Family Tree ©2000 Zhang HuanBody markings piercings, tattoos and so forth have recently evolved into a kind of marginalized form of graphic expression, yet one that sheds an unusual light on some of the more mainstream ways in which design often reveals itself. It used to be that T-shirts and bumper stickers were the primary vehicles of choice for public displays of private opinion. Yet while the market for these printed artifacts still remains economically solvent (and commercially viable) the idea of writing on the body seems so much so much
what, exactly? More honest? More immediate? Less impersonal? Less mass-marketed?
More universal?
Or just
weirder?Cosmetic intervention is generally considered a kind of deeply personal conceit. And yet, in spite of the surge in
elective surgeries, the mass appeal of certain
Reality TV shows and a wealth of other
visual oddity reinforcing our corporeal fascination, when did it first become a surface for typographic experimentation? Today, the body has become a new kind of exposed canvas for displaying messages, feelings, histories, timelines, advertisements, and more. Why the body? Why just make a poster, after all, when you can
scratch type onto your torso and
then make a poster? Why, for that matter, make a poster at all? Why not just make
art?I realize I may be into dangerous territory here, but bear with me. It often seems that art involving typography edges its way, pica by pica, into the realm of graphic design. And yet, when something involving hand-drawn language is involved, we rarely, if ever evaluate such work by the same criteria that we reserve for, say, a book or a poster or CD cover. Would any of us ever dream of critiquing the letterspacing on this
Lou Reed album, for instance? And while it is unlikely that the contemporary Chinese artist
Zhang Huan looked at Stefan Sagmeister in general or at Lou Reed in particular there's an unmistakable similarity in method between these two pieces of work. What's
different is the motive.
What's
different is that one is graphic design. And the other is art.
Writing On The BodyWriting on the body is a topic of enormous interest among certain scholars, particularly feminist theorists who have ascribed deeper meanings to the impulse of self-marking, raising questions of gender and identity and social equality. And yet ironically, it seems that most of the graphic experimentation is done at the hands (and on the bodies) of men
not women. Consider, for example, Zhang Huan, who was born in China during the peak of
Mao's Cultural Revolution, and became active in performance art (new to China at the time) in the early 90s as one of the founders of the
Beijing East Village movement. Today he is one of China's leading contemporary artists, often using his body in potent, memorable performances that physically explore China's complex history whtin the context of a universally poetic lyricism. (His piece "To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond" adorned NYC subways, buses, and the cover of the catalog during the ground-breaking exhibition "Inside Out," jointly organized by the Asia Society and SFMOMA in 1998.) In
Family Tree, 2000, recently acquired by the
Yale Art Gallery, he created a serial self-portrait during a performance in which he had 3 calligraphers inscribe his family and cultural history on his face until it turned black.
Zhang Huan's facial calligraphy looks at chronological history as a form of written expression, a comment on cultural saturation and yes an implied gesture of physical extremism. (It is worth noting that Stefan Sagmeister's well-known poster for
AIGA Detroit was an effort to try and visualize the pain that goes into making design, so perhaps there is more in common here than one might think.) Presented as a grid of self-portraits,
Family Tree is both potent and poetic, at once a work of performance and a testament to let's face it unimaginable patience.
But I wonder: would Zhang's personal geneology have been even the least bit memorable had it been typeset on paper, etched into stone, even emblazoned on a wall? And what if Lou Reed's face were to have been covered in Bembo? How is it that these images work their way into our popular consciousness, or more importantly, into the human psyche? What's with all the handwriting on the body, and on the face, and where, incidentally, is it leading us?
Comments [26]
02.21.05
04:01
i have a large abstract garland that travels from my right hand , snakes up my arm, crosses my shoulders like a yoke dips over onto my chest and continues over the entire area of my back. it was a huge, long painful and peculiar experience having that tattoo applied. it was not something that i think most people should do without very very thorough consideration. the whole process took a period of five years and i had to stop before it was complete (it was supposed to travel down my leg as well). expense, pain, long miserable itching healing time and the constant commentary of those who don't know what it means to you are all things that i wouldn't want to repeat.
i don't show it to anyone but a very close chosen few. yet, strangers still want to touch my arm when my sleeves are rolled up (for some reason waitpersons especially), and many people feel the need to express their most personal (and unwelcome, unsolicited) feelings about it. it turns off a huge number of people and some have actually freaked (burst into tears or abruptly left the room). it became a surprising litmus test for friends and clients. the predjudices and assumptions of the insensitive and ignorant is always a shock.
so, i have some regrets - particlularly how it changed the others around me. but this personal experience on my skin reflects a strange and somehow magic period in my life history. to this day i love the thing. but, i don't think i'd do it again. other people are just too judgemental and damning. they can ruin a good thing.
02.21.05
06:56
A very curious tattoo.
http://www.johnkenny.net/gallery/ramada0502/P1010023
02.21.05
09:18
Writing on the body removes it's subject from the 'official' system of print and places it resolutely in the 'vernacular' graphic language of body art and hand rendered lettering; it's all a question of semiotics.
02.22.05
08:32
hubris.
02.22.05
10:52
02.22.05
11:31
"Marking one's own body is undoubtedly reflexive to some extent, It deals with our own identity and feelings about ourselves ... Writing on the bodies of others though, seems to imply an implication of control, or even ownership"
Then what does it say when, according to the results of a Millward Brown branding study, "18.9 percent of respondents declared a willingness to be tattooed with their favorite brand's logo"?
In order: Harley-Davidson, Disney, Coca-Cola, Google.
02.22.05
11:57
by the way, i've got a bridge i wanna sell you.
