Art Subjects - General & Miscellaneous, Modern Art, Art of the 1980s and 1990s

Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art

Name: Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art
Author: Simon Morley
ISBN: 9780520241534

by Simon Morley

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Overview

This study explores the strange, unsettling and often humorous results when words escape their traditional confines and inhabit artworks. It traces the growing bond between word and image in art, explaining how artists since the late nineteenth century have harnessed the resulting tension to form identities, challenge authority and make sense of a world in constant change. Arranged by significant movements from the impressionists to the present day. Writing on the Wall also reveals how artists have responded to an environment increasingly saturated with words, and how the mass media have adopted and adapted artistic devices in lypography, propaganda and advertising.

Synopsis

"An intriguing survey of word-imbued artworks of the modern period, Writing on the Wall will surely be a touchstone for readings on the relationship between language and art across time. While filling a gap in the current scholarship on text in art, Morley has crafted in clear, accessible prose, a study that is easily extrapolated beyond modernism, indeed beyond the fine arts. It is an adventuresome work, and extremely stimulating."—Kathy O'Dell, author of Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s

About the Author, Simon Morley

Simon Morley is an artist, curator and lecturer. After studying at Oxford University he lived and trained as an artist in Italy, the United States, and finally at Goldsmiths College, London. He teaches at the Sotheby's
Institute of Art, London, and has exhibited his work internationally.