Shop Notes

Chicago artist John Himmelfarb's concern for language led to the development of an elaborate visual vocabulary much like hieroglyphics. This print of 1992 is at first convincing as rows of verbal information, but on closer inspection proves to be dense expressionistic gibberish. Himmelfarb explained: The actual words we read are often masked or merely a facade for an underlying meaning that we can't see. That's where, in order to read critically and to derive a richer meaning from what we're looking at, we have to look at underlying meanings, hidden meanings. I think these letters are part of a dialogue about what is the difference between visual information and visual art; and visual information about visual art and visual art about visual information.