David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


22 November 2020

TARebus


bLOGOS/HA HA 💛 rebus

"Largely gone from the funny pages but alive and well on the rear bumper of the car, the rebus is a visual puzzle that, in its various forms, encapsulates the history of alphabetic writing from ideograms (pictures designating concepts or things) to pictographs (pictures representing specific words or phrases) to phonograms (pictures representing specific sounds or series of sounds). Dictionaries struggle to define the term in such a way as to capture the range of shapes a rebus can take, typically focussing on its pictographic and phonogrammic attributes, forgoing mention of the ideographic. For example, the OED defines rebus as “a. An enigmatical representation of a name, word, or phrase by figures, pictures, arrangement of letters, etc., which suggest the syllables of which it is made up. b. In later use also applied to puzzles in which a punning application of each syllable of a word is given, without pictorial representation.”

... The simplest rebuses are those consisting only of letters: IOU, the (in)famous title of Marcel Duchamp’s moustached Mona Lisa “l.h.o.o.q.” (Elle a chaud au cul, literally something like ‘Her ass is hot,’ figuratively, ‘She’s horny’), and such staples of modern day texting as CUL8R or French @2m1 (à deux m un, i.e., “à demain” ‘[See you] tomorrow’)."

- Alexander Humez

Humez starts at "the funny pages", which is also how we know the rebus best. From 19th and 20th century French newspapers and trade cards, both of which we've collected. 

  original rebus artwork for Petit Illustri Amusant c.1906
(above and below by unknown artists) collection FIAPCE  
Theatre of the Actors of Regard    
  Le Chien Savant, a French trade card c.1890, 
  aka a TAR card, in which 
  - we regard...
  - a man with pipe and three cornered hat regards...
  - a clown-hatted clever dog regards... 
  a rebus of physical objects.

The young Marcel Duchamp would have grown up with such rebus word-image games as part of the day-to-day popular culture of France. Before we understood this, his LHOOQ work seemed intellectual, rarified, exotic. Now we appreciate that it follows upon the disruption-to-art news of the period (Mona Lisa stolen in 1911, recovered 1913) and is crudely street playful. 

Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia : Marcel Duchamp, 1919, L.H.O.O.Q. originally published in 391, n. 12, March 1920

When one knows of that popular culture common ground, of that mass daily multi-layered challenge of language and image play... after the newsprint and actuality collages, and the expanded view matrix of the various stages of Cubism,

Pablo Picasso, Siphon, Glass, Newspaper and Violin, 1912

and after Marcel Duchamp's LHOOQ, the productions of daDA and Surrealism appear obvious and inevitable. Works by children grown up, continuation rather than revolution.

 Francis Picabia, Chapeau de Paille?, 1921
 M... pour celui qui le regarde! Literally, it is addressed to
        for whoever looks at it! 
Theatre of the Actors of Regard    
        detail 
        A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/ 
        someone looks at something... 

        LOGOS/HA HA 

The view of  LHOOQ  from the distant Anglo-Antipodes is Shock of the New. Much less so where it happened. 


 Rene Magritte, L'Apparition, 1928


Above is a rebus-like portrait of Robert Rauschenberg, made in 2005 by the photographer Irving Penn. 

Today's ArtDaily Newsletter has an image of a TARist posed in regard of Robert Rauchenberg's 1955 "Rebus", now on show at MoMA. It's such a dynamic application of a title : a challenge to each person who regards this (and any other) arrangement to de-code the given, as if the world is a puzzle that can be solved and known.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
  Robert Rauschenberg's 'Rebus' on display during a press 
  preview of MoMA's first ever Fall Reveal at the Museum of 
  Modern Art on November 13, 2020 in New York City. 
  Cindy Ord/Getty Images/AFP

 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...
  
 LOGOS/HA HA