In their simplest incarnations—a line for an I, a circle for
an O—letterforms reveal their true nature: they are forms first, letters
second. The connective tissue that transforms a circle into a letterform is
only as strong as the imagination and consensus of the community for whom that
circle represents the letter O. For some communities the O is a rectangle, for
others it is a lozenge balanced between parallel horizontal lines. To tell
either of these communities that their Os are not Os is as futile as telling a
speaker of one language that he ought to be speaking another. These variable
permutations of abstraction and legibility are the source of the alphabet’s
dynamism, and it is in the boundary between these two states that I enjoy
spending my time.
Roma
Abstract is based closely on a geometric alphabet I painted while at
the American Academy in Rome. When I first arrived for my fellowship in Rome, I
did so with a high level of anxiety. I felt an intense pressure to produce
work, and from my first day at the Academy I could feel the time slipping away.
In an attempt to calm myself, I painted a seven-inch diameter circle on a
wooden panel. As people visited my studio they would unfailingly remark on the
“O” on my wall. Each time I would tell them that it was not an O but a circle,
and each time they responded that they had assumed that it was a letterform
because I had drawn it. I had become the O’s contextual source of legibility,
it was through me that the circle became an O. By the fourth or fifth such
conversation, I began saying that the circle was an O, and proceeded to paint
the remaining twenty-five letterforms in the alphabet.
The west wall of my Rome studio with the circle/O to the left on the wall.
The east wall with many of the original Roma Abstract paintings along the floor.
After returning to New York in 2010, I digitally traced the
letterforms and used them at greatly reduced size on my MMXI
new year’s card and on a page of Specimens
of Diverse Characters. Although I liked the smaller printed
versions, something was missing. The original scale of the painted letters was
critical to their reading as monumental forms that had been degraded and
deprived of their full meaning. Since printing Specimens I have wanted to print the
letterforms of Roma
Abstract at their original size.
The problem I faced was that I did not simply want to make
a facsimile of the painted alphabet, and I could not find a compelling exterior
reason to print the book. So I put the idea aside and waited. Then increasingly
over the last two years I have come to feel that every aspirational symbol of
culture and civility has been abstracted into unrecognizable ciphers; and any
stable understanding I thought I had of a Roman ideal has been shattered by the
steady onslaught of global social and political upheavals. My illegible
alphabet suddenly makes sense, has gained in legibility within the current
political context. What grew out of a desire to challenge the Roman ideal
suddenly changed into a lament of its passing.
The title page reading Roma Abstract/An Alphabet By/Russell Maret
In contrast to the original alphabet in which each
letterform was painted on its own wooden panel, the letterforms in Roma Abstract
are printed on translucent paper to emphasize their communal aspect—rather than
standing alone, each letter is supported and explicated by those around it. The
book’s cover is printed with the text from the inscription on Trajan’s column,
the letterforms of which are widely regarded as the apotheosis of Roman
alphabetical form. Set in the letterforms of Roma Abstract, this Trajanic benchmark of
enlightened Imperial form is rendered nearly illegible, echoing the absurd
mockery of statehood in which we find ourselves living.
Detail of the cover with the text from the inscription on Trajan's column set in Roma Abstract.
