Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. There is a man in the contemporary art landscape who accomplishes a rare feat: making the hieroglyphs of Memphis converse with the tags of Los Angeles, the manuscripts of the Middle Ages with concrete walls. Marquis Lewis, known as RETNA, is not just a street artist who became respectable. He is the creator of a visual language that questions our certainties about what separates scholarly art from popular art, the sacred from the profane, the ancient from the modern.
Born in 1979 in Los Angeles, RETNA draws his name from a Wu-Tang Clan track, “Heaterz”, where this prophetic line resonates: “Kinetic globes light will then shine, burns your retina.” This musical lineage is not trivial. It immediately reveals the synesthetic dimension of an art that aims to make the retina vibrate as much as the ear, creating a total language that transcends sensory boundaries.
RETNA’s work is rooted in a millenary tradition that finds its deepest roots in the art of medieval illuminated manuscripts. This lineage is neither accidental nor superficial. It reveals an intuitive understanding of what illumination was in the Middle Ages: a total art where text and image formed an inseparable whole, where each letter carried within it a spiritual and aesthetic charge that went beyond its simple linguistic function.
The illuminated manuscripts of medieval Europe, produced in monastic scriptoria between the 6th and 15th centuries, represented far more than simple decorated books [1]. They constituted sacred objects where calligraphy reached heights of artistic and spiritual excellence. The very term “illumination”, derived from the Latin illuminare meaning “to light up”, referred to this practice of adorning texts with vivid colors and especially gold, literally creating the impression that the page was lit from within. This luminous dimension finds a striking echo in RETNA’s work, whose golden and silver letters seem to radiate the same mystical energy as the illuminations of the Books of Hours, those popular private prayer books at the end of the Middle Ages, especially in the 15th century.
RETNA’s technique directly recalls the methods of medieval illuminators. Like them, he wields the brush with goldsmith precision, creating initials that bloom into complex arabesques. His compositions follow the same logic as Carolingian or Gothic manuscripts: a subtle balance between readability and ornamentation, between function and beauty. His works such as “Sad to See” (2015) or “Shadows of Light” reveal this disturbing kinship with the manuscripts of the Abbey of Saint-Denis or the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry. There, one finds the same decorative density, the same ability to transform the page’s space into a cosmic universe where every detail participates in a harmonious whole.
But RETNA does not merely mimic medieval art. He reinvents it in light of his era and origins. Son of American diversity, with African-American, Salvadoran, and Cherokee heritage, he creates a hybrid alphabet drawing from the most diverse sources: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy, Gothic script, not forgetting the codes of Los Angeles Chicano graffiti. This synthesis carries nothing of the pejorative sense of eclecticism. On the contrary, it reveals a profound understanding of what illumination always was: an art of cultural synthesis, capable of integrating the most varied influences into a unified language.
The artist thus develops what he himself calls a “universal language,” a writing that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers while preserving the spiritual charge of sacred writings. His collaborations with brands like Louis Vuitton and his creations for Justin Bieber’s Purpose album testify to this ability to circulate his mysterious alphabet through all circuits of contemporary culture, from the most prestigious galleries to the most popular media.
This universalist dimension finds its most spectacular fulfillment in his collaboration with Verdi’s opera Aida, presented at the San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera in 2016-2017 [2]. This meeting between street art and lyric art might seem incongruous. In reality, it reveals the deep logic of RETNA’s work. Verdi’s opera, rooted in ancient Egypt, regains through him its original hieroglyphic dimensions. RETNA’s sets transform the stage into a giant manuscript where the signs of a millenary script are deployed with a modern twist.
The artist says about this experience: “The fact that my work, much of which is based on the structure of Egyptian hieroglyphs, was used for Aida closed the loop of my entire conception of my career, marking an important step in my artistic and spiritual development.” This sentence reveals RETNA’s awareness that he is part of a tradition far beyond the scope of street art. By creating the sets for Aida, he recaptures the ancestral gestures of the medieval illuminator who adorned liturgical manuscripts, transforming theatrical representation into a visual celebration.
