Words and Images: A Persistent Paradox

Abstract

One of the key developments in American art of the past thirty years is the frequent use of words in conjunction with visual images. This combination of verbal and visual elements is evident in a broad range of artistic approaches of the period: Pop Art and the related Photo-Realism, Conceptual Art and various documentary or information modes, the personalized imagery and language of California Funk and Chicago Imagism, and finally, the various narrative and personally expressive forms leading up to today's Neo-Expressionist and “appropriation” art. The forms in which words and language fragments are presented in visual formats are as various as the types of art, but they are united by the fact that the words serve to increase the image's potential for meaning. Whether the words underline and reinforce the image, essentially become the image, or contradict the image to achieve a telling ambiguity, the combination of the visual image with the visual sign system we know as language always creates a compelli...