The Dow: Volume 1 — 1928

Description

First conceived in 1999, THE DOW is an anthology and aesthetic treatise by LG Williams concerning personal conduct, artistic practice, social order, prosperity, value, and the relation of the individual to forces larger than himself. The work brings the ancient discipline of the Way into contact with market language, corporate management, positive thinking, financial accumulation, and the American expectation that invisible alignment should become materially visible. Across books, signs, paintings, posters, and digital manifestations, the project preserves the changing financial language through which American prosperity represents itself. Each abbreviation reproduced in the book also identifies an artwork, rendering the constituent language of the indexes as a physical sign and editioned object. Volume 1 fixes the project at the moment the Dow Jones Industrial Average expanded to thirty companies in 1928, while also carrying the transportation and utilities lineages that surround that reorganization. The volume establishes the series method: the index determines the corporate field, the corporate names determine the abbreviations, and the abbreviations become both historical record and artwork.