Art I like Mira Schendel

Still thinking about my Writing. Word project, I have come across two Brazilian artists who work with words.  One is Mira Schendel, who was born in Switzerland in 1919 but moved to Brazil in 1946.

She did a lot of works on paper, either drawn or using Letraset (can you still even get Letraset?) to make images and installations which challenge the viewer to see the random-ness and lack of menacing in words, as well as their value.

Pieces I have seen and particularly like include this one in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (the link is here) Houston

MIRA SCHENDEL 
Brazilian, 1919 - 1988 
Variantes 
Variants
1977 
93 monotypes 

Variable dimensions

 

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 

Museum purchase with funds provided by the
Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund

Arts of Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean 

 

ABOUT

This work was discovered after Mira Schendel's death by her daughter. Comprised of 92 white-on-white monotypes and one black monotype, the installation is the culmination of Schendel's graphic objects series that launched her international career in 1964. The monotype technique she used consisted of spreading the paper over a smooth surface covered with paint and marking it on the back with some type of instrument. The sheets were then grouped, pressed between two sheets of acrylic, and suspended in order to be viewed from both sides. Although suggestive of writing, they are not intended to be read but rather experienced as texture and light.

Schendel also did a lot of drawings which are based on writing, although it isn't clear whether the writing has any particular textural meaning.  Sometimes the writing is overlaid, layer upon layer, 

Picture copied from here

Pictures copied from here.

Some are hand drawn, like this one,  and repeat over and over a handful of letters, in different typefaces or different kinds of handwriting.

Copied from this blog.

Some of her letraset and typescript drawings are very formal and geometric, like this one Dactiloscito, 1976, 

I really like the way in which Mira Schendel's work veers between the typographical and purely abstract mark-making and drawing.  I like the use of layers, and the idea of writing one r and over, filling the space with a big noise of the words and letters.  This reminds me a bit of the overlaid photographic images of text done by Idris Khan