Typography and Text-Image Recursion

Typography is a curious example of relationship between text and image. Where, to use a classic example, Magritte’s Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe unifies image and text or language if you will in their arbitrariness, typography solidifies this connection because the image is made up of text or language. Whereas before to reiterate in Magritte, text and image unite in that they both become portions of the painting, typography takes this connection one step further in that the image becomes language and the language, recursively, becomes image. So, the curious relationship that occurs is that text makes the image yet the image also expands on the meaning of the text. I have three separate examples of typography, the most curious M, which exemplifies this recursion because text becomes the image and the image is text but an image nonetheless—if that has any semblance of sense at all. Thus, to me, what M suggests is a paradoxical relationship between meaning: that there is an absence of meaning of the whole, while parts of this work create meaning through this absence.
The relationship between text and image in M create an absence of meaning. Consider this relationship: M is a work that has a three dimensional M that is made up of various phrases that are sized and oriented differently. Because the letter M is three dimensional, that depth affects the text-ness. In other words, as the letter m takes on another dimension of physical depth, it also takes on another level of meaning in that m becomes an image as well. The phrases that make up the letter m create unintelligibility because they do not relate to the meaning of m—whatever that be. Further, as m stands alone, m remains abstract. That is to say that “m” connected to, say, “oon” has concrete meaning, but m alone means m which has no concrete meaning—other than it succeeds L and precedes N. So this discord between random phrases and the thirteenth letter of the alphabet seems to be unintelligible.
Also, an abundance of cliché phrases in M and the overall unintelligibility of the piece create intelligibility. That is to say that phrases in M, “Because we are told that’s why,” “Now entering zero gravity,” “God,” “normally,” enjoy a popular recognition, a hackneyed existence, coupled with the absence of complete cohesive meaning suggest that these phrases, as the whole does, also lack meaning. I interpret this lack of meaning to be a criticism, on one level, saying that cultural clichés because of overuse tend to be accepted rather than challenged. That our minds believe or buy into cliché simply because we recognize and not necessarily because we understand what they mean. Because I am able to make some sense of M, because one can navigate through the haze, suggests that the absence of meaning is significant and thus, intrinsically, meaning.
On another level, whether or not M is a criticism on clichés, it still becomes an example of meaning at work in art. That is to say that M may be overall devoid of meaning, but the simple fact that there is no meaning paradoxically means there is meaning. To me, what this suggests is that possibly art cannot exist as just art, or perhaps, that for something to intrinsically mean nothing that inherently suggests that there is meaning. So it seems impossible for something to simply exist without meaning, because to not have meaning is to “mean nothing”.
One possible objection to this is that M as a whole piece does have cohesive meaning. Of course this objection is conditional, i.e., if one accepts that there are no great truths within a work, that all meaning synthesizes through reader response, then it seems impossible to prove that a higher truth does exist within M. Further, whether or not a higher truth does exist is unimportant because I am theorizing about the interaction between meaning of the whole and the parts that make it, of form rather than content.
If the whole piece lacks meaning but portions of the work have meaning, then how is it possible for the whole to be made up of parts and loose their content. Partially, it seems that the recursive nature of the piece traps its significance. Because it is an image of text that is made of smaller bits of text, which become part of the image, there seems to be no concrete way to say that M is either image or text. This recursive interaction parallels how the piece makes meaning. Because significance arises out of connotation from the parts, the phrases that have some concrete meaning, clashes with the lack of meaning of the letter m, a message is born between the recursive relationship between meaning and meaning nothing.