The Typography, The Arts

Painting and letters have been through integration and separation for a long time. Earlier, painting and letters were used together without classification, but after the Renaissance, the “coexistence” of painting and letters became no longer easy to find. For the next 400 years, in the tradition of painting, letters were strictly separated from art and treated outside the realm of art under the name of “typography”. Then, the letters reappeared in art when avant-garde artists, led by cubists, began to accept them again in the early 20th century. Picasso and Braque adopted letters in the structure of the painting through the method of collages, and futurist poets pursued visual poetry through the formative arrangement of letters. To the avant-garde artists in the early 20th century who wanted to reveal concepts and arguments, thoughts and statements within artistic actions, art and typography were fused as a means of integrated art. However, as this, typography, which stood at the intersection of art and mutual convergence, disappeared from art history after the 1930s when Stalin’s art policy forcibly terminated Russian constructivism, and letters classified as a new occupational category, typography, became an exclusive means of rapidly developing designers.

It was in the 1960s that painting and letters appeared together again. Letters became an important element of art again by conceptual artists such as Mel Bochner and Joseph Kosuth, followed by Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, who actively used letters as a formative language, making the letters in art no longer unique. In the case of Korea, although the context is different, letters began to be used in art by Lee Ungno, who started Letter Abstract in the 1960s, and it naturally took place in art by many artists, including Nam June Paik who actively used letters in paintings to promote the importance of Chinese character education. The appearance of pop art is also to be the stimulus for using letters in art. As well as Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, and other artists actively put letters on the screen and in the 1990s, when the boundaries between art and design became blurred, letters were used without hesitation in art, like in Joel Mesler’s works. This exhibition is a place to present the works of contemporary artists and designers, starting with the works of conceptual artists, whose begun to deal with letters in art in earnest. Artists ,for example Lee Kwangkee, Kim Seunghyun, use letters in their works for their formative beauty, but like Jung Sane some artists use letters to pay homage to conceptual artists, and through this, they use it to convey any statement or message. In addition, designers like Ahn Sangsoo, Sulki & Min change our perceptual system and lead us to think further and differently, actively using letters in unique positions. Please enjoy the exhibition and check out variations of letters in art.