Pen to Paper: Artists' Handwritten Letters • A Review by Sarah Madges
"Designed by Princeton Architectural Press, the book operates much like a gallery exhibition, privileging the visual over the verbal so that we may take in the high quality images as art objects before reading the accompanying “wall text” that complements and situates them."
BY SARAH MADGES
Borne from an offhand observation between Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art colleagues about the instant recognizability of minimalist painter A.D. Reinhardt’s handwriting, Pen to Paper: Artists’ Handwritten Letters, inspires reverential curiosity. In this carefully considered book, Curator of Manuscripts Mary Savig regards letter-writing as an art, paying special attention to how each artist addresses formal properties of line and space, as well as what we can infer from these decisions about their creative processes and everyday lives.
Proceeding alphabetically from Bernice Abbott through Grant Wood, and spanning the decades from the 1830s to the 1970s, this thoughtful compendium tells the history of art in America in the words of the artists who shaped it: through correspondences both professional and personal, from negotiations with art collectors and curators to revelations about their art and attendant aspirations.
For this project, Savig sought out curators, professors, historians, artists, and archivists alike to read not just between the lines, but to read into each line, inviting 56 different minds to investigate the interplay between language and art in short essays included alongside each letter. As she explained in an interview with us: the goal was to get the writers (many of whom had previously pored over these manuscripts for citations in art catalogs and dissertations) “to step back from the content and instead approach the letter as if it’s a painting or a sculpture. What might the curves, dashes, and density of line tell us about the artist?”
She hoped that providing examples and interpretations of artists’ handwriting would offer new frameworks for understanding their work — and she was right. “What emerged from this project,” Savig summarized, “is that primary sources, and handwritten letters in particular, remain relevant and poised for interpretation.”
Designed by Princeton Architectural Press, the book operates much like a gallery exhibition, privileging the visual over the verbal so that we may take in the high quality images as art objects before reading the accompanying “wall text” that complements and situates them. While each entry deserves thoughtful consideration, their enigmatic, artistic value may be grasped in a glance, making the collection ripe for paging through at any pace and in any order. Full verbatim transcriptions are included in the back of the book so that readers may experience each letter’s gestalt before delving into character-based, historical, or cultural analysis.
In order to demonstrate just how closely intertwined the written word is with visual art, Savig selected a wide range of artists and traditions. Artists’ idiosyncrasies impress themselves on the page, leaving a tangible trace from which we may draw parallels between artist’s pen, personality, and practice. We see how, in a letter from Howard Finster, sketches of Mount Rushmore-ish busts of important figures punctuate the otherwise breathless string of blocky san serifs, recalling his emphatic speech as a Baptist preacher as well as what he termed his “sermons in paint.” Senior Curator at Smithsonian American Art Museum Eleanor Harvey notes how Frederic Edwin Church’s calligraphic pen strokes echo his brushwork, “in which the rapid back and forth of his brush delineates the contour of a landscape with lyrical flair.”
Seemingly trivial details such as the consistency of letterforms and their organization on the page, or the evident ease or burden with which each letter was composed communicate a surprising amount of personal information as well.
As Savig notes in the book’s introduction: “Artists often code their feelings through handwriting.” We can learn a great deal about the level of affection and familiarity between the letter writer and recipient, the writer’s emotional or professional investment in the contents, and even their current mood. Henry Ossawa Tanner’s anger radiates in his 1914 letter to Eunice Tietjens that responds to an article presuming Tanner’s racial identity and relating it to his success. “Now am I a Negro?” Tanner demands in determined script after a paragraph of underlined phrases, crossouts, and emphasized quotations that undermine that claim. In drafts of a condolence letter written between October 8 and 9, 1968 to Teeny Duchamp just one week after Marcel Duchamp’s death, Joseph Cornell’s handwriting chokes up with ineffable grief. Entire paragraphs are violently slashed out with vertical ink bars, and his script stutters through the recounting of a dream that marks the last time Cornell “saw” Marcel.
Pen to Paper's letters run the gamut from personal chronicles and affectionate notes to philosophical treatises and meditations on the intersection between race, gender, and class in the art world. Some comments are profound, such as Marcel Duchamp’s first utterance of “readymade” to explain his transformation of everyday objects into art to his sister, and others are more banal — “sending this by carrier moose,” Ivan Albright teasingly signs off a letter to Earle Ludgin. In some cases, the letters bear ignorance of their future significance.
