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Image/paper size: 30 1/8 x 22 1/2 inches each (76.5 x 57.2 cm each)
Edition of 25
Signed, titled, dated and numbered in pencil on verso
(Inventory #23232)
THE LIST PORTFOLIO consists of four of the artist’s earliest lists, made between 1987 and 1990. They have a lot to do with sound:
“Ugly Duckling” is a found alphabetical list of names excerpted from the S section of the Gary, Indiana telephone book. The names are all ungraceful sounding with their multiple consonants, until Swan, the 27th and last name on the list.
“Liszt” classifies and enumerates all of the composer’s works (sonatas, concertos, symphonies, an opera, waltzes, choral works, rhapsodies, even literary works…) into a homonymic list.
“Homophonia” is a list of words identified by the artist that each contain a pair of identical looking and sounding letters, homophonic in other words. Just one letter away from homophobia, “Homophonia” is a verbal metaphor and short cut for the larger society, demonstrating the importance of like members to structure and meaning. It has been distributed as a handout in many venues, bookended between “The Center Show” in 1989 at The Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center, New York City, and “Once Upon a Time and Now” in 2015 at The LGBT Community Center, New York.
“Liste/List” is a two-part list of French and English words. Liste, the French words, look like English words. The second part, List, is the English translation of the French Liste, which also look like English words.
Kay Rosen’s investigation into the visual possibilities of language has been her primary focus since 1968, when she traded in the academic study of languages for the study of language-based art. Through paintings, drawings, murals, prints, collages, and videos, Rosen has sought to generate new meaning from everyday words and phrases by substituting scale, color, materials, composition, graphic design, and typography for the printed page.
While political issues often form the bedrock of Rosen’s artwork, she insists that her work is driven not by politics, but by language, and she follows it to whatever place it takes her. Rosen loves the physical act of drawing and painting, and materially her paintings and drawings are intensively rendered; however, she considers language to be found material, conceptually placing her in the more passive role of a cognitive observer and enabler of language. The writer Rhonda Lieberman described her as a revealer of language who “shows it doing things that are totally above, beyond, and/or below its function as a mode of communication.”
Rosen’s work has been described as sculpture, poetry, architecture, and performance. Roberta Smith once called her a “writer’s sculptor” and Eileen Myles called her the “poet of the art world.” In a 2014 piece for Art In America, Rosen wrote: “The linguist in me wanted meaning to be carried by the structure of the words, not type style; the inner painter insisted that color convey meaning; the sculptor in me obsessed about the construction of letterforms through materials and process; and any poetic instincts strove for efficiency.”
Kay Rosen has been the subject of numerous articles, reviews, and group and solo exhibitions, including in 1998 a two-venue mid-career survey entitled Kay Rosen: Li[f]eli[k]e, curated by Connie Butler and Terry R. Myers at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and Otis College of Art Design. She has been the recipient of awards that include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2017 and three National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Grants. Her work is included in many institutional and private collections. Rosen taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for twenty-four years. She was born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas and lives in New York City and Gary, Indiana.
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