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Writing as image: calligraphy, illuminated letters, shaped poems, word paintings and slogans, where letterforms carry meaning.
1 work · 10 related artists
About
Letters have been made into images wherever writing is honoured. The Chi-Rho page of the Book of Kells (c. 800) swells the first letters of Christ's name into a field of spirals and knotwork. In China calligraphy has long ranked among the highest arts, and Wang Xizhi's Preface to the Orchid Pavilion (353) has been copied and studied for well over a thousand years. In Iran, Mohammad Ehsai has turned the flowing lines of Persian script into large, rhythmic abstract paintings.
Modern artists in the West rediscovered words as form. Guillaume Apollinaire shaped poems into falling rain and towers in Calligrammes (1918), and Ed Ruscha painted single words such as OOF (1962) in bold letters on plain grounds. Robert Indiana's stacked LOVE, with its tilted O, spread from a 1960s design onto prints, sculptures and a postage stamp. Barbara Kruger sets blunt slogans in white on red over found photographs.
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