Tuesday, December 17, 2002

Cartouche In designing the Convergence Performance Art T-Shirt, I wanted to distinguish the work's imagery from the Certificate of Authenticity. I did so by drawing a box around the Certificate's information. A cartouche can be the figure that frames text within a piece of art, or it can be something like a plaque on the outside. It often has meta-information about the art, such as the artist's name. (Thanks, Artlex) There is a certain type of cartouche that I'm trying to get at... Merely signing the glass of the frame of the work, as was taken note earlier this month, doesn't seem to be a cartouche, in that the signature was not formally designated by a field, or figure. Nor is the information on the bottom of a Fine Art Print, usually not really demarcated by a figure. A piece of paper that is a Certificate of Authenticity as described last month, doesn't seem to be physically close enough to the work, for me to think of it as a cartouche. I would simillarly not include the musuem wall label as a cartouche. However, the chop or stamp used by an artist, we looked at awhile back, is close enough physically and may include a figure, either as a line, ground, or by the surrounding impression it makes, that frames the information. This framing is like the use of a cartouche on a map that separates data, such as the map's title, or scenes of the area, from the map proper. (C. Lane, D Cresswell) This is similar to the notion of cartouche in egyptian painting where it is a rope placed around a King's name. (Jim Loy) It is this notion, the cartouch as framer, marker of special meaning, designator of meta-information, that I want to identify. 9:30:30 PM