When Grant Wood squiggled a frame around an ebullient, red-penciled “Hurray!” at the top of a letter to Zenobia Ness, he couldn’t have known he should be celebrating his imminent fame in addition to the fact that the Art Institute of Chicago decided to hang two of his paintings, including the iconic American Gothic. The parenthetical postscript “(How are you Jackson?)” in Lee Krasner’s aerogram to Jackson Pollock during their trial separation carries chillingly prophetic weight when considering it was likely their last communication before he died in a drunken car crash a few weeks later.
From the whimsical floral doodles surrounding the word “darling” in Rockwell Kent’s letter to his wife Sally to the Asian calligraphy-inspired characters of A.D. Reinhardt, these missives offer extensive proof of the expressive and aesthetic capabilities of handwriting, while engendering a unique familiarity with figures who previously loomed larger than life in our consciousnesses.
By preserving and presenting these ephemera, the book emphasizes process over product, with redactions and insertions of text betraying an artist working through ideas—evidence no longer available in a world dominated by digital modes of communication in which individuality is often obscured by the opacity of typed text. Additionally, the book’s smattering of penmanship styles reflect trends in handwriting, as the ornamental cursive of Thomas Eakins (above), son of a 19th century handwriting instructor, is replaced by the uniform efficiency of the Palmer Method, as seen in Andy Warhol’s comically curt biography offered to the managing editor of Harper’s.
This quiet collection poses a direct challenge to anyone who associates archival materials with must, dust, and irrelevance. The unmistakably human element of handwritten letters elevates what today may be merely cursory communication — an email or text message — to a kind of art that evokes the presence of the person who penned them, and leaves behind a physical relic of the relationship between letter writer, recipient, and the world at large. Appropriately in the book’s introduction, Savig encourages us not to ring the death knell of handwriting. Instead she invites us to “celebrate how imaginative correspondence now exists in material and digital forms,” providing new access and ways of thinking. Pen to Paper is a distillation of that celebration.
Dan Flavin's Art & Life • A Conversation with Tiffany Bell
"It’s concerning that kids growing up today might not be able to read letters, read these manuscripts. Flavin’s early text is so difficult to read, you almost feel shut out. He has all these flourishes, especially the way he ends a word. It’s very sad when this kind of information becomes inaccessible."
SARAH MADGES: How did you get involved with this project?
TIFFANY BELL: I got a call from Mary [Savig] because she noticed my work on the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné. I make use of the archives on a regular basis and so she asked if I would write about one of Flavin's letters that they had because his writing is so unique.
MADGES: How did you decide which letter to talk about?
BELL: She [Savig] asked me to choose one and I was already familiar with this one because it was available online. I was also interested in it because the content of the letter reflected his handwriting. It describes his interest in 19th century drawings and landscape art, and Ellen [Ellen Johnson, the letter's recipient] had a collection of these John Frederick Kensett drawings.
His handwriting is quite formal considering how innovative his art is. It was interesting to me that it looked so perfect, exactly the way it had been taught to him.
I also knew the artist and knew he took writing seriously; he took serious care...I think he had some idea his letters would be studied at some point. He was interested in the collected writings of Cezanne and would use some of them in lectures. He was very interested in traditional writing like that, capturing the artist's life, and so I thought this letter projected that aspect of his personality.
MADGES: Why do you think archives should be public access? Why are these letters, these archival documents, important?
BELL: It’s invaluable for the kind of research I do. I think archives should absolutely be public access--and there is so much online now, which is so exciting. Even the postmarks on letters tell you where the artist was on a certain date. It’s invaluable for putting together someone’s biography.
But now, with all of these emails exchanged instead--I don't know if or how they will be saved. The quantity of material might be overwhelming to sift through. A lot was done through phone calls, so a lot has been lost there too. My work on Agnes Martin — although not entirely relevant to this conversation — her letters in the Archives of American Art are completely essential as far as learning who people in her circle were, what she thought about her art, and where she would show it. There's no other way to find this information out because she didn't keep a record of anything. Flavin kept his stuff as a record, knowing; he was prepared for people to access his writing.
MADGES: You noted in your essay that Flavin’s art resisted associations with the handmade, and yet he took such care with his penmanship. What were his journal entries like compared to his letters? You said that his letters were copied from what he wrote in his journal--did you notice any edits made between first and second draft?
