Voices from a Lovely Nowhere

“Ventriloquism is mythical, not just in the sense that it is so intimately bound up with fable and fantasy, but also in that it may fairly be said of it, as early mythographers suspected of myth itself, that it is a past without a present. Whether because it is scandalously or mysteriously archaic, or uncannily premonitory, ventriloquism is always anachronistic, never quite on time.”

Steven Connor, Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism

 

Most of the artworks and manuscripts in this gallery showcase ways in which the divine voice becomes a religious text: pages of the Bible inspired by the word of God; a page from the Quran, a text believed to be delivered orally by God to the prophet Muhammad; and a more contemporary textual work by R.B. Kitaj, evocatively entitled Voice from Lovely Nowhere.

Title Page to Concordantiae Bibliorum, printed 1922

 

Title Page to Concordantiae Bibliorum, printed 1622, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Abbey Rents, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA