Column094 — July/August 2009
The State of North American Vizpo, Part Two
Small Press Review,
Volume 41, Numbers 7/8, July/August 2009
Poetry, Volume 193, Issue 2, November 2008
Edited by Christian Wiman
100 pp; 444 N. Michigan Ave., Ste.1850,
Chicago IL 60611. $5.50 ppd./copy.
po–X-cetera
Webmaster: Bob Grumman
http://comprepoetica.com/newblog/blog01758.html
Because too few poetry critics really tie into a poem they’re discussing, and just about none that treat visual poems, I’ve decided to interrupt my overview of what’s going on in the precincts of current visio-textual art to zero in on one of the pieces in the Poetry gallery I wrote about in my last column, Scott Helmes’s “haiku #62″ (which is on view at my blog, URL above). It’s a great piece, for one thing, as good as any current visio-textual art I’ve seen. But it should also allow me to say a few things about the non-verbal aesthetic value of text in visual art that I don’t believe anyone else has.
At first, I thought “haiku #62″ entirely non-verbal–“asemic,” as those making averbal textual designs call it. It has a few words and word-fragments, but they didn’t seem to mean much, aesthetically. It was a portrait of a standard American haiku, because its title said it was, it consisted of three “lines” like such a haiku, and because it had text, if not significant words. Moreover (and this is something else I overlooked at first), its text is entirely oriented as literature–all its letters, that is, are standing straight up.
Now, however, I see that its employment of pure text plus non-representational design as the 5/7 of a traditional haiku makes a word in its third “line,” “place” aesthetically important for naming where it is as both strongly a visimagery place (“visimagery” is my newest coinage for “visual art”), but also a textual place (with linguistic potential). The “sq ft of” in the 5/7 portion suggests (lyrically and amusingly) that measurement, definition, something not haphazard, is required to make the color and shape of the third line create a place. So I now classify it as (barely) a visual wordwork.
To go on, it is superb even if taken as purely visual. Fonts, letter-sizes, colors repeating and varying and contrasting all over it–with a haiku delicacy and serenity; its three main shapes suggesting fragments of autumn, things afloat or in flight, and the momentariness that haiku so much represent, but also clearly out of the bright brittle of High Commerce.
The text, as pure text, does more–and here is where, I hope, I get meaningfully into the question of what attributes of non-verbal text can carry out useful functions in visual art. So far, I’ve found five such attributes: (1) it’s recognizable; (2) it’s tonally significant; (3) it’s auditory; (4) its elements have direction; (5) it is symbolic.
(1) That text is recognizable, or familiar, is particularly advantageous in a nonrepresentational work of visual art by acting against disorientation or alienation, giving an engagent spots to rest his eyes in–and landmarks to use (cartoceptually) in traversing the piece. Text will make what it’s in to some degree comfortingly resemble a printed page, too–the way the circular forms I like to put in my non-representational visual artworks suggest moons or suns to give what they’re in the look of landscapes. This seems unarguably true of “Haiku 62.”
(2) That text can make a significant tonal contribution to a visual artwork. Cursive results in a tone much different than print does, and various fonts can express many different tones. In the Helmes piece, it provides a sharp Madison Ave. contrast to its over-all haiku ambience. Tonality is important, but I can’t see how it can ever be central.
(3) That text consists of elements that for the most part can be pronounced, or partially pronounced (and which most people will automatically sub-vocally pronounce, however slightly) will add an auditory dimension to the artworks it’s in. In some cases this can be exploited to major effect. The auditory effect of “Haiku 62’s” text seems to me minimal–which is one reason I find it very close to the borblur between poetry and visimagery. On the other hand, the escape it seems to be making from language into more ethereal realms is not minor. . . .
(4) Closely related to (1) is text’s having direction–letters face right (for the English-speaking), thus acting as unobtrusive arrows. Hence, text can be used to guide an engagent’s exploration of what it’s in more dependably than anything else other than actual arrows (if that’s what the piece’s creator wants). Its having direction also gives a piece a tone of going somewhere, of having purpose, and motion toward a goal. At the very least, it gives a piece a greater feel of location than the piece would otherwise have–or, another expressive element for its maker to work with–as I feel Scott Helmes did to excellent effect in his piece, albeit very possibly unconsciously.
(5) Most obviously, text adds a symbolic layer to a work of visual art it’s in. Freshness, since visual art is generally . . . visual. Vivid contrast, as well: something wholly abstract next to (and/or containing) something wholly sensual (color). More than that (according to my theory of psychology, at any rate), an egagent will not (really) see the text, he will read it, or try to. So the piece with have a sort of “underscore” of symbols. It will be much weaker in an asemic piece than in something with significant verbal content, but it will still be present, and the engagent will still experience it in two different parts of his brain, his visual and his conceptual awarenesses. If he does this both at once, he will get into Manywhere-at-Once, as I called it years ago, naming it the most important destination of poetry.