Take an everyday object, explain its method of manufacture and uses, bring back from the archives some emblematic characters of its history, and you will have a book of historical anthropology attentive to a “ micro device » of writing – the neon signs – which illuminate an entire world, always alive.
Writing devices
Writings on the verge of disappearing: this is how Philippe Artières describes the illuminated signs, which have marked – and transformed – urban space in the XXe century. Not that this “ street advertising » particular has completely deserted the city today. But the one considered by Artières exploits the infinite resources of the neon tube, while we now more commonly use the technology of LED (acronym for light-emitting diode or light-emitting diode) which, unlike the neon of yesteryear, consumes little energy, lasts a long time and does not heat up. More ecological and safer, the LED is also, Artières tells us, more limited in its uses, and its “ low graphics capability » would contribute, combined with new objectives, to standardizing our visual environment. The book is therefore essentially devoted to these writings of yesterday, “ bearers of magic and events », which encouraged consumption when today’s lights, originally used in enclosed spaces by companies concerned with efficiency, would on the contrary invite people to work.
The project is based on the hypothesis that these “ devices ” Or “ micro devices » writing contains “ knowledge of politics and its most modern form, governmentality “. Artières recalls how Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, observing signs as symptoms, were able to open the way to taking them into account as the result of a “ capitalist writing program » and how examining the landscape « electrographic » of Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown and Steven Izenour led them, through the valorization of vernacular practices, to oppose modernist ideology. The program of the book is consistent with the approach of Bruce Boût, whose work Artières cites on the American motel: “ the sign (…) can become, thanks to a conversion of perspective, a true sign, no longer of the information to be delivered, but of the intellectual and economic system which produced it “.
The theoretical field of Artières’ work is that of historical anthropology, and more precisely here of an anthropology of writing, in line with the Graphic reason by Jack Goody, the first reference to which the foreword of the book refers. The signs are considered here with an intention similar to that which recently led Arlette Farge to examine the parchment bracelets of the XVIIIe century, or Béatrice Fraenkel to analyze the writings of September eleventh in New York: according to the conviction “ that there are no accessory or anecdotal objects in history », and that the study of these forms of writing, however discreet they may sometimes be, allows us to renew the exploration of our ways of seeing and doing. Researcher at Ehess and author of numerous essays which report on the analysis of various archives, notably medical and criminal (but also, more recently, those of Thérèse of Lisieux: The written lifeto be published in Belles Lettres), Artières co-hosts, with sociologists Jérôme Denis and David Pontille, a blog dedicated to “ small investigations into writing and its worlds » and was interested in forms of inscription as varied as tattoos, banners and graffiti.
The sign factory
Illuminated signs mobilizes heterogeneous documentation. The original data, resulting from the analysis of different archives, municipal and professional, and which constitute the core of the book, and the information provided by a few rare studies on signs, are associated with elements taken from textual and iconographic sources of various nature. , from Brassaï to Georges Perec and, more unexpectedly, to Patrick Modiano, “ epigrapher and sensitive archivist of the cities of our modernity “.
Among the archives, those of the Paris Prefecture: the very first pages of the chapter “ Opening » are occupied with the transcription of the results of the Prize for the most beautiful illuminated signs in the City of Parisfrom 1970 to 1973, before such competition, and the encouragement for electricity spending that it implies, became incompatible with the restrictions imposed by the oil crisis. If the jury sometimes retained spectacular proposals, such as the composition for the facade of the building RTL rue Bayard, entrusted to the artist Vasarely and which earned the Ediradio company a reward of 5,000 F in 1972, more modest brands could also be awarded prizes in other categories. Based on archives from the urban planning permit department of the city of Montreal around 1950, Artières addresses the question of “ administrative factory » signs, showing how the appearance of the street depends on specific regulations and the authorizations granted, or refusals, by municipal authorities to requests from merchants. The negative responses repeatedly inflicted on a shoe merchant on Sherbrooke Street thus shed light on the principle of limiting, in size and number, commercial registrations in the Quebec capital. Finally, preserved at the Labor Archives Center in Roubaix, the collection of the Luneix-Néon company provides an opportunity to describe the activity of a sign manufacturer between 1936 and 1965. Through the list of employees of this small Parisian company appears a group of invisible workers – designers, blowers, fitters, representatives or locksmiths. Artières suggests the “ potential landscape » contained in these archives, where unfinished sign projects have accumulated, but also the unprecedented archeology revealed by plans and documents, offering an image of the city that is all the more precious as it reflects a very ephemeral aspect – the lifespan of a sign being incommensurate with that of a building.
