Reading Scott Makela: The Subversion of Dyslexic Deconstruction

Abstract

Since its proliferation as a field in the nineteenth century, graphic design has constantly renegotiated its ambiguous position in the spectrum of visual culture. As Marcus Verhagen has written, art nouveau posters, for example, were met with numerous polemics surrounding the contested status of the poster infin-de-siecle Paris, which was widely criticized by an appalled conservative contingent, partially on the grounds that both its imagery and its style courted the viewer like a street-walking prostitute.2 Though the metaphor may well sound rather exaggerated, or even absurd when taken at face value, this criticism does raise a significant issue pertaining to the proactivity, or theatricality, not only of art nouveau posters, but perhaps more broadly, of graphic images in general. I borrow the term, theatricality, from art historian and critic Michael Fried, whose work since the 1970s has been influential in introducing the role of the spectator as an object of study. As I will outline below, Fried's conclusions about the relationship between the viewer and the image are markedly conservative, as if to side with the opponents of Cheret and Toulouse-Lautrec mentioned above. Fried's terms, however, represent a language useful for speaking of the relationship between an image and its viewers, and indeed I will ultimately suggest that part of the significance of the recent model of deconstructive design, particularly as exemplified by the work of Scott Makela, lies in its ability to scandalize Fried's classically inspired paradigm. Fried's model theorizes a dichotomy, which pits the absorptive against the theatrical. 3 former, epitomized by high classicism, neoclassicism, and more recently, selected examples of formalist painting, he describes as an art so self-absorbed as to be utterly unaware of and indifferent to the presence of the viewer. In figurative works, such absorption manifests itself not only in the engaged gesture and expression of the figure, but also, and for my purposes more importantly, in the seamless technique of the artist, which disguises itself in such a way that one sees only the narrative illusion and not the strokes of the brush or the chisel. In short, neither the figure nor the artist actively solicits the viewer's attention. In such works, Fried maintains that viewers would be so 1 This is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the 2002 College Art Association Conference, for the panel Do I Make Myself Perfectly Clear: Readability and Legibility in Graphic Design, chaired by George Marcus. Both versions of the paper owe thanks to my colleagues Michelle Bowers and Paul Wittenbraker, who generously shared their time and resources. 2 See Marcus Verhagen, The Poster in Finde-Siecle Paris: 'That Mobile and Degenerate Art', in Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz, eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modem Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 103-129. 3 See Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980). ( Copyright 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Design Issues: Volume 19, Number 2 Spring 2003 5