Analysis of his works reveals a technical mastery that rivals the greatest calligraphers of the past. His mural installations, like the one created at the Houston Bowery Wall in New York in 2012, spread on monumental surfaces the same precision of line found in the finest manuscripts. Each letter is carved with the care of a goldsmith, each composition obeys rhythmic rules that recall the musicality of sacred writings.
This musical dimension is not metaphoric. RETNA often paints while listening to music, letting the sonic rhythms guide the movement of his brush. This practice directly joins the experience of monk scribes who chanted as they worked, inscribing in their letters the cadence of prayers. RETNA’s art thus regains this performative dimension of illumination, this ritual aspect that made the creation of a manuscript an almost liturgical act.
The spirituality emanating from his works does not belong to New Age folklore but to an authentic quest for meaning. His collaborations with El Mac, notably the Skid Row mural depicting Big Slim accompanied by the inscription “Blessed Are The Meek For They Shall Inherit The Earth” (Heureux les humbles, car ils hériteront de la Terre), testify to this prophetic dimension of his art. Like the medieval illuminators who adorned the Gospels, RETNA transforms urban space into a support for spiritual meditation.
His use of gold and silver, constant in his works, is not a mere aesthetic seduction. He perpetuates this tradition of illumination which saw in these precious metals the materials of divine light. His canvases such as “Sometimes Eye Can’t Read What Eye Write” (2014) shine with the same supernatural luminosity as the manuscripts of the Treasure of Saint-Denis.
The encrypted dimension of his writing also participates in this medieval heritage. Illuminated manuscripts often contained hidden messages, visual wordplays, allusions that only the initiated could decipher. RETNA perpetuates this tradition of hidden meaning, creating a language that reveals itself without fully delivering itself. His statements on the very impossibility he sometimes has to reread his own texts reveal this oracular dimension of his art, this capacity to channel forces beyond him.
This assumed opacity radically distinguishes RETNA from most contemporary street artists. Where many favor explicit messaging and direct political claims, he chooses the path of allusion and symbol. This artistic strategy brings him closer to the great masters of illumination who knew that pure beauty could carry messages deeper than all speeches.
The evolution of his career, from the walls of Los Angeles to the most prestigious cultural institutions, testifies to this unique ability to make the most distant worlds dialogue. His exhibitions in international galleries, his collaborations with fashion houses, his interventions in public space form a coherent whole that reveals the contemporary relevance of the medieval heritage.
RETNA’s artistic posterity is part of this line of great creators of visual languages who have marked the history of art. Like the master illuminators of the Middle Ages, he proves that calligraphy can reach the highest peaks of artistic expression. His mysterious alphabet will continue for a long time to question and seduce, perpetuating this millenary tradition which makes writing a total art.
In a world where instant communication tends to impoverish forms of expression, RETNA reminds us that writing can still be an art of slowness and contemplation. His works demand time, attention, this same frame of mind required by illuminated manuscripts. They invite us to rediscover this sacred dimension of writing that our era has too often forgotten.
RETNA’s art thus constitutes much more than a simple personal achievement. It represents a lesson in art history in action, demonstrating that the oldest traditions can nourish the most contemporary creations. By reinventing illumination for the 21st century, Marquis Lewis offers us a rare model of creative fidelity, proving that there is no opposition between cultural rooting and artistic innovation.
His work remains open, in perpetual expansion, like those medieval manuscripts that were constantly enriched by their successive readers. Each new creation by RETNA adds a page to this infinite book that he has been writing for over twenty years, continuing this age-old tradition that makes the artist a bridge between worlds, a translator of the invisible.
- Illuminated Manuscripts, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Illuminated manuscripts constitute a European artistic tradition spanning from the 6th to the 15th century, characterized by the ornamentation of texts using gold, silver, and bright colors.
- Washington National Opera, Aida Production Notes, 2017. Production directed by Francesca Zambello with conceptual sets by RETNA, presented at the Kennedy Center Opera House from September 9 to 23, 2017.
