How Art Came to Speak

Most people would undoubtedly classify the act of reading as more »intellectual« than directly looking at a painting. Some twentieth-century artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Liubov Popova, Ed Ruscha, and John Cage, embraced this very process of discernment-translating language into a pictorial form that demands to be read. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, is highlighting just such collection items in the exhibition Word as Image, which opens August 11. They underscore the importance of legibility in the creation of a text and, more importantly, in its exploration. Both prominent and lesser-known positions from movements such as Cubism, Pop Art, and Conceptual Art explore the boundaries between image and language.

The exhibition unravels the history of the interdisciplinary approach: At the beginning of the last century, for example, the avant-garde first claimed words and letters as a means of expression for art - mixing the images to be read with the real world. Examples include Picasso's drypoint etching Still Life with Bottle of Marc (Nature morte à la bouteille de marc, 1911) and Popova's painting The Traveler (1915), both of which contain fragmented text. This was followed by the Pop Art and Conceptual Art styles that were vibrant in experimental New York at the time. These artists responded critically to their surroundings by reinventing visual forms or painting over billboards with graffiti. At the time, luminaries like Andy Warhol used the language as an artistic inside joke. His famous Campbell's Soup series (Museum Edition: 1968), which merged art and advertising by using graphic mass production, is a testament to this.

The exhibition Word as Image encourages visitors to think about how they constantly »read the image« outside of museum spaces. Through January 8, 2024, they will have the opportunity to look at language and image in a new way and to perceive words as an essential part of visual culture.