Art and Text

Book excerpt: This volume covers the development of the textual medium in art from the early combinations of text, lettering and image in the work of seminal artists such as El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters right up to the present day. The use of written language has been one of the most defining developments in visual art of the twentieth century. The use of text can be seen in some of the most avant-garde artwork of the twentieth century; René Magritte and dadaist artists used it to describe anti-art and anti-aesthetic sentiment. The work of some of the most famous conceptual artists of the 1960s began to use written language as an artwork in itself. Artists such as John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner and Bruce Nauman, who are still today some of the world's most respected artists, helped push the boundaries of what constitutes art at the time and it has continued to develop since that period. The expansive Art & Language group of artists and theorists, including Joseph Kosuth, also reconsidered the possibilities of "linguistic art."