ABSTRACT
The use of language within art is hardly new. Early fusions of the verbal and the visual occur in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese ideograms, and Mayan glyph writing. Illuminated manuscripts, seventeenth-century emblem books, pattern poetry (from George Herbert to the present; see Bray, this volume), and William Blake’s mixed art are among some of the diverse and “curious” combinations of media that predate our time. It is in the twentieth century, though, that an eruption of language into the field of the visual arts can be witnessed. This eruption began early in the century, exploded onto the conceptual art scene, and is still evident today in performance modes, multimodal artworks, and multimedia installations (see Gibbons, “Multimodal Literature,” this volume). Indeed, the pervasiveness and variety of language works produced during the twentieth century are remarkable. Hybrid works including words appear in paintings with words as dominant images (Edward Ruscha), or words painted directly on walls (by conceptualists Lawrence Weiner, Robert Barry, and Mel Bochner as well as painters whose inspiration has sources in graffiti art, like Jean-Michel Basquiat). Some artists produce visual signs contextualized by theoretical essays (Daniel Buren), essays on aesthetics presented as art and wall texts that are stories (Art and Language Group), collage or sculptural objects with fictional texts (Edward Kienholz), performed texts (Joseph Beuys, Laurie Anderson), books (Lawrence Weiner, Dan Graham), card files (Robert Morris), postcards with words (On Kawara), puns conveyed through body art (Bruce Nauman, Chris Burden), thesaurus works (Joseph Kosuth, Vito Acconci), scripted events (George Brecht, John Cage), the exchange of spoken or written secrets (Vito Acconci, Douglas Huebler), multimedia installations with texts (Jonathan Borofsky, Marcel Broodthaers), photographs (Barbara Kruger), neon signs (Jenny Holzer), and more. Numerous art movements generated during the twentieth century are also defined by their use of language: conceptual art and performance art include programs for using language as a primary material. Since the 1960s, language has become as important to many artists as the brushstroke has remained to others.
