Mark My Words: The Power of Text in Art

Lesley Dill, Heaven/Hell Dress from Hell Hell Hell/Heaven Heaven Heaven: Encountering Sister Gertrude Morgan and Revelation, assorted fabric, 2010, courtesy of the artist

Niki Hare, Not So Sure, acrylic on canvas, 2014, courtesy of the artist

Language has simultaneously assumed the dual roles of word and images.

—Edward Ruscha, American Pop artist

One afternoon while I was biking with my husband in Montreal, headed to the botanical gardens, he stopped so abruptly that I hit the back of his tire. "Look," he said, pointing to the word "nervous" spray-painted in black spiky letters on the side of a brick wall of a shabby apartment building. He took several pictures of the image, which to him suggested the feel of the neighborhood. The moment inspired me to watch out for meaningful words and phrases marking the urban landscapes that may capture the spirit of the place or times or may be merely amusing. In the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, I found scrawled on the side of a shotgun shack "Don't Muddy the Waters, Mississippi" and farther on down the street on a sagging wooden fence the loopy lettered phrase "Cast out of the Asylum." In New York, "Life Is Beautiful." In Toronto, "Hack Work" and "Gay for Pay," and in Vancouver, "Heartbreak Makes Me Horny." At first glance these inscriptions can seem intrusive, more appropriately scribbled in a journal than inscribed on buildings, highway overpasses, or train cars. Yet they are declarations of worry, frustration, and occasionally joy that add a new dimension to the way one experiences a city. Some may be evocative of stories, but in the end, the texts stand by themselves, untethered from story, demonstrating the power of words alone.

Niki Hare, Just Don't Forget to Come Back, mixed media on canvas, 2013, courtesy of the artist

The use of language in visual art has a long history, but to understand today's language-based art, the avant-garde movement of the early twentieth century offers a starting point. Aligning himself with Dadaism, Marcel Duchamp deliberately challenged the traditional ideas of what constitutes art by questioning both subject and form. He broke with the convention of holding a mirror to nature and capturing its reflection on canvas. The painter's brush is simply unable to reproduce the vision of the eye and the imagination. Too much is lost in translation. He also rejected the need in art for elevated themes from history, religion, literature, and mythology. He advocated a different kind of experience that substituted concept for mimesis. In part, he offered the authoritative nature of words as a truer source of art. Embedded in language is the power to control and influence as well as inspire, often more directly and convincingly than pictures. Words without visual accompaniment demanded a different viewing strategy—reading language as text and as image. Whether as social commentary, hard-edged phrases, terse statements, or text with no context, words in art could themselves be an aesthetic experience, commanding the same power and substance as images.

John James Anderson, A Smile in Every Bite, Digital Print, 2013, courtesy Adah Rose Gallery

Inspired by Duchamp, who called for liberation from more traditional European aesthetics, the Pop art movement of the late 1950s accelerated and intensified an engagement with the textual in visual arts. Living in a world saturated by words and images from consumer culture, artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Edward Ruscha also challenged the concept of fine art and the conformist values they saw in popular culture. They appropriated and reworked slogans, headlines, and advertisements into clever, whimsical, and arresting artwork that critiqued postwar consumer culture. Although individual styles were wide-ranging, Pop artists to varying degrees believed in the power of words—their use and abuse in product labeling and logos, for example—to create a more legitimate artistic...