kaldron / a commentary by karl kempton and Mahmoud Moawad Sokar
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| kaldron issue #19 |
ABOVE:
kaldron cover by Hassan Massoudy
Part 2: KARL KEMPTON
I would like to share some history about the contributors who caught Mahmoud Moawad Sokar’s eye.
I published many works by Avelino De Araujo, a significant Brazilian visual poet, over the visual duration of kaldron issues. His work I often saw in other visual poetry publications and many mail art exhibition catalogs. He continues to compose visual poems, some of which may be found on his facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/avelino.araujo.12. Also, many from Brazil are found in various issues over the years. At that time I was unaware of the internal concrete and visual poetry conflicts within Brazil.
During the early period of kaldron’s e-edition (https://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/kaldron.htm) there were hours of telephone conversations with Karl Young, hosted of the site as part of his larger anthology, Light & Dust Anthology (https://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm). The national and international politics of the visual poetry scene was front and center for Karl Young. The intent for hosting an e-kaldron anthology was an egalitarian model opposing a self appointed American academic hierarchy. The day date of the launch of the site is a symbol for his intention, the French Bastille Day of independence. Among other disconcerting issues was the saga I found at first difficult to believe but would later write about: the concrete-visual poetry hierarchy in Brazil. It controlled who would or not be published. As a result many post-concrete visual poets in Brazil found international outlets for their works through such publications as kaldron and through the international mail art network where their works were widely embraced through exhibitions and published in catalogs.
kaldron 16 is a special issue of the treated texts by Doris Cross (1907-1994). The sample Mahmoud Moawad Sokar illuminates in his Commentary, cover page of k-8, is one of many found throughout the series of issues. It was an invaluable gift for me to be able to kick off the visual issues of kaldron with samples of her epic treatments of the 1913 Webster Dictionary. She chose that date to celebrate the famous Armory Show which introduced modern art to the city of her birth, New York City. She was schooled in art by Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico. She began her treatments in 1965, a year before Tom Philips. Her works are unique, not derivative. She remains a major practitioner who is, to put it mildly, under-discussed. (See copies of her book, col•umns. A reasonably priced copy is available through its publisher David Arnold of Trike, at davidcarnold@sbcglobal.net.) In 1983 I traveled to New Mexico to meet yet another under-discussed poet, Barbara Mor, in Albuquerque. Then I traveled north to Santa Fe meeting Doris and later Paula Hocks, a book artist I also often published. I had published Barbara often in the pre-visual issues and featured her and Will Inman in the last mixed lexical issue series.
On the cover page of kaldron 9 is an abstract script tabloid publication by Constantin Xenakis, another individual with work in many issues. A Greek born in Egypt, he moved to France where his work became celebrated.
His publication transforms a tabloid format into a fully illuminated otherness providing the reader/viewer unique symbols and language parts. From his bio on his web site, “His work often included written script, symbols and codes of everyday life, traffic signs, alchemy, the zodiac, mathematical and chemical symbols, Egyptian hieroglyphics, letters from the Greek, Phoenician and Arabic alphabets.” This and other works perhaps can be framed within the hypertext movement influence sphere of the lettrists, but like Massoudy, he was independent. For more on Lettrists see https://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lettrist/lettrist.htm
Most Xenakis works were colored paintings, thus he can be added to the list of word painters as should Doris Cross. His web site remans active https://constantinxenakis.org/. A curious aside is that he shares his name with a the Romanian-born musique concrete innovator, Innais Xenakis, whose scores are masterful visual text works. Since both moved to France, a possible connection exists and thus an echo chamber of mutual influence. Not so speculative — he collaborated with the composer Jean-Yves Bosseur on the work Ornigrammes in 1976-1977.
Hassan Massoudy’s work was a crucial addition to kaldron; his work has also been pivotal for Synapse International and my own a history of visual text art. A sample of Hassan Massoudy’s works is found here on this our self-same blog at https://synaptry.blogspot.com/2018/10/hassan-massoudy.html. And last, to conclude, an extract on Massoudy from my book a history of visual text art:
At an early age calligraphy caught and instructed Massoudy’s eye. His ear learned poetry. Both tuned his heart. He was born into a traditional family setting in the sacred Shi’a city of Najef. His father was highly knowledgeable in poetry and explained the levels of meaning of calligraphic verses chiseled into tombstones in the city’s huge cemetery. His uncle was a poet and calligrapher. Massoudy was also constantly attracted to calligraphy on display throughout the city and learned more about poetry in school.
Leaving behind limited opportunities imposed by the harsh dictatorship on the Shi’a community, he moved to France in 1969 to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. He graduated in five years. He, however, remained dissatisfied and returned to calligraphy. With his appreciation for image, yet well aware of the mirage of image, he plumbed deeper, studying esoteric calligraphy to understand more about the image behind the image. Out of this variety of mixed cultural influences has come a vast body of radiant, uplifting, and heart-penetrating works informed by ancestral traditions, new evolving modern art approaches bound together with a thorough immersion in the Sufi Science of Letters.
The Parisian art scene had vigorous and exploratory multimedia events, Situations, created or informed by the Lettrists. He added his own flavor to multimedia events in the 1970s with music, poetry, and calligraphy; he later added dance. Among his numerous compositions and books, one sees and reads complex, long series based on proverbs(1), a word (such as peace) (2), and poetry, either a line or two or an entire book(3). From the latter comes one of his more important, penetrating accomplishments, his long series from Ibn ‘Arabī’s The Interpreter of Desires, of which a small portion is available in his book(4). His rendered beauty of the desert can be read as a metaphor for the journey of the discriminating mind working to open the heart. Gossamer letters rise on the breath of a poetic wind as an ascension, a reaching into the heart center: the gift of perfect harmony.1
1 http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/ms01.htm and http://visualpoetryrenegade.blogspot.com/2013/01/hassan-massoudy.html November, 2018.
2 http://synaptry.blogspot.com/2018/10/hassan-massoudy.html, http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/m01.htm November, 2018.
http://visualpoetryrenegade.blogspot.com/2010/12/hassan-massoudy.html November, 2018. For entire collection, The Calligrapher’s Garden, 2012.
3 Massoudy. Perfect Harmony: Sufi Poetry of Ibn ‘Arabi, 2002
4 http://hassan.massoudy.pagesperso-orange.fr/english.h November, 2018. tm http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/massoudy.htm November, 2018.
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