Untitled (from Les Journaux des Dieux) 1950

Editor: This is "Untitled (from Les Journaux des Dieux)" by Isidore Isou, from 1950. It’s a mixed-media drawing with ink on paper, and I am really struck by its chaotic, almost stream-of-consciousness feel. All those images, lines and words. What’s your take on this piece? Curator: It reads like a palimpsest, doesn’t it? Each layer, a deposit of thought and experience, blurring the lines between text and image. Look at the superimposition of musical notation onto everyday objects, for example. How does that speak to you? Editor: It feels like…synesthesia? Like Isou is trying to visually represent sound or musical feelings. Curator: Precisely. And notice how familiar symbols—eyes, houses, scales—become alien, destabilized within this framework. This disorientation is key to understanding Lettrism. The individual mark, divorced from traditional meaning, becomes a signifier in itself. It recalls early alchemical symbols—complex, layered, evocative. Consider what is conveyed by repurposing already established languages in that way. Editor: So, the power isn't in recognition of familiar images, but in what happens when those images break apart or combine in unexpected ways? Curator: Precisely. The cultural memory embedded in each sign is disrupted and recombined, challenging our ingrained ways of seeing and understanding the world. Editor: That's fascinating. I was just seeing a jumble, but now I appreciate how deliberate and loaded that jumble is! Curator: It reveals the complex interweaving of memory, language, and the act of artistic creation.