Abstract
This article explores graphic artist Pere Joan’s creation of an iconic, innovative language in his work 100 pictogramas para un siglo (XX) (2014). His critical-visual work reflects the contemporary status of emoticons and emoji, signs of the digital’s increasing integration in everyday life. Understood in light of the artist’s recent production, Pere Joan’s analytical visual language functions to underscore the formal possibilities signaled by the digital and at the same time to vindicate analog culture and historical reflection. Moreover, the innovative structure of the book’s pages highlights the relationship between comics and graphic art proper. In the end, more than celebrate the digital, 100 pictogramas recovers an analogic, essayistic impulse in order to stress the critical potential of all images. Within a formal minimalism, a graphic echo of emoticons, Pere Joan makes an historical awareness possible that will symbolically carry readers beyond the immediacy suggested by consumeristic logic toward a critique of everyday life.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 180-195 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Romance Studies |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2 2018 |
Keywords
- España
- Pere Joan
- Pere Joan
- Spain
- arte gráfico
- comic
- cultura digital
- cómic
- digital culture
- emoticonos
- emoticons
- epistemología visual
- graphic art
- iconicidad
- iconicity
- visual epistemology
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Literature and Literary Theory