Word art or text art [1] is a form of art that includes text, forming words or phrases, as its main component; it is a combination of language and visual imagery. [2]
There are two main types of word art: [2]
The style has been used since the 1950s by artists classified as postmodern, partly as a reaction to abstract art of the time. Word art has been used in painting, sculpture, lithography, screen-printing and projection mapping, and applied to T-shirts and other practical items. [2] Artists often use words from sources such as advertising, political slogans and graphic design, and use them for various effects from serious to comical. [3]
Other artists whose work is known for using text include Jasper Johns, Robert Indiana, Shepard Fairey, [2] Mel Bochner, Kay Rosen, Paul Kuniholm, Lawrence Weiner, Ed Ruscha and the collective Guerrilla Girls, whose work conveys political messages in the tradition of protest art. [4] Australian artists include Abdul Abdullah, Kate Just, Anastasia Klose, Sue Kneebone, [3] and Vernon Ah Kee. [5]
A 2018 exhibition held simultaneously at Subliminal Projects (which was co-founded by Fairey) in Los Angeles and Faction Art Projects in New York featured the word art of Holzer, Ruscha, Guerrilla Girls and Betty Tompkins as well as younger artists like Ramsey Dau and Scott Albrecht. [1]
Also in 2018, an exhibition called Word in the Hugo Mitchell Gallery in Adelaide, South Australia, featured the work of Just, Abdullah, Klose, Kneebone, Alice Lang, Richard Lewer, Sera Waters, and many others. [3]
Graffiti is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan, political, commercial, religious, or other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines a slogan as "a short and striking or memorable phrase used in advertising". A slogan usually has the attributes of being memorable, very concise and appealing to the audience.
Stencilling produces an image or pattern on a surface by applying pigment to a surface through an intermediate object, with designed holes in the intermediate object. The holes allow the pigment to reach only some parts of the surface creating the design. The stencil is both the resulting image or pattern and the intermediate object; the context in which stencil is used makes clear which meaning is intended. In practice, the (object) stencil is usually a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material.
Frank Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. In 1989, he designed the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
Andre the Giant Has a Posse is a street art campaign based on a design by Shepard Fairey created in 1989 while Shepard attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. Distributed by the skater community and graffiti artists, the stickers featuring an image of André the Giant began showing up in many cities across the United States. At the time, Fairey declared the campaign to be "an experiment in phenomenology". Over time, the artwork has been reused in a number of ways and has become worldwide. Fairey also altered the work stylistically and semantically into OBEY Giant.
Jenny Holzer is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertising billboards, projections on buildings and other structures, and illuminated electronic displays.
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He is also noted for creating several artist's books. Ruscha lives and works in Culver City, California.
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.
Anamorphosis is a distorted projection that requires the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices, or both to view a recognizable image. It is used in painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special effects. The word is derived from the Greek prefix ana-, meaning "back" or "again", and the word morphe, meaning "shape" or "form". Extreme anamorphosis has been used by artists to disguise caricatures, erotic and scatological scenes, and other furtive images from a casual spectator, while revealing an undistorted image to the knowledgeable viewer.
Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art.
Richard Bell is an Aboriginal Australian artist and political activist. He is one of the founders of proppaNOW, a Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective.
Campbelltown Arts Centre is a multidisciplinary contemporary arts centre located in Campbelltown, New South Wales, south west of Sydney, Australia. It is a cultural facility of Campbelltown City Council, assisted by other government funding and private sponsorships.
The Barack Obama "Hope" poster is an image of US president Barack Obama designed by American artist Shepard Fairey. The image was widely described as iconic and came to represent Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. It is a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, beige and blue, with the word "progress", "hope", or "change" below.
proppaNOW is an arts collective for Indigenous Australian artists in Queensland. Aiming to counter cultural stereotypes and give a voice to urban artists, the collective has mounted several exhibitions around the country. The collective was founded by Richard Bell, Jennifer Herd and Vernon Ah Kee in 2003 and formalised in 2004.
Tony Albert is a contemporary Australian artist working in a wide range of mediums including painting, photography and mixed media. His work engages with political, historical and cultural Aboriginal and Australian history, and his fascination with kitsch “Aboriginalia".
Blenheim Art Foundation (BAF) is a multi-award-winning non-profit organisation that presents large-scale contemporary art exhibitions at Blenheim Palace.
Jenny Holzer’s Truisms (1977–1979) are some of her best-known works. The nearly 300 aphorisms and slogans utilize a series of modern clichés or commonly held truths.
Sue Kneebone is an Adelaide-based artist and arts educator who lectures at Adelaide Central School of Art.
Vernon Ah Kee is a contemporary Australian artist, political activist and founding member of ProppaNOW. Based primarily in Brisbane, Queensland, Ah Kee is an Aboriginal Australian man with ties to the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidinji and Gugu Yimithirr peoples in Queensland. His art practice typically focuses on his Aboriginal Australian identity and place within a modern Australian framework, and is concerned with themes of skin, skin colour, race, privilege and racism. Ah Kee has exhibited his art at numerous galleries across Australia, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and has also exhibited internationally, most notably representing Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale and the 2015 Istanbul Biennial.
Chocolate Room is an installation artwork by American artist Edward Ruscha. It consists of a room with walls covered in chocolate screen-printed on sheets of paper. It was first exhibited at the 35th Venice Biennial in 1970, where over the course of the exhibit the chocolate slowly melted, and had anti-war slogans and symbols carved into its sheets. It was closed after attracting large amounts of ants. Since 1995, it has been exhibited more than eight times, and was purchased by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2003 for an estimated US$1.5 million. The smell of the chocolate is a key element of the work.