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 (Ã deux m un, i.e., “Ã demain” ‘[See you] tomorrow’)."
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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
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