Earlier this week, we had the privilege to witness the fifth anniversary of the TED Fellows program, one that traditionally kicks off the week of TED with a boom. While last year brought the greater creative community to…
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From the number of house plants to the amount of music played and what type, the new exhibition “Image of the Studio: A Portrait of New York City Graphic Design” showcases a fastidious breakdown of the…
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How one designer represents the antiquity of type in the digital age
Austrian designer Andreas Scheiger celebrates the “craft of etching, engraving and letter design” with a nod to both science and the graphic design of the Victorian era. Scheiger believes that letters are “full of life” and, in an effort to explore “the means of communication by dissecting and rearranging its basic elements,” he delves into the heart of typography with his sculptural letter series, The Evolution of Type, inspired by Frederic W. Goudy’s tome, The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering (1918). Says Scheiger, “Goudy analyzes the denomination of letters as we know them today. For him, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous achievement because with it, written communication is independent from pictograms like hieroglyphs.”
Turning typography into a metaphor for evolution, Scheiger depicts the immortal nature of the written word with his latest contribution to the Evolution of Type series, Exhibit 16/1-9. Reminiscent of fossilized specimens suspended in amber, Scheiger takes an anthropological look at the future of the craft. Casting solitary letters made of balsa wood into polyester glass resin, the designer spells out a cautionary tale that echoes the way of the extinct trilobite fossil group. Scheiger reflects, “With digital print processing, letterpress letters indeed become something like ancient species.”
The seemingly petrified letter blocks follow in Scheiger’s alphabet, which also includes sculpted letters splayed in sections to reveal a realistic array of muscles and marrow. Using a combination of wood and carved chicken bones mixed with polymer clay, Scheiger’s Evolution of Type exhibits visually conjure up an anatomical riff on the children’s alphabet—S is for Spine, T is for Tendon and so on.
For Scheiger, “letters are organisms and typefaces are the species, all classified similar to biological taxonomy. Each letter displays the anatomical features and evolutionary characteristics shared by so many living creatures,” an idea harkening back to Goudy’s inspiration, which focuses on the notion that “a letter should possess an esthetic quality that is organic, an essential of the form itself and not the result of mere additions to its fundamental form nor to meaningless variations of it.” As a result, Scheiger becomes somewhat of a “font surgeon” of design-focused, dissected specimens.
Items from The Evolution of Type series along with Scheiger’s graphic prints are available for purchase in his shop.
“Paraconceptual” art in Susan Hiller’s new comprehensive book
Both intimate and cosmic in scope, as described by critic Lucy Lippard, Susan Hiller’s ruminative multimedia works are the result of a career change from anthropology to art forty years ago. The U.K.-based artist, thinking of her discipline as “value-free,” experiments with sculpture, photography, painting and more, letting the subject dictate media to give her abstract theories form.
A through-line in Hiller’s works is what she calls “paraconceptual”—combining conceptual underpinnings with paranormal studies. But the resulting mysticism, unlike many of her contemporaries, isn’t the point. Whether through hundreds of postcards or video installations, Hiller’s appeal comes from her studious, almost scientific, approach.
Often taking years to research a project, Hiller’s interrelated obsessions include themes ranging from cultural erosion (how Nazi street names were replaced with “Jew Street”) to looking at the suspension of disbelief through our reactions to supernatural phenomena. This broad conceptual scope was recently the subject of a survey at Tate Britain, which was accompanied by a comprehensive catalog, now available stateside.
The book includes a thorough sampling of work, including the more intensive and thought-provoking pieces like “Homage to Joseph Beuys” and “Painting Blocks,” which were completed over the course of decades. Others—”From the Freud Museum” and “Enquiries/Inquiries“—similarly are the upshot of several years of closely observing her subject. One of the earlier artists (and at 71, one of the oldest) to incorporate the Internet in her practice, her use of current technology, like her overall approach to materials, is not just a medium but part of the message.
The exhaustive book explores the U.S.-born artist’s contemporary work through previously published essays, interviews, papers, lectures and images. “Susan Hiller” sells online from Amazon and Tate. U.K. customers can also go to Amazon U.K..
A comprehensive study of tribal art
American art historian Carl Schuster spent more than three decades traveling the world exploring tribal customs and patterns, gathering ancient tribal art and artifacts along the way. Though his goal was to illustrate the intrinsic human connection to artistic expression in an anthropological study, Shuster never managed to compile his research into a cohesive form. With the help of a fellow anthropologist, Edmund Carter, who transferred Schuster’s notes and musings, they were able to transform Shuster’s work into “Patterns that Connect: Social Symbolism in Ancient & Tribal Art“, a seminal book from 1996 that provides evidence and examples to support the scholar’s theories on our natural connection to art.
Comprehensive and comparative, the study contains a total of 1,023 illustrations, featuring sculpted figurines, garments, carved stones, paintings and body decorations from cultures and tribes around the world. Schuster labors to decode this complex iconography in notes and analyses that accompany the images, providing insight into the surprising unity of human society.
According to Schuster, tribal designs such as the ubiquitous zig-zag motif and artifacts such as “Y-posts” are really attempts to record family lineage, not meaningless doodles or objects meant for play. Of the continuous patterns generally used in ceremonial and even everyday garments Schuster remarks, “This is a graphic representation of the puzzle of procreation itself, in which there is neither beginning nor end.”
In contrast to the common anthropological idea that each culture is singularly unique, Schuster argues that since these designs did not just occur in isolated cultures, but were widespread across the earth at different time periods, they are proof of a collective human instinct. Schuster further pushes his theory by positing that ancient patterns continue to survive and are in fact relevant today. Stacked chevrons, for example, ubiquitous in several tribal cultures, are used as modern military insignia denoting rank. Another extension of this relevance appears in modern tattoos, textiles, fashion and art, which all seem to draw from frivolous and innocuous patterns that are actually saturated with hidden meaning through their connection to our tribal past.
A hefty tome in and of itself, Schuster & Carpenter’s “Patterns That Connect,” is intended for more than casual students of anthropological beauty (I discovered it in the library of New Mexico-based artist Judy Tuwaletstiwa). It’s out of print but a good copy can be found for around $100. Those even more serious about the discipline will want to check out the monumental work from which “Patterns” is derived, the 1986 “Materials for the Study of Social Symbolism in Ancient and Tribal Art,” which consists of twelve books in three volumes. Alibris is a good place to start your search.
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