BELL: His final page has no crossouts, and his letters were often typed. There are more crossouts and edits in his journals. You can really see him working through a thought.
MADGES: A kind of related question here, but what did you learn or what do you think others could learn about Dan Flavin from studying his letters that you couldn’t from biographical record?
BELL: Access to letters gives access and insight into thinking. You get to see how he presents himself to people.
MADGES: Did he write for the duration of his career?
BELL: He started in the 60s--the journals begin in 1961 or ‘62 and he kept them going through the 80s. As a young artist he was very interested in recording what he was doing as an artist. Early letters reach out to people who might be interested in buying or showing his work. I think he already knew Ellen Johnson when he wrote to her--when Flavin made his fluorescent light works they were always untitled, but were often dedicated to people. One of them was dedicated to Ellen Johnson.
MADGES: How do you feel about the fact that the U.S. Core Curriculum no longer requires handwriting instruction?
BELL: I was shocked. I even feel sorrow because I type so much now and I very much miss the way writing by hand connects you to your thought in a different way. When you actually write something down it enhances your ability to think through the idea. The fact that handwriting is slower means you stay with the thought longer.
It’s concerning that kids growing up today might not be able to read letters, read these manuscripts. Flavin’s early text is so difficult to read, you almost feel shut out. He has all these flourishes, especially the way he ends a word. It’s very sad when this kind of information becomes inaccessible.
MADGES: How did working on this project inform or change how you think about handwriting?
BELL: Well first of all, the book is really beautiful. I’m very pleased to be a part of it. It didn’t change how I think, but maybe it reinforced the idea of how wonderful handwritten letters are. Dan Flavin himself understood the beauty and great capacity of what you could convey in a handwritten letter. It’s interesting to look closely at them; you get more sense of personality, occasionally some humor. You can observe how he puts the date and place in each entry and fills the whole page, leaving no margins. He has this very meticulous handwriting that looks angular, even stylized, and always on unlined paper.
MADGES: Do you consider handwriting visual art, writing, or some combination?
BELL: For Flavin, I think it’s a lot like his drawings in some way. He used to carry a notebook around with him all the time and he would use the same pen to sketch. He collected drawings, like he mentioned in the letter: Kensett pieces. Kensett also did ink drawings on paper, often with little notes about where they were drawn and when. Flavin kind of took after him--he recorded the date and time. You can sense the connection to his past art, its influence on him.
Handwritten & Smithsonian @ The Sketchbook Project (9/10)
Pen to Panel
Handwritten & Smithsonian at The Sketchbook Project
September 10, 2016
We are over the moon to be partnering with the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art to celebrate the launch of Pen to Paper, an object of art published by Princeton Architectural Press, by hosting this culminating event, “Pen to Panel,” at none other than the world-renowned The Sketchbook Project. What better setting than a massive room lined with thousands of sketchbooks from humans around the world?
Join us on September 10th, from 6 – 8pm, for an evening of conversation, Brooklyn lagers, and archives. Curator of Manuscripts Mary Savig will be bringing letters from their archives to exhibit in the space, and around 7pm, we'll be quieting down to listen to five incredibly bright minds talk about the art and act of writing by hand today. On the panel will be Mary Savig, Linda Shrewsbury, Tullis Johnson, Luis Jaramillo, and Barbara Bash. You can see more information about our panelists and get a sneak-peek at Pen to Paper by visiting our online exhibition here: www.handwrittenwork.com/pentopanel.
The event is free, and so is the beer thanks to Pipe Dreams NYC! So come one, come many. We hope to see you at The Sketchbook Project for a few hours of wild words. Until then, keep the beautiful pen busy, and ink responsibly.
Curator of Manuscripts, Mary Savig, will be bringing some of the letters from Pen to Paper, which was published by PA Press (2016).
See our Facebook Event here, or enjoy the Handwritten Exhibition, What Stories Will Your Handwriting Tell?, which showcases letters from Pen to Paper, as well as exclusive interviews, essays, and reflections with Mary Savig and several of the contributors from the anthology.
I Don’t Keep a Journal the Way Most Journal Artists Do • A Conversation with Brian Singer of 1000 Journals Projects
Brian Singer is a San Francisco-based fine artist whose sobriquet “Someguy” downplays the enormously unique body of work he has produced in the last decade or so. I first discovered his work at age 15, when I stumbled across the 1000 Journals Project book in my sister’s bedroom.
