Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: And Now for Something Completely Different
- 1 The Back Story of Twentieth-Century Art
- 2 The Greatest Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 3 The Most Important Works of Art of the Twentieth Century
- 4 The Greatest Artistic Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century
- 5 The Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 6 Creating New Genres: Conceptual Artists at Work and Play in the Twentieth Century
- 7 And Now for Something Completely Different: The Versatility of Conceptual Innovators
- 8 You Cannot Be Serious: The Conceptual Innovator as Trickster
- 9 Painting by Proxy: The Conceptual Artist as Manufacturer
- 10 Co-Authoring Advanced Art
- 11 Language in Visual Art
- 12 Portraits of the Artist: Personal Visual Art in the Twentieth Century
- 13 The Rise and (Partial) Fall of Abstract Painting in the Twentieth Century
- 14 The Globalization of Advanced Art in the Twentieth Century
- 15 Artists and the Market: From Leonardo and Titian to Warhol and Hirst
- 16 The State of Advanced Art: The Late Twentieth Century and Beyond
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
11 - Language in Visual Art
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: And Now for Something Completely Different
- 1 The Back Story of Twentieth-Century Art
- 2 The Greatest Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 3 The Most Important Works of Art of the Twentieth Century
- 4 The Greatest Artistic Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century
- 5 The Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 6 Creating New Genres: Conceptual Artists at Work and Play in the Twentieth Century
- 7 And Now for Something Completely Different: The Versatility of Conceptual Innovators
- 8 You Cannot Be Serious: The Conceptual Innovator as Trickster
- 9 Painting by Proxy: The Conceptual Artist as Manufacturer
- 10 Co-Authoring Advanced Art
- 11 Language in Visual Art
- 12 Portraits of the Artist: Personal Visual Art in the Twentieth Century
- 13 The Rise and (Partial) Fall of Abstract Painting in the Twentieth Century
- 14 The Globalization of Advanced Art in the Twentieth Century
- 15 Artists and the Market: From Leonardo and Titian to Warhol and Hirst
- 16 The State of Advanced Art: The Late Twentieth Century and Beyond
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
A distinctive feature of visual art in the twentieth century is its use of language. Words had appeared in paintings and sculptures since classical times, but their use was generally restricted to a few specific functions. From an early date, inscriptions served religious purposes, identifying the protagonists in a biblical scene or referring to a relevant biblical text. Artists' signatures identified the person responsible for a work, and dates were often included to specify when a work was completed. And artists sometimes included the title of a painting within the work's image. In the early twentieth century, however, some artists began using language in their works for very different reasons. Over time this practice spread, as words and even sentences became more conspicuous in a number of artists' work. Eventually, in some cases language became more important than images, and for some artists words replaced images altogether.
The introduction of language into art for new purposes is a symptom of the increasingly conceptual nature of visual art during the twentieth century. The increasing acceptance of the use of language equally became an independent factor fueling the conceptual orientation of art, for the possibility of using language appealed to many young artists with conceptual goals: the example of important visual artists whose work featured language helped make visual art an attractive activity for many conceptually oriented artists, and provided them with points of departure for new conceptual innovations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art , pp. 211 - 227Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009