated. We learn to name the world around us by attaching

words to the things we perceive in it, each culture creating reality in its

many forms and transformations through language.

Language and design share the same animated flow; are equally in a state

of constant flux. The image and the word are often combined in artists

designs, completing each other and reinforcing both verbal message and

visual form.

The design reflects the constituents of an idea and the way these are shaped

to materialize it. It can change in the course of a given project. This kind

of flexibility is intriguing for the designer because it means that one can

discover new paths through which to reach their goal. Designs are a kind

of external representation: instruments to facilitate memory and thought.

Memory is enriched when one can recognize in a design certain stimuli,

situations and actions that have become over time part of the shared record

of human experience. Such representations have the advantage of being

open to investigation, discussion, modification by various groups of people.

The gesture of visual journaling creating a record of thought that resembles

a typical student journal, though containing representations rather than

well structured notes has in recent years become widely popular across

international academic programs, especially, as might be expected, in

design schools and related academic departments.

The message in a communicational act such as the advertising campaign,

or any other campaign for that matter that uses the poster as the most

common means of expression, is the upshot of a very careful combination of

visual element and typography. Generally speaking, the development of font

design may be said to serve this purpose among others: namely, to carry

the message across as eloquently, directly and securely as possible. From

posters originating in the student protests of May 1968 in France to the

contemporary statements of artists. Especially in poster design, gestural

letters are not only very common, but also quite successful at the hands of

inspired artists. This alone is a compelling fact: something has happened

to undermine the monopoly conventional typography held on mass message

transmission and to thrust the gestural letter once inhabiting only the

world of art works, serving more introverted aesthetic purposes to the

surface of mass visual communication.

By examining the works of artists engaged in gestural design and

painting tracing the flow of movement across the works surface, the

development of lines and doodles, the space occupied by signs and the

varied relationships formed between these elements I can visualize the

shape of the characters I will need to assemble the words or phrases by

which the image will be composed. Typeface selected for the image on a

poster that has the explicit aim of communicating with the viewer-passerby,

of conveying a certain message, invariably implies the notion of the word-

phrase. The space delineated by the surface of the paper, which serves

as a base, is conceptually constructed with the added use of elements

borrowed from the paintings of specific artists, which help complement or

reinforce the meaning of the word-phrase. The form of characters can be

developed in various ways. Free-flowing shapes seem to crystallize in their

form the dynamics of the gesture, of the artists thought and emotion, and

become the channel through which message is conveyed. Assembling all

these diverse materials by means of collage in fact causes signifiers to be

arranged in a new order that follows from a specific aesthetic approach. As

a result, words-phrases on the paper become a sort of ideogram.

H.F.Claus.1978. Notiz des Todes

83

86

87

,

,

, ,

, , .

, ,

,

[- ]. ( ., )

Cloning

The life sciences can now pose a threat to the living being through their use

of biotechnological methods a development that has been made possible

by information technology and the advancement of biotechnology. The living

being is no longer threatened by a nuclear destruction of the natural world,

but by artificial insemination, the ability to control the sources of life, the

very origin of beings. Is there any so-called moral value to such remedies?

Can they at least be connected in some way with the first article of the Hip-

pocratic Oath (never do harm)? (P. Virilio, The Information Bomb)

Posters

Perspectiva

.

,

,

.

Perspectiva

Literally meaning to see through, to inspect

carefully Before devouring space with a

bulimic appetite that has no parallel in the

entire history of human migration, the pioneer

has already done so with the eyes: in America,

everything begins and ends with the unslaked

desire of the gaze.

97

98

- .

.

-There is no paradise but in our childhood dreams.

(an aphorism written on a wall in Exarheia, Athens)

-Cyberpunks

IAD (Internet Addition Disorder),

,

, , - .

(. , )

Cyberpunks

People addicted to multimedia networks, suffering from IAD (Internet Addiction Disorder), their memory an

absurd jumble of disparate things, a dumpsite of images from all corners of experience, a mess of tattered

symbols thrown together topsy-turvy.

(P. Virilio, The Information Bomb)

;

How Far is Too Far?

Mind

Manipulieren

Save the earth

Free Will

113

Politicians

-

live cameras -

, ,

-

,

, ,

1950 . ( , . )

Tele-surveillance

When there are five million live cameras around the world and hundreds of millions of cybernauts able to watch all at

once on their monitors what these cameras record, then we shall witness the first Optical Crash and so-called televi-

sion will yield its place to the universalized tele-surveillance of a world where the infamous economic bubble will be

replaced by the optical bubble of the collective fancy with the attendant risk of setting off the Information Bomb,

whose coming Albert Einstein announced as early as the 50s. (P. Virilio, The Information Bomb)

Justice

119

Law and Order

,

. o, ( , . )

Babel

Mankinds massive settlement becomes a colony, a camp for the great trial; a universal ghetto; the

city and the world in chaos (P. Virilio, The Information Bomb)

123

124

Neo-idiots, -

.

,

... ,

( .George Steiner)

Neo-idiots

An army of imbeciles beaming with stupidity and beastly ambition: easily recognizable

by their unmistakable lack of good taste, their patent inability to use justly and tactfully

the power that is henceforth in their hands. The power of the media is an empty shell:

the truth it claims to communicate is nonexistent (George Steiner, Language and

Silence)

Philo-folie.

H ( Philo-sophie ) .

( , . )

Philo-folie

A word whose formation mirrors that of philosophy (philo-sophie), but signifies the exact op-

posite. (P. Virilio, The Information Bomb)

-

.

.

( ), , ,

, (

, . )

The school as treadmill

The child and the teenager represent an aspect of the dangers held in store by the future. There-

fore they are to be shown no mercy. What awaits them is an almost militarized education system;

the treadmill of school (as Stefan Zweig would describe it), a conventional marriage, dowries and

heirships, anything to make their non involvement in public life seem prudent, to keep them in a

state of unrelieved dependence. (P. Virilio, The Information Bomb)

129

.

.

There is no paradise but in our childhood dreams (an aphorism written on

a wall in Exarheia, Athens)

131

Life in the forest

;

;

Where does Writing Begin?

Where does Painting Begin?

139

Selected Bibliografy

Paul Virilio, , (La bombe informatique)

Vilem Flusser, H , (Die Schrift)

Tana Hoban, Que vois-tu?

Andriew Robinson,

Georges Steiner, , (Le Silence de livres)

( .)

,

Roland Barthes, L empire des signs ( )

Jodi Hauptman, Drawing from The Modern

No Limits, Just Edges , Jackson Pollock

Par la voie des Rythmes, Henri Michaux

Denklandschaften, Hansfriedrich Claus

La subversion des images, Centre Pompidou

Soulages , l exposition, Centre Pompidou

, 2010.

, , : .

, : .

: .

his book was published in November of 2010 in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the M.A. in Visual

Communication of the Vakalo School of Art and Design.

Designed, edited and texts by: Eleni Zouni.

Supervising and technical supporting by: Dimitris Kritsotakis.

Translated by: Maria Skamanga.

Grafi01Binder1.pdfGrafi0