An ongoing collaborative experiment, The 1000 Journals Project attempts to track 1000 originally empty journals through their travels across the globe, accumulating stories, sketches, and photographs as they pass between friends’ and strangers’ hands. In addition to larger scale projects such as this, he creates visual art pieces that explore the layers of signification of the printed word, crossing out and redacting text in a process of mixed media décollage.
SARAH MADGES: The extensive, anonymous shared artifact network you created with The 1000 Journals Project speaks volumes about individuals' desires to be creative, without fear of criticism. Did you expect to find so many untapped talents waiting to give expression to their thoughts? Did you initially conceive of this project as a way to make collaborative art or did it just kind of happen?
BRIAN "SOMEGUY" SINGER: I think everyone is creative, but society tends to have a narrow definition of the word. Some people are creative when they cook, or garden, others make art. In the book Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie talks about creativity—I’m paraphrasing here—he says that if you ask a room full of kindergarteners how many of them are artists, they’ll all raise their hands. Ask the same question of a bunch of 6th graders, and a few will raise their hands. Ask high school students, and you’ll be lucky to get a couple to raise their hands. So, what happens to us growing up? We begin to fear criticism and judgment of society.
When the project was conceived, it was based on what people write on bathroom walls. Not quite collaborative art, but more like public conversations. That said, I love the works of Dan Eldon, and sort of imagined what would happened if people just layered and layered their contributions until you got a density similar to his journals.
MADGES: In an increasingly tech- and text-based world, handwriting has lost some of its former relevance and ubiquity—cursive is no longer even required in U.S. school curricula and thousands of people have never written or received a letter in their entire life. How important is the handwritten aspect of these journal entries to you? How important is the written word to you as an artist?
SOMEGUY: The hand-crafted element is crucial to the journals. It’s almost like a signature, or hint of a person’s personality, beyond the words written. As an artist, for whatever reason, it has a little less meaning to me. Strange, now that I think about it. Perhaps because it’s so accessible and anyone can do it, it feels less precious or unique. Or maybe because I don’t incorporate handwriting into my art work — I’ve never really liked the look of my own handwriting. It’s more like chicken-scratch, which I blame my dad for.
MADGES: Do you keep a journal?
SOMEGUY: No. Yes. Sort of. I don’t keep a journal the way most journal artists do. When I was younger, I kept a journal which was more like a diary of sorts. Now, I have sketchbooks, which I use mostly for notes and ideas. Not really for freeform writing, or artwork, just lists and notes and sketches.
MADGES: As far as I can tell, the 1000 Journals Project was last on exhibition in Scottsdale in 2013. Where is it now? What are your plans for the project? Do you consider yourself its curator anymore?
SOMEGUY: There aren’t any exhibition plans for 1000J right now. A couple years back, I approached a few venues, and while there’s some interest, nothing panned out. As for plans, again, I don’t have any current plans. This is mostly due to time constraints, it takes a lot of energy to keep things going. I do consider myself the curator of the project, but am mostly playing a waiting game.. waiting for journals that have been out in the world for almost 15 years to be rediscovered and sent home. I imagine most are sitting on bookshelves, forgotten over the years.
MADGES: What do you think is the relationship between visual arts and creative writing? Do you think of yourself as a poet or writer when you create your cross-out and printed word pieces?
SOMEGUY: That’s a great question, because I haven’t given it much thought. I tend to gravitate towards certain types of works. These can be strictly visual in nature, or strictly written. I think the ability to combine the two opens up the best of both worlds when done well. They can live in harmony, or in contrast, and add value to each other, or amplify the artist’s intent. When I create my redacted works, I mostly consider myself an editor. I’m stripping away information and creating new meaning. I’d hesitate to call myself a poet or writer, which might be an insult to poets and writers, but there are some similarities in our goals to shape language and message.
MADGES: What have you been working on lately?
SOMEGUY: Lately, I’ve been working on building bodies of work around themes. So not really participatory, or journal based projects. One recent explorations was around visualizing number patterns (connect the dots) in unexpected ways. And the current exploration (no photos online yet), are process based works where I put a shape on every page of a book (imagine a circle or letter), and then cut the book up and reassemble the shape using the edges of the paper.
