Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
The Writing’s on the Wall :: Two New Books Explore the Rise of Text in Art
John Baldessari - I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, 1971. (Image © the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery and Sprüth Magers)
A picture may or may not paint a thousand words, but what about the word painting the picture?
The roughly ten year period from the mid 60s – 70s, saw an explosion in the use of text in (or text as) contemporary American art. John Baldessari’s stylistically and aesthetically void text paintings must have seemed absurd to many who first saw them in the late 60s. By the mid 1970s, artists’ use of the written word had grown substantially. Consider some of the most well regarded names exhibited by Leo Castelli over the span of a few short years. In 1968 hei presented his first show with Bruce Nauman, followed by Lawrence Weiner in 1971 and Ed Ruscha in 1973. All three worked heavily with text, exploring territory ranging from minimalism to pop.
(Images: © Black Dog Publishing, Taschen)
Out next month, Art and Text (Black Dog) presents a select survey of text in art. Using seminal early 1900s artist El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters as a starting point, the book moves through the 1960s conceptualists (including those mentioned above) to heavyweight contemporaries like Jenny Holtzer, Barbara Kruger, Richard Long, Martin Creed and Tracy Emin. Absent from the volume, but worthy of consideration, are names like Steve Powers, Tauba Auerbach and Greg Lamarche, who represent a new wave of artists continuing the dialogue between art and text.
Barbara Kruger – Untitled (I shop therefore I am), 1987 (Image © Mary Boone Gallery)
Type – A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1 (available now from Taschen) steps further back. The first book of a two volume set traces the evolution of the printed letter by providing both a written history and visual compilation of typefaces prior to the twentieth century. The source material is near astounding, drawing from the monolithic collection of Jan Tholenaar, who amassed one of the world’s greatest private collections of type specimens prior to his passing this year and before the book’s publication. Included with purchase of the volume, is unlimited access to an online image library of 1000+ high-resolution scans of type specimens, downtloadable for unrestricted use. For the casual reader, Taschen has made the entire book viewable for free in PDF format here. Volume 2 is scheduled for release in February of next year.
Sample page from Type, Vol. 1 (Image: © Taschen)
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