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Perhaps my most extraordinary move as a beginning visual artist, around 1967, in my own middle-late 20s, was the decision to work primarily with words, only words. It was an innocent move, really, made less from intelligence than the lack of it; I never learned to draw likenesses or make collages or anything else that most people learn in elementary art classes, which I never took. Indeed, not only did I know or care little about visual art when I began such work, but I also had little taste for imagery other than that made by words. What kept me innocent was the thought that I was making only poetry, albeit visual poetry, on sheets of paper the same size as those I used for my manuscripts—the standard format of 8 1/2 x 11 inches—initially for publication in literary magazines and anthologies. |
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Intro to Wordsand Again – Richard Kostelanetz
Perhaps my most extraordinary move as a beginning visual artist, around 1967, in my own middle-late 20s, was the decision to work primarily with words, only words. It was an innocent move, really, made less from intelligence than the lack of it; I never learned to draw likenesses or make collages or anything else that most people learn in elementary art classes, which I never took. Indeed, not only did I know or care little about visual art when I began such work, but I also had little taste for imagery other than that made by words.
What kept me innocent was the thought that I was making only poetry, albeit visual poetry, on sheets of paper the same size as those I used for my manuscripts—the standard format of 8 1/2 x 11 inches—initially for publication in literary magazines and anthologies. This last development happened quite rapidly, as my work was certainly distinctive and thus acceptable to publishers receptive to alternative writing (though anathema to those self-consciously not).
Continuing with paper in the standard literary size, I added numerals in lieu of words in the mid-70s and then both line-drawings to be read in sequential order (as a kind of flip-book fiction with abstract images) and photographs (more precisely, a single photograph cut up and recomposed in various ways). Some of this work appeared in books designed and produced by me; and since the contents of these volumes were visibly different from those in standard books, they were considered book-art, or “artists’ books,” and included in exhibitions under that rubric. As visual poetry seemed Literature to the visual arts world (and I was first visible as “a writer”), book-art books was the medium on which my visual arts reputation was based—indeed, the medium for which I received my only senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (which has not yet rewarded my writing).
I came to realize that I was working in the distinguished modernist tradition of simply ignoring my infelicities. Just as John Cage made music without depending upon harmony, for which his sometime teacher Arnold Schoenberg told him he lacked talent, so I made visual art largely devoid of handiwork for which no one needed to tell me I had no distinguished skill.
Not until 1974 or so, after I moved into SoHo, did I expand into media other than small rectangular pages, producing not only silkscreened prints that are 22 x 30 inches and then 30 x 40 inches, but also short audiotape compositions whose content was likewise words, only words. Just as my visual poems were devoid of imagery, other than those made only with words, so my initial audio compositions eschewed sounds other than those made by spoken words. Purism was then an aspiration important to me.
Enjoying my experience with audiotape, I felt predisposed to take my words into other modern media, producing in 1976 a film that’s frames had only words (Openings & Closings); in 1978, a multiplex hologram that’s content was only words; and in 1976, videotapes based upon my words, to which visual imagery was necessarily added. Only a decade later would I learn how to put my words directly into the visual frames of videotape.
In the spring of 1977, James Warren Felter, then directing the art gallery at Simon Fraser University, invited me to present a small retrospective of my work that opened in the fall of 1978. It subsequently traveled to the galleries at the universities of Alberta, Miami-Dade, Cornell (Iowa), North Dakota, California State-Bakersfield and Vassar, giving me in the visual arts world the credibility that only a retrospective can, which is to say that I was no longer a writer who did book art but a visual artist who also wrote books, which is an identity that I assume to this day.
My enthusiasm for working in new media is probably indebted to two major modernists on whom I incidentally did documentary monographs published in 1970—John Cage and Moholy-Nagy. Just as Cage worked in writing and pictures in addition to making music, producing in each medium works radically different from the norms, so Moholy extended his distinct constructivist esthetic through painting, photography, book design and film. Soon after those books appeared, I coined the epithet “Polyartist” to define creative adventurers who do distinguished work in two or more nonadjacent arts. I developed a popular lecture identifying Cage and Moholy as the exemplars. To those who suggest that the category describes my own work, I’ve traditionally replied that it is writing, mostly writing, that reflects the “polyartistry” of my work to a degree that the work of no other writer has—a claim at once modest and distinguished.
Indeed, the exploration of possibilities within the constraints of materials (usually words) has certainly been one theme of my produce; this has so far included book-art books, poetry, fiction, experimental prose, video, holography, cd-roms, drawings, prints, electro-acoustic music, radio plays, creative photography, documentary photography, documentary film and experimental film, and lord knows what else other people might identify. Whenever a new medium comes along, I try to find a production facility that would invite me to incorporate, usually in collaboration with a technician, my signature materials. So after the year 2000, I made a novel, 50 foot long on clear acetate, and a poem, 200 foot long on paper, and put my words into a computer-assisted, multi-projection produced at the MIT Media Lab. Perhaps, the credibility of Wordsand Again will provide me with greater leverage for continuing my adventure.
