Art, Word and Image: 2,000 Years of Visual/Textual Interaction [Paperback]

What does it mean to say that a painting has been “invaded” by language?Art, Word and Imageanswers this question by exploring how visual images and writing can work in dialogue in an artwork. Whether the picture frame is encroached upon by doodlings, as with Adolf Wolfli’s seemingly irrational scribbles, or a plea to spirituality is blazoned across a vast canvas, as in the moving images of Colin McCahon, we can be sure that words here have a special meaning, one beyond everyday communication.

 

Art, Word and Image, one of the first books to examine the use of language in art, is constructed around three major chronological essays by renowned scholars John Dixon Hunt, David Lomas, and Michael Corris. Their essays chart the use and significance of words in art—from Classical Greece through the Middle Ages and Renaissance to modern digital media.

 

John Dixon Huntis emeritus professor of the history and theory of landscape at the University of Pennsylvania. He is editor of the journalWord and Imageand the author ofNature Over Again: The Garden Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay. MichaelCorrisis professor of fine art at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author ofAd Reinhardt.David Lomasis reader in art history at the University of Manchester. He is the author ofThe Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity.

Preface by Michael R. Leaman
Introduction by John Dixon Hunt

I  The Fabric and the Dance: Word and Image to 1900
         John Dixon Hunt

  1  Blake's Illuminated Word
          Joseph Viscomi

II  'New in art, they are already soaked in humanity:' Word and Image 1900-1945
          David Lomas