02.22.05
12:20
Does the body part where the tattoo exists, whether an individual design or a corporate logo, add meaning to the expression?
02.22.05
01:15
so, the faux study simply reinstates the personal aspect of tattooing. think about it.
when examining writings in the promotion and adverttising arenas (particularly politics) you should always read byond the statement and think around what is said. otherwise you buy face value and get stiffed. you study reinforces the obvious.
02.22.05
01:24
Have we grown so overwhelmed by the abundance of information we encounter, that someone sharing their personal story with us is not enough to be considered memorable? Should something need to be visually unusual even though the story might be phenomenal and beautiful and rich?
Regardless of what gets labeled as "memorable," and what type of formal/informal elements are used to present this, Zang's choice to display his history on the outside of his head can be seen as a statement about bringing what is normally internal and invisible into the realm of the external and highly visable.
Zang carries his own history around in his head, just as we all do, where it is protected and unjudged by the outside world. His work reverses that norm, leaving him vulnerable to criticism in the same way that people with tattoos are vulnerable to criticism for wearing their beliefs/passions on their skin.
02.22.05
05:22
Steven:
I have to agree with Art on your point about company logos as tattoos; people get the nike tick tattood on themselves for the same reason they might get a football club or regimental tattoo if they were a football fan or soldier. Self perception is intrinsically tied up with the figures and concepts we identify with socially, and it is a sad fact of life that many people identify most with large business brands, and the 'culture' with which they sell their products. (Insert apologies for not entirely insincere anti-capitalist sentiment here if necessary).
This is a system of control, but the impetus to tattoo oneself is still one of personal identity or identification with a certain set of values.
02.22.05
09:59
that is what i was reacting to in your remarks. and if a "tattoo" isn't a something that the official design culture would classify as vernacular, i don't what would be. it's pretty predicatible and you can do much better.
02.22.05
11:47
I entirely agree that to seperate different graphic styles into high and low as some kind of value judgement is quite pointless, however, i think it is important to recognise that, in general, graphic design has certain conventions of things which are 'done a certain way', in its most basic sense, the vast majority of written language in western culture (and probably the whole world) is typeset, whether on screen or some print medium. to me a vernacular source is simply something which disregards these conventions, and handwritten text cut into human flesh becomes a 'vernacular' (using the above definition) source when it is then photographed and placed within the context of Graphic Design, with its conventions of print on paper. I wouldn't class this as being any kind of judgement of its effectiveness or validity, or any attempt to categorise it in social terms, and, if anything, this sort of use of wide ranging graphic references, influences and techniques is far favorable in terms of developing a rich visual culture and effective work than sitting in front of a hot mac all day, simply becuase that's what 'everyone normally does' - a scarily common attitude among many of my contemporaries.
02.23.05
09:11
the limitation of graphic design to what is conventionally ruled graphic design misses the vast body (tattoo pun intended) of the history of graphic design. your viewpoint is like saying "it ain't graphic design until graphic designers say it's graphic design" or something. what kind of perspective is that? limited, i'd say.
i seem to work on a much broader spectrum of graphic design. just look at my work. am i wrong? it ain't design? huh?
02.23.05
11:32
At no point in this thread have I said that convention is a good thing, or in any way preferable to alternative (i won't use the v-word again)forms of graphic expression. All I'm saying is that these 'alternative' or even 'unconventional' forms of expression gain their power from being unconventional, ie. if the conventions weren't there, there'd be no point in subverting them. I'm not saying that any of this 'isn't graphic design' but that graphic design / visual communication is a broad field, and the contrasts between these different means of expression are prescisely the reason that 'unconventional' treatments and techniques are often more memorable.
I am familiar with your work, and find your attitudude puzzling, if not a little hypocritical.
Your 'Night Gallery' poster from 1991, for instance, seems to gain its effect from placing cultural references out of context in this way. (Once again, I'm not making a value judgement! I'm not saying that it's not graphic design!). This is just a technique to be used, like any other, but one that gains its power from subverting pre-existing conventions and preconceptions. Therefore, referencing is a valuable graphic technique, but one that would lose its power if there weren't established conventions and preconceptions in the first place.
P.S.
Rick Poynor has said the following about your work:
Is this maybe just a word you're sick of hearing?
02.24.05
05:40
also, i often rather strongly disagree with rick poyner's ideas and opinions (he knows that) and he disagrees with mine. so, your quoting him as gospel when talking about my work is pretty amusing to me. thanks for that.
gosh, if rick sez that about me, then it must be true!
02.24.05
08:49
Oh, and I never suggested that Mr Poynor's word was gospel, rather that you had been described as using quote-unquote 'vernacular' sources in your work, which appears to be at odds with the argument you so resoundingly advocate here. to reiterate myself earlier in this thread:
where exactly in this argument do you see any kind of 'snobbery of the design culture'? that, (and i will reiterate, again) is the last thing i intended, and, having explained my position multiple times, in the face of cheap sarcastic jibes and polemical rambling, you have yet to show any signs of any kind of willingness to engage with the argument at hand, but rather a wish to rather pedantically stir up some kind of flame war on this thread.
02.24.05
09:12
02.24.05
10:19
sorry if you don't like my 'voice'. but, it's the way i 'talk'. you really should not read so much into it. that part is entirely in your head. honest. these are simply calmly stated opinions. that's all.
02.24.05
10:41
02.24.05
10:46
02.24.05
03:31
02.27.05
07:56
02.28.05
12:15
From 'Ornament and Crime' by Adolf Loos, via Mr Keedy:
How's that for 'vernacular'? (Removes tongue from cheek at this point)
03.03.05
08:58
03.03.05
01:04