Using texts for making two dimensional visual art had come into vogue sometime in the sixties. Then came the use of pixels for the same type artworks. Iraqi artist Hayv Kahraman's recent works are however not significant just for the use of texts but the subtexts that underlie the use of these texts.
Her visual images reflect on issues of gender, looking at the victimization of women during war, and the effects of practices such as honor killings and genital mutilation, as well as alienation, marginalization, and displacement. Kahraman addresses these contemporary issues through paintings which have a classical and timeless feel to them, her delicate and elegant work in tension with the complex issues and painful real-world realities which she often takes as her subject. Born in Iraq in 1981, Kahraman moved to Sweden while a child, and later moved to Italy, before returning to Sweden in 2006 to study at the University of Umeå, and later moving to the United States. Having taken up oil painting at twelve, she extends her work beyond drawing and painting to sculpture and design, and the stylistic references her works evoke are wide-ranging. But it is the influence of Persian caligraphy as a form of art that is most easily visible in these art works.
However Kahraman's are not the only known text arts that are nice to look at. the internet is full of such works made by amazying artists. One such work below is by
But the question is how far are these works fit the definition of visual art, how far do they fall in the category of fine art?
The art world as the world of literature is however increasingly getting enmeshed in the blast of changing technology. Writers and artists are using new tecnologies to create visually apealing works. Perhaps this explains why erstwhile writers are now thinking of seriously writing graphic novels. Artists with computer aids can now quickly help such writers.
Then there are the in-between illustrated novels, with more and less graphics.
One such work which recently caught our attention was the work of Lynda Barry called "Cruddy", with a undertext : An Illustrated Novel. So it does not claim to be a graphic only text and offers more to read and imagine than see and enjoy.
The story is about a psycho-killer's daughter narrating her gory youth. Disguised as a boy
she accompanies her father on his murderous jobs, during which she
pretends to be a mute so as not to give away her voice. One of the more
memorable tasks is disposing of dead mobsters in a slaughterhouse.
On a September night in 1971, a few days after getting busted for dropping two of the 127 hits of acid found in a friend's shoe, a sixteen-year-old who is grounded for a year curls up in the corner of her ratty bedroom, picks up a pen, and begins to write.
Roberta Rohbeson, the protagonist rants thereafter against a world bounded by "the cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road behind cruddy Black Cat Lumber" soon becomes a detailed account of another story. It is a story about which Roberta has kept silent for five years, until, under the influence of a pale hippie called the Turtle and a drug called Creeper, her tale giddily unspools... Roberta Rohbeson, 1967. The world of Roberta, age eleven, is terrifyingly unbounded, a one-way cross-country road trip fueled by revenge and by greed, a violent, hallucinatory, sometimes funny, more often horrific year of killings, betrayals, arson, and a sinister set of butcher knives, each with its own name. Welcome to Cruddy, Lynda Barry's masterful tale of the two intertwined narratives set five years -- an eternity -- apart, which form the backbone of Roberta's life. Cruddy is a wild ride indeed, a fairy tale-cum-low-budget horror movie populated by a cast of characters that will remain vivid in the reader's mind long after the final page: Roberta's father, a dangerous alcoholic and out-of-work meat cutter in search of his swindled inheritance; the frightening owners of the Knocking Hammer Bar and sometime slaughterhouse; and two charming but quite mad escapees from the Barbara V. Herrmann Home for Adolescent Rest.
Amazying to read, it however poses a question: does it mean that in future no writer can independantly be able to write any thing? Is a graphic artist becoming a regular feature in the literary industry?
Her visual images reflect on issues of gender, looking at the victimization of women during war, and the effects of practices such as honor killings and genital mutilation, as well as alienation, marginalization, and displacement. Kahraman addresses these contemporary issues through paintings which have a classical and timeless feel to them, her delicate and elegant work in tension with the complex issues and painful real-world realities which she often takes as her subject. Born in Iraq in 1981, Kahraman moved to Sweden while a child, and later moved to Italy, before returning to Sweden in 2006 to study at the University of Umeå, and later moving to the United States. Having taken up oil painting at twelve, she extends her work beyond drawing and painting to sculpture and design, and the stylistic references her works evoke are wide-ranging. But it is the influence of Persian caligraphy as a form of art that is most easily visible in these art works.
However Kahraman's are not the only known text arts that are nice to look at. the internet is full of such works made by amazying artists. One such work below is by
But the question is how far are these works fit the definition of visual art, how far do they fall in the category of fine art?
The art world as the world of literature is however increasingly getting enmeshed in the blast of changing technology. Writers and artists are using new tecnologies to create visually apealing works. Perhaps this explains why erstwhile writers are now thinking of seriously writing graphic novels. Artists with computer aids can now quickly help such writers.
Then there are the in-between illustrated novels, with more and less graphics.
One such work which recently caught our attention was the work of Lynda Barry called "Cruddy", with a undertext : An Illustrated Novel. So it does not claim to be a graphic only text and offers more to read and imagine than see and enjoy.
On a September night in 1971, a few days after getting busted for dropping two of the 127 hits of acid found in a friend's shoe, a sixteen-year-old who is grounded for a year curls up in the corner of her ratty bedroom, picks up a pen, and begins to write.
Roberta Rohbeson, the protagonist rants thereafter against a world bounded by "the cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road behind cruddy Black Cat Lumber" soon becomes a detailed account of another story. It is a story about which Roberta has kept silent for five years, until, under the influence of a pale hippie called the Turtle and a drug called Creeper, her tale giddily unspools... Roberta Rohbeson, 1967. The world of Roberta, age eleven, is terrifyingly unbounded, a one-way cross-country road trip fueled by revenge and by greed, a violent, hallucinatory, sometimes funny, more often horrific year of killings, betrayals, arson, and a sinister set of butcher knives, each with its own name. Welcome to Cruddy, Lynda Barry's masterful tale of the two intertwined narratives set five years -- an eternity -- apart, which form the backbone of Roberta's life. Cruddy is a wild ride indeed, a fairy tale-cum-low-budget horror movie populated by a cast of characters that will remain vivid in the reader's mind long after the final page: Roberta's father, a dangerous alcoholic and out-of-work meat cutter in search of his swindled inheritance; the frightening owners of the Knocking Hammer Bar and sometime slaughterhouse; and two charming but quite mad escapees from the Barbara V. Herrmann Home for Adolescent Rest.
Amazying to read, it however poses a question: does it mean that in future no writer can independantly be able to write any thing? Is a graphic artist becoming a regular feature in the literary industry?
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