Mel Bochner, Blah Blah Blah, Park Avenue Armory, Card, 2009. Size: 4.75 x 6.5 inches — Available for Purchase. As a conceptual artist in the late 1960s and 70s, Mel Bochner worked primarily with an abstract vocabulary of lines, spaces and geometric shapes. More recently, he has been emphasizing words and treating them both as an abstract element, and as a conveyor of ideas.
While words appear in the work of Cubist, Surrealist and other early 20th century artists, it wasn’t until the latter half of the century with the rise of Pop and Conceptual art, that words and text became a common motif of art. For those interested in the play of text and visuals, we have made it easy to find and explore by a Text and Word Art category.
Although Ed Ruscha is arguably the text-and-word art master, words have also been central to the work of numerous other artists like Lawrence Weiner, Robert Barry, On Kawara, the Guerrilla Girls, Christopher Wool, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, and Barbara Kruger. With the rise of graffiti in the late 1970s and 80s, “word art” began to enjoy wide popularity as a distinctive new form of calligraphy.
Below are some of our favorite examples of ephemera featuring Word and Text Art. You can also see more on Gallery 98.
Pop Artist Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha (Cover), The End, Anthology Film Archives, January-February-March Program, 2007. Size: 8.5 x 11 inches — Available for Purchase
Edward Ruscha, Saying from Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, Leo Castelli Gallery, Folded Card, 1995. Size: 5 x 7 inches — Available for Purchase
Since the 1960s Pop artist Edward Ruscha has used words and text as the principal subject of his art. In some works, he simply appropriates words that are in themselves popular images. Often though, Ruscha probes more deeply into the ways words are used and perceived. The bottom card’s text is a phrase written in Black dialect from a novel by the 19th century writer Mark Twain.
Pop Artist Robert Indiana’s Love
The Conceptual Artist Collaborative General Idea’s AIDS
Robert Indiana, LOVE Stamps, Issued 1973. Sheet of 50 LOVE stamps signed by Robert Indiana, along with a photo of Indiana signing the sheet. — Available for Purchase
General Idea, The Public and Private Domains of The Miss General Idea Pavillion, ARTSPACE, 11-Page Booklet, 1987. Size: 5 x 5 inches — Available for Purchase
Pop artist Robert Indiana enjoyed great success by reconfiguring the look and placement of letters in the word “Love.” First created in 1964, Indiana’s “Love” became a U.S. postage stamp in 1973. Fifteen-years later General Idea, a collective of conceptual artists from Canada, created an attention-grabbing variant by substituting the word “AIDS” for “Love.”
Conceptual Artist Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner, Two Folded Double-Sided Posters made for Agnés B’s Point d’Ironie No. 6 Magazine, 1998. Size: 17 x 24 each — Available for Purchase
Conceptual Art’s emphasis on ideas helped bring the use of words into the art mainstream. Lawrence Weiner gave social and philosophical texts greater prominence by altering the ways in which they are seen and contextualized.
Conceptual Artist Hamish Fulton
Hamish Fulton, A Seventeen Day Walk in The Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Autumn, 1984, John Weber Gallery, Three-Fold Card, 1985. Size: 5 x 6.25 inches — Available for Purchase
Hamish Fulton’s art focuses on his nature walks. Most of his works use photographs as documentation, but this announcement card uses only words to evoke visuals.
Pictures Generation Artist Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger, “I Shop Therefore I Am,” Two-Fold Card, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), 1999. Size: 6 x 6 inches — Available for Purchase
Barbara Kruger, Back to the Future, Folded Card, Mary Boone Gallery, 2004. Size: 7 x 7 inches — Available for Purchase
Barbara Kruger employs tried-and-true advertising techniques to give greater power to texts that express social and political concerns. Her stylistic repertoire prominently features the color red and bold typefaces like Futura and Helvetica. While she usually combines words with images, at times she lets the words themselves make their own statements.
Graffiti Artist BLADE & Street Photographer Martha Cooper
Blade, Blade in Front of Tribute Mural painted by RIME and designed by Freedom for MoCA’s Art in the streets, Photograph, 2011. Size: 4.2 x 6 inches — Available for Purchase
Martha Cooper, Joseph Sciorra, RIP: Memorial Wall Art, Book, 1994. Size: 8.25 x 9.25 inches — Available for Purchase
Like Blade, many graffiti-based artists are talented calligraphers who create their own original styles of lettering. As graffiti was done primarily on subway trains or on the street, many graffiti-based artists evolved into skilled mural artists employing both words and images. The prolific photographer Martha Cooper has captured much of this largely ephemeral art in dozens of publications.
