Venetia Porter: Word Into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East (2006)

This landmark catalogue is one of “the most comprehensive gatherings of Middle Eastern artists that has been undertaken in recent times.” Based on an exhibition mounted by the British Museum, it is “devoted to the recurring theme of calligraphy and how artists from the Middle East and North Africa use the traditional visual vocabulary of Arabic letters as a point of departure and an integral expressive element. The works, which were drawn mostly from the British Museum’s own collection of contemporary Islamic art, demonstrate how each artist celebrates the aesthetic powers and plasticity of the letters, while simultaneously pushing the boundaries, even sometimes subverting traditional canons. The artists manipulate letters, often transforming them beyond recognition, using ingenious and innovative methods, materials, styles, and daring compositions. Some use letters for purely aesthetic reasons, while others use them more instrumentally as writing, signs, or ciphers that allow the artists to grapple with issues of socio-political orientation and cultural and religious identity. For some artists this resonates with the sacred tradition of Islam and the Qur’an, while for others it is an undeniable part of their cultural heritage and a natural vehicle for expression.” (Sourced from the two reviews linked below.)

Foreword by Saeb Eigner
With contributions by Isabelle Caussé
Publisher British Museum Press, London, 2006
ISBN 0714111635, 9780714111636
144 pages
via IslamicManuscripts.info

Reviews: Islamic Monthly (2006), Maryam Ekhtiar (CAA Reviews 2007).

Publisher
Exhibition
WorldCat

PDF (124 MB)

Lucy R. Lippard: Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (1973–) [EN, ES]

Full title: Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard.

“In Six Years Lucy R. Lippard documents the chaotic network of ideas that has been labeled conceptual art. The book is arranged as an annotated chronology into which is woven a rich collection of original documents–including texts by and taped discussions among and with the artists involved and by Lippard, who has also provided a new preface for this edition. The result is a book with the character of a lively contemporary forum that offers an invaluable record of the thinking of the artists–a historical survey and essential reference book for the period.” (from the back cover)

Publisher Praeger, New York, 1973
Reprint University of California Press, 1997
ISBN 0520210131, 9780520210134
xxii+272 pages

Review: Clive Phillpot (Leonardo, 1975).

2012 exhibition based on the book, Interview with curator

WorldCat

Six Years (English, 1973, 129 MB, JPG, added on 2019-1-12)
Six Years (English, 1973/1997, 40 MB, via Sofia Carrillo Herrerias)
Seis años (Spanish, trans. Luz Rodríguez Olivares, 2004, 102 MB, via marcelo, updated on 2020-4-28)

Visible Language (1967–)

Visible Language is the oldest peer–reviewed design journal, first published in 1967. For it’s first four years, it was published under the title The Journal of Typographic Research.

The primary tenet of its foundation was that reading and writing together form a new, separate, and autonomous language system. From its initial focus on typography, it has evolved with the changing landscape of communication design to embrace interdisciplinary relationships with anthropology, art, design, education, English and linguistics. The journal has covered subjects such as concrete poetry, artists’ books, Fluxus, painted text, textual criticism, the abstraction of symbols, articulatory synthesis and text, and the evolution of the page from print to on-screen display.

Visible Language was founded by Merald Wrolstad who served as editor and publisher until 1987. The following 26 years (1987-2012) it was edited by Sharon Poggenpohl of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, with administrative offices at the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently, it is edited by Mike Zender of the University of Cincinnati, which publishes and provides administrative offices for the journal.

Edited by Merald E. Wrolstad (1-80), Sharon Poggenpohl (81-155), Mike Zender (156-)
Publisher Merald E. Wrolstad (1-80), Sharon Poggenpohl (81-155), University of Cincinatti (156-)
ISSN 0022-2224
via Stéphanie Vilayphiou, via Natacha Roussel

Announcement about the journal going open access

PDFs of issues 1–157 (with abstracts in HTML, PDFs of some issues missing)

Special issues:
40 Spelling, ed. Richard L. Venezky
44 Barthes: Beyond the Empire of Signs, ed. Steven Ungar
45 The Interface of Reading and Listening, ed. Dominic W. Massaro
51 Behavioural Studies of the Handwriting Skill, ed. Alan M. Wing
52 Theory, Research, Experiment, ed. Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
57 Spatial Factors in Typography, ed. James Hartley
58-59 Visual Cues in Word Recognition and Reading, Part 2, ed. Keith Rayner
65 Calligraphy, ed. Gunnlaugur SE Briem
66 The Renascence of Die Hermeneute, ed. Charles Robert Kline, Jr.
70 Some Effects of Communications Medium on Visible Language, ed. Patricia Wright
71 Aspects of the Japanese Writing System, ed. Chris Seeley
72 Psychological Processes in Reading, ed. Dominic W. Massaro
73 ATyp1, ed. Charles Bigelow
74 Graphic Design Computer Graphics, ed. Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
76 The Book, Inside and Out, ed. Judith Preckshot
77 Pattern Poetry: A Symposium, ed. Dick Higgins
78 Promoting Plain English, ed. Erwin R. Steinberg
79 The Origins and Functions of Literacy, eds. David Olson & Derrick De Kerckove
81 Bi-Graphic Differences: Languages in Con(tact)(flict), ed. Richard Hodgson
83 Then and Now: Readers Learning to Write, ed. E. Jennifer Monaghan
84 The Avant-Garde and the Text, ed. Stephen C. Foster
85 Lipreading, ed. Ruth Campbell
86 Literacy Literacy, ed. Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
87 Instant Theory: Making Things Popular, ed. Craig Saper
88 The Printed Poem and the Reader, ed. Richard Bradford
89 Inscriptions in Paintings, ed. Claude Gandelman
95 The Artist’s Book: The Text and Its Rivals, ed. Renée Riese Hubert
97 Fluxus: A Conceptual Country, ed. Estera Milman
98 Diagrams as Tools for Worldmaking, ed. Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
99 Writing in Stereo: Bilingualism in the Text, ed. Richard Hodgson
101 Visual Poetry: An International Anthology, ed. Harry Polkinhorn
104-106 New Perspectives: Critical Histories of Graphic Design, Part 2, Part 3, ed. Andrew Blauvelt
107 The Luminous Object: Video Art/Video Theory, ed. Andrew Blauvelt and Herman Rapaport
108 Money!, ed. Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
110 New Media Poetry, ed. Eduardo Kac
119-120 Words in Space, Part 2, ed. Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
123 Voicimage, ed. Enzo Minarelli
125 Limits of Language, Limits of Worlds, ed. Dietmar Winkler
127 An Annotated Design Research Bibliography, ed. Praima Chayutsahakij
131 Instruction and Provocation, or Relearning from Las Vegas, ed. Michael Golec
137 Fluxus and Legacy, ed. Ken Friedman
138 Fluxus After Fluxus, ed. Ken Friedman
143 Visual Metaphors in User Support, ed. Karel van der Waarde
144 After the Grave: Language and Materiality in Contemporary Art, ed. David Scott Armstrong
148-149 Communication Design Failures, Part 2, ed. Sharon Poggenpohl and Dietmar R. Winkler
150 Global Interaction in Design, ed. Audrey Grace Bennett
152 Punctuation, ed. Anne Toner
154 Envisioning a Future Design Education, ed. Sharon Poggenpohl

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