Inside the design world of Jean-Luc Godard

A new exhi­bi­tion ded­i­cat­ed to Jean-Luc Godard’s last work high­lights his artistry and focus­es on how the influ­en­tial French film­mak­er imple­ment­ed a hap­tic approach not only to film­mak­ing but the entire cre­ative process. Scé­nar­ios, his very last short film, com­plet­ed a day before his assist­ed death, is a visu­al col­lage accom­pa­nied by an actu­al note­book that shows Godard’s way of think­ing. A mix of images, paint­ing and writ­ing gives us an exclu­sive look into the mind of one of the most inno­v­a­tive and exper­i­men­tal direc­tors ever, who shaped an aes­thet­ic that would influ­ence film­mak­ers and artists for gen­er­a­tions to come.

His fear­less kamikaze way of cre­at­ing films meant that he would write scripts on set prac­ti­cal­ly from scratch, in between takes. Not a great believ­er in prepa­ra­tion, his mot­to was ​“See­ing pre­cedes the writ­ten word”, so much so that he drew par­al­lels with fine art and con­tem­po­rary design through­out his films. The run through the Lou­vre in Bande à Part can be under­stood as a depic­tion of the way he absorbed and utilised inspi­ra­tion that came from the world of fine art.

In Pier­rot le Fou, eclec­tic col­lages of ​“indus­tri­alised” art­works by Picas­so, Modigliani, Cha­gall, Renoir and oth­ers appear in the form of posters and post­cards taped on the walls, jux­ta­posed with bold red mag­a­zine cov­ers of Paris Match. A cel­e­bra­tion of post-mod­ernism but also a cul­tur­al obser­va­tion on the rela­tion­ship art has with mass repro­duc­tion. By using post­cards of the great­est works of art, and ripped out mag­a­zine cov­ers, the wall becomes ever-chang­ing and alive. This con­stant move­ment is also true of the pro­tag­o­nists who are on the run across the coun­try from the police. When they get to relax in a bath­tub, they are seen to be avid read­ers of Elie Faure’s His­to­ry of art. Pierrot’s blue paint­ed face can be seen as a then con­tem­po­rary ref­er­ence to Yves Klein and his icon­ic blue as Pier­rot van­ish­es into the blue sea and sky. But Godard goes a step fur­ther: By posi­tion­ing the pro­file of his cre­ation, Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do and Anna Kari­na, in the midst of two Picas­so por­traits, he seems to issue a state­ment: If Picas­so is the great­est painter, then Godard is the great­est filmmaker.

Where oth­er French film­mak­ers such as Éric Rohmer were strong­ly inspired by clas­sic lit­er­a­ture, Godard’s inter­ests span phi­los­o­phy, paint­ing, music, design, adver­tis­ing and the con­sumerist, visu­al world we live in. Despite the ever occur­ring ref­er­ences of mod­ern art and adver­tis­ing, typog­ra­phy seems to be the thread that ties it all togeth­er and became a focal point in his work. The ten­sion between text and image and the use of spe­cif­ic fonts went beyond cre­at­ing a lay­out; it became a reflec­tion of both his mus­ings on zeit­geist and his dual Swiss-French origin.

His typo­graph­ic choic­es can be divid­ed into mul­ti­ple parts, as observed by Paule Pala­cios Dalens. Films like Pier­rot Le Fou, La Chi­noise, Week­end, Mas­culin, Féminin and Week­end were marked by the French font Antique Olive, designed by Roger Excof­fon and released in 1960. Not only was it a very con­tem­po­rary choice but also one that is strong­ly entwined with a typ­i­cal­ly French aes­thet­ic. The dot on the cap­i­tal ​‘I’ was pos­si­bly cus­tom-made by Godard and added play­ful­ness to a live­ly font that also pos­si­bly has its coun­ter­part in the British Gill Sans. Except for the black and white Mas­culin, Féminin, each film makes clear that it is a French font by util­is­ing the flag’s emblem­at­ic tri­colour, which gives a strong sense of belong­ing and socio-polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion. Par­tic­u­lar­ly 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her looks crit­i­cal­ly at the con­sumerist world we live in. Godard even lines up mul­ti­ple items such as cig­a­rettes, tooth­paste, wash­ing pow­der and cere­als in the shape of a flat lay, pret­ty much pre­dict­ing today’s con­sumerist Insta­gram aes­thet­ic. In no oth­er Godard film does he high­light the bom­bard­ment of adver­tis­ing as dra­mat­i­cal­ly and hope­less­ly as he does here. Large bill­boards in bold type on colour blocks, con­trast the whis­per­ing off voice, it is all too pow­er­less against cor­po­rate enti­ties. Indi­vid­u­als seem small and irrel­e­vant, almost dis­ap­pear­ing into its busy back­drop of mes­sages. This is a favoured frame of his, which he uses in the same man­ner in oth­er films. In A Woman Is A Woman, when­ev­er Angela leaves her domes­tic enclave, she is sur­round­ed by adver­tis­ing, as is Nana in My Life To Live, the farm­ers in Week­end and the youth in Mas­culin, Féminin.

The films using Antique Olive are in con­trast to those dis­play­ing the Hel­veti­ca. Films like Alphav­ille, Keep Your Right Up and Film Social­isme dis­play the Swiss font because its usage was a the­mat­ic reflec­tion and one of the mod­ern age. Hel­veti­ca remains one of the most wide­ly used fonts in the world. It is often con­sid­ered a safe option and to this day still praised in design schools which ensures its continuum.

It has swept over con­tem­po­rary cul­ture and its imprint on logo design is over­whelm­ing; the New York sub­way, Amer­i­can Air­lines, Pana­son­ic, Lufthansa, and many oth­er tech and trans­port com­pa­nies use the font due to its pow­er­ful prop­er­ties of moder­ni­ty, progress and prag­ma­tism. Mag­a­zines use it paired with fash­ion for a cool retro look and to sig­nal they are young and ahead of the curve. It becomes clear why Hel­veti­ca was used for his dystopi­an Alphav­ille instead of the French Antique Olive. By using Hel­veti­ca, he pur­pose­ful­ly swaps the red, blue and white palette to replace it with a more som­bre black, white and grey. The films become more exper­i­men­tal mus­ing on pol­i­tics as opposed to the provoca­tive expres­sive­ness that is present in a film such as La Chi­noise, but now they con­tain the cold sober­ness and dis­tance of a neu­tral coun­try that is his oth­er half, Switzer­land. It’s a font that remains devoid of per­son­al­i­ty and accen­tu­ates the tone of the med­i­ta­tion on human val­ues by Anna Kari­na in Alphav­ille, when she won­ders what the word ​“con­science” means. A top­ic that can­not with­stand the tri­colour Antique Olive.

The typo­graph­ic choic­es that Godard made were the­mat­ic and not only cho­sen for their styl­is­tic prop­er­ties. It is for this same rea­son that the off voic­es are so dis­tort­ed in Alphav­ille and hushed in 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. Godard said he was a ​“painter with let­ters”, per­haps Scénario(s) can help us dis­cov­er how all encom­pass­ing his per­cep­tion of mov­ing image real­ly was so we can reflect about it, pos­si­bly in our own handwriting.

Scénario(s) runs from the 14 – 22 Decem­ber with accom­pa­ny­ing film pro­gramme at The Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Arts (ICA)