Micrography (from

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, literally small-writing – "Μικρογραφία"), also called microcalligraphy, is a

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

ish form of

calligram A calligram is a set of words arranged in such a way that it forms a thematically related image. It can be a poem, a phrase, a portion of scripture, or a single word; the visual arrangement can rely on certain use of the typeface, calligraphy o ...

s developed in the 9th century, with parallels in Christianity and Islam,Torah, Bible, Coran
(French) utilizing minute Hebrew letters to form representational, geometric and abstract designs. Colored micrography is especially distinctive because these rare artworks are customarily rendered in black and white.

Description

The artwork is created from text that forms an image when viewed at a distance, creating an interplay between the text and image. The

photomosaic A photographic mosaic or photomosaic is a picture (usually a photograph) that has been divided into tiled sections, usually equal sized, each of which is replaced with another photograph that matches the target photo.Cartwright (2007) p.102 quo ...

, whose tiny individual images form a mosaic when viewed from a distance, is a modern analogue. Another modern analogue is

ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) character (computing), characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCI ...

, where ASCII or extended ASCII characters are arranged to form an image on a computer screen and/or printout.

Motivation

There is a relationship between this form of art, employing both digital and analogic symbols, and the restrictions on images found in the second commandment. Micrography provides a unique solution to the visual artist who wishes to remain devout in observation of

Jewish law ''Halakha'' ( ; , ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Written and Oral Torah. ''Halakha'' is based on biblical commandments ('' mit ...

, by using only text, not images per se. As similar restrictions exist in certain

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

societies, this solution has been adapted in

Islamic calligraphy Islamic calligraphy is the artistic practice of penmanship and calligraphy, in the languages which use Arabic alphabet or the Arabic script#Additional letters used in other languages, alphabets derived from it. It is a highly stylized and struc ...

to the

Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...

as well.

References

External links

Micrography: Text Art and Typography
* Leila Avrin

Jewish Heritage Online Magazine

British Library, BL Add. MS 21160

British Library, BL Add. MS 15282
Jewish Theological Seminary exhibit on Micrography

* Dalia-Ruth Halperin
Micrography - a Jewish art
British Library Hebrew manuscripts project. Accessed 2016-05-25. Visual arts genres Jewish art Islamic calligraphy Hebrew calligraphy {{calligraphy-stub

Description

Motivation

See also

References

External links