Text Artists and Writers of Note in Mousse Magazine no 46

 Found an old copy of Mousse Magazine at work weeks ago and finally got around to scouring it for ideas and research points in the region of artists and words. Specifically it is issue number 46 - Artists' Words, December 2014 - January 2015.
Selected below are some photos of the pages that are points of interest:

Ian Hamilton Finlay:
His concrete poetry doesn't literally speak or say too much in the above poems, he experiments with the text itself, the forms it takes, the composition. But some of his other works are said to be charming and full of thoughts, hopefully later this month I will get to see some of his words he left in the landscape of the garden and lands he lived in, in Scotland. Ideas of mixing words with land and space would be an interesting step away from paper.

 Short phrases, to the point, sweet.

Poetry has been really interesting for me to look at again, after so long, having only ever really read or studied it at school and in class, but alwasy enjoying most of the poems in the beloved 'Anthology' that we got to draw, doodle on, make notes on, and then couldn't take to the exam, I miss my copy and I wonder what happened to it?

Marcel Broodthaers worked as a poet and writer till his 40s around about, then his poems became visual too, he played with sculpture and presenting his ideas using humour. One of his first visual works was a sculpture, where he had taken an unsold book of his poems titled Pense-Bête 

and embedded it in wet plaster, after having classed himself as a failed poet before this 

(a bit premature really?). 

 

John Giorno was an artist with a strange perspective on certain topics that I feel strongly against (ie drugs etc), but I have to admit his works are interesting if only as they mix collage and words and text with colour. The square format is a lively choice for his works.
Use of different sizes to emphasise meaning again used here.

Again another artist, Maurizio Nannucci, who takes text out of the flattened realm of paper or board or painting and takes it into the space to lie upon walls and positioned in strange little nooks, a meeting of text and architecture that is different to graffiti art. Though this text piece is playful, his lit up works sculpturally located have a more impressive presence.

Ramond Pettibon's above snapshot is deceptive, aside from the little remark he includes as part of the drawing, there are no black and white cartoon style drawings of people or things or spaces. His choice of words can also be borrowed from other writers like Ruskin and so on. Check out his drawings though, their very gritty and dark. 

Dan Graham's structures of steel mirror and glass are fascinating, even their grouped name of pavilion sound semi ancient, but his words are what I'm really interested in, but the idea of making words into 3D pieces out of wood or sculptural materials to be placed here and there is a good one. And they are just words put next to each other, they all seem to realate but they don't make a coherent sentence in the usual way.

Alison Knowles, yes at last a female artist! Born in Amercia in the 1970s, her practice has been ever changing and diverse, but her books words and her looking at text here really stand out, compared to the above she is thinking of presenting books in non conventional ways, looking beyond a single poem or few words chosen and creating many of them and then thinking how to issue them as a book, or to spread them out into the world, check out Bean Rolls. Above is a text piece she made with James Tenney using computer based technology. Often classified as the first computerised poem, Knowles wrote out lists of words and these were then fed into an early IBM computer which then selected sepcific words from that list using data it had at the time.  
Working in performance too she is an artist of many talents, and one comment I loved in this article is her obsession with books and reading. A fellow book bibliophile who has met some amazing people like John Cage and Albers. 

Nani Balestrini is an Italian writer who has be remarked on being important to many various magazines and within literary circles in Italy. He has exhibited as a visual artist and is a writer whose books have been added to my tbr list (a long list at this point). His ideas as visited and examined in the guardian article around reproduction and the Gutenberg press and similar press ideas during that time period are making me consider the idea of originality, and single unique works within text based work, and readings.

Any comments, artist or writer recomendations around text art, concrete poetry or anything relating to the above, please feel free to leave a comment.


Sources:
http://moussemagazine.it/issue.mm?id=52

On Ian Hamilton Finlay...
http://www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com/ian_hamilton_finlay.html

On Marcel Broodthaers...
http://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1542 
http://www.artspace.com/magazine/news_events/exhibitions/marcel-broodthaers-at-moma-53532 
http://www.moma.org/m/tours/50/tour_stops/621?locale=en
http://www.artnews.com/2016/03/15/when-is-sense-nonsense-on-fischliweiss-at-the-guggenheim-and-marcel-broodthaers-at-moma/

On John Giorno...
http://bombmagazine.org/article/3179/john-giorno

On Maurizio Nannucci...
http://www.micheledidier.com/index.php/gb/mfc-exhibitions/mfc-archive/mfc-exhibition-maurizio-nannucci.html
http://www.arteecritica.it/archivio_AeC/72/articolo02-eng.html 

On Ramond Pettibon...
http://blog.art21.org/2007/09/19/raymond-pettibon-here%E2%80%99s-your-irony-back-the-big-picture-at-zwirner/#.V6HkQ6JYFOY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Pettibon

On Dan Graham...
http://www.lissongallery.com/artists/dan-graham
http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artists/dan-graham
http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/qa/dan-graham-52392

On Alison Knowles...
http://www.aknowles.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Knowles
http://www.fluxusheidelberg.org/interviewwithalisonknowles_v1.3.pdf

On Nani Balestrini...http://old.nannibalestrini.info/ (might need to put it through google translate to view) 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/13/nanni-balestrini-tristano-novel-technology

 

[Archive] John Lewis Summer 2014 Edition

Brilliant geometrics - imagine geometrics made out of basketry weaving....

 pink and gold wth this fish like scales repeat

love the skirt and trousers with the florals drawn like on white fabric.

Vibrant colours and beautiful florals.

John Lewis (2014) Edition. Summer 2014. 

John Lewis Autumn/Winter 2013 Catalogue

My favourite pages and pieces from this catalogue. I don't actually go in for much - well except for that one time when I was desperate for some calico for a school project, or when I needed a special sewing tool for my work at university. You know, actually I quite like John Lewis and Fenwicks' haberdashery/fabrics/sewing departments. They are well stocked and specialised which is always a good thing when you need specifics for your sewing machine.

The orange binding is textured and the book has a quote by William Morris for some reason. Likely because JL likes to state that it works and buys from British designers and makers (I half believe that) that convey important ideas of having a purpose and still having an aesthetically pleasing form. Morris was all about equality for people, regardless of class or wage, and keeping makers and designers in work, paid well and utilising their specific skillsets instead of depending on factories and mass manufactured things, bit of naive thinking on his part, and strange considering his benefactors and people who commissioned him/his company were generally of the middle and upper classes.  

 

Each section is given a theme, starting with the mostt striking in terms of colour and texture, 'The Modern Restoration' title uses a strong identity of a traditional idea mixed with a bit of modernity. The next few pages are full of interesting shapes and textures. Again in keeping with the colour scheme, including teals and cobalt blue, some of which I have photographed. More sections reveal floral imagery, interesting design aesthetics - both what could be considered as classic ideas and innovative thinking, (like the magazine rack within the coffee table). 

I would have prefered to scan these, but in the end photographing meant I could test out the phone camera on my Nokia lumia 520, its not fantastic, but it can pick up detail and though really could do with a flash and maybe something that gets rid of my shaky hand, it does a good job.