Micrography
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Micrography is a Jewish art form developed in the 9th century, utilizing minute Hebrew letters to form representational, geometric and abstract designs. Colored micrography is especially distinctive due to the fact that these rare artworks are customarily rendered in black and white.
In micrography, the word literally becomes the vision (or image), as thousands upon thousands of Hebrew characters blend and weave together to tell a story. Similar to the well-known visual art form of photomosaic or phototile images (pioneered by Leon Harmon of Bell Labs in 1973 and made famous by Salvador Dalí in his 1976 painting Abraham Lincoln), more recently done via computer in, for instance, the poster of the 1998 film The Truman Show, micrography reveals one thing at close range (a set of words) and another thing (a visual image related to the set of words) at a distance. Whether small words forming a larger picture or small pictures forming a larger picture, (and theoretically small pictures could form large words), this kind of art always invites the viewer to make an association between the larger image and the subset of images or words that constitute it, despite the fact that the connection, as in linguistics, could be utterly irrational and still convey two sets of lovely images. Richly symbolic and steeped in the grand tradition of the Jewish heritage, this art form is both intellectually and visually stimulating. Especially interesting is the relationship between this form of art, employing both digital and analogic symbols, and the restrictions on images found in the second commandment, for which micrography provides a unique solution to the visual artist who wishes to remain devout in observation of Jewish law, which allows God to exist in the word and word only.
External links
- Jewish Theological Seminary exhibit on Micrography (http://www.jtsa.edu/library/exhib/microg/08.shtml)
- Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress, from the Jewish Virtual Library (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/loc/Micrography.html)