Monday, November 4, 2002

Adding the Verbal to the Visual There is a very nice article by John Paul Caponigro, Making the Visual Verbal, on the Communications Arts site. In it he explains how artists beneft by working on how they speak or write about their work. This concerns artist statements, lectures, interviews, journals, as an exercise, etc... (Thanks, Lee Potts for the link.) One aspect that was not mentioned (and would have been tertiary to his point, anyway) was artists that actually write on their work. Some roots would go back to the 1912-13 and the Synthetic Cubists' collage, where they added text via newspaper clippings. Another early milestone would be Rene Magritte 1929 painting that included an image of a pipe with the words painted on the canvas that translate to This is Not a Pipe. One might jump ahead to 1977 and Jenny Holzer's Truisms series which is all text. Perhaps this is the minimalist conclusion for this textual component of art? (hmm...note to self, see what authors do.) One other aspect of adding the Verbal to the Visual. This is what is done when an author titles a piece. Did Magritte call his painting Not a Pipe? No, he called it The Treachery (or Perfidity) of Images . 10:13:50 PM