Various data make it possible to follow the evolution of the internal management of the Luneix-Néon company and the orders that kept it alive. The text of the placards that the director has inserted in the directories gives an idea of the offer: tobacco carrots in pressed Plexiglas ; painted or metallic letters in relief and colored luminescent tubes ensuring, day and night, visibility for the customer who can also request, as an option, animated or intermittent lighting. Notes record the commercial conversations during the canvassing carried out by the representatives, whose work Artières depicts as difficult and restrictive. A confidential note from 1930 offers, in the form of a dialogue, an interview guide for these salespeople whose art lies above all in words – dramatization of a potential conversation which develops a typical argument by accompanying it with recommendations on the rhythm (“ quickly unpack and chain “) as in the tone (“ all this must be said calmly, calmly “) of the speech.
It is one of the great qualities of this book to share with the reader the joy of the archive, and thus to bring out gestures, words or characters, like the superintendent Jacques E. Laliberté, responsible for the building inspection service in Montreal, which examines sign installation request files, like Paul Poulin, founder of Luneix-néon and whose disappearance in 1965 will be fatal to the company, or even more present in THE book, the discoverer of neon. After recalling how it was formed, from the very end of the XIXe century, the term “ city of light “, and the fascination then exerted by the growing use of electricity in the urban context, Artières describes, in great detail, the invention of the light tube in 1910 by the French physicist Georges Claude. It recounts the strange career of this inspired scientist who became a fervent collaborator during the Second World War, thus passing “ from light to night “.
Take the sidewalk opposite
The book is full of varied details, crossing time and space in several directions. Literary quotations are compared with extracts from archives, primary and secondary sources are used together in a subtle weave. The scientific requirement in no way restricts the freedom of tone here and there is, in the text that Artières offers, like his approach as a researcher, an extremely stimulating experimental dimension. The extent of the field explored shows the richness of this anthropological approach and implicitly indicates multiple avenues. That, for example, of a formal analysis of these urban writings. Artières cites the American artist Ed Ruscha’s interest in signs, and the artistic fortunes of these would indeed constitute a complementary area of exploration. Alongside Brassaï, whose book Paris at night of 1932 is mentioned, could for example feature Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and his Dynamics of the big citya 1922 scenario that he reproduces in his book Malerei, Photography, Filmand in which his own name appears in flashing light letters. We of course also think of the artist Bruce Nauman, who made neon, and its capacity both figurative and scriptural, the basis of numerous sculptures from 1966 to the end of the 1980s. A consideration of the aspect specifically graphic would certainly also be productive, as suggested by the surveys of typography specialists Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon (Signs: Lettering in the Environment), or Lisa Mahar’s methodical dissection of American motel signs (American Signs: Forms and Meaning on Route 66), Observing the signs themselves is certainly a source not to be neglected. Artières also encourages “ take the sidewalk opposite », what as an applied student the author of these lines tried to do. Conclusion: neon, used to signal businesses of all kinds, undoubtedly still has a bright future ahead of it, and the graphic possibilities of its young competitor do not always prove to be so limited. Used judiciously, we can even imagine the electro-luminescent diode capable of producing new graphic effects, and thus freeing itself from the objectives of “ population management » which marked its appearance. No fatality would weigh on this technology – a hypothesis that an anthropology of these writings today will undoubtedly allow us to discuss… in the next century.