‘Rewriting the World’: Lettrism and Comics

Features Alex Dueben | August 21, 2026 (Editor's note: Click on the little circles at the bottom of the galleries to move to the next photo) In the interest of full disclosure, I've met Bill Kartalopoulos a few times and we’re friendly. I first came to know him through his work, which includes working on the recent Joe Brainard collection, The Complete C Comics. Because of this, I attended a zoom lecture that Bill gave on Lettrism, though I knew nothing about the topic. I don’t think I was alone in not knowing what Lettrism was before that talk or before visiting the exhibit that he co-curated, and surely I’m not the only person who became mildly obsessed with the subject afterwards. “Rewriting the World: Isidore Isou and the Lettrist Book” is an exhibition curated by Kartalopoulos and Frédéric Acquaviva that ran from January to May of this year at the Center for Book Arts in Manhattan. For the exhibit and accompanying book of the same name, the two assembled more than one hundred objects to explain this avant-garde arts movement. Acquaviva and Kartalopoulos make the case for this small, largely forgotten avant-garde movement as a hub of creativity and innovation that continues to ...