A fascinating overview of how contemporary artists incorporate text and language into work that speaks to the most pressing issues of the 21st century. In this new volume celebrated artist and curator Michael Petry, addresses media and marketplace concerns about the state of language and the value of books in the digital age. As words find new modes of transmission in contemporary society, text becomes information, and information strives to become free, Petry asks, what value can text hold in the sphere of visual art? Looking at the work of a broad range of artists including Bruce Nauman, Julien Breton, Jeremy Deller, Takashi Murakami, Tracey Emin, Christian Boltanski, and more, The Word is Art explores this and related questions and demonstrates how words remain critical, powerful, and central to art practice. Presenting major areas where the word has dominated artistic practice, this book takes us on a fascinating and richly illustrated global tour of diverse contemporary art forms.

The artists’ books made in Russia between 1910 and 1915 are like no others. Unique in their fusion of the verbal, visual, and sonic, these books are meant to be read, looked at, and listened to. Painters and poets—including Natalia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Mayakovsky— collaborated to fabricate hand-lithographed books, for which they invented a new language called zaum (a neologism meaning “beyond the mind”), which was distinctive in its emphasis on “sound as such” and its rejection of definite logical meaning. At the heart of this volume are close analyses of two of the most significant and experimental futurist books: Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards) and Vzorval’ (Explodity). In addition, Nancy Perloff examines the profound differences between the Russian avant-garde and Western art movements, including futurism, and she uncovers a wide-ranging legacy in the midcentury global movement of sound and concrete poetry (the Brazilian Noigandres group, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Henri Chopin), contemporary Western conceptual art, and the artist’s book. Sound recordings of zaum poems featured in the book are available at www.getty.edu.

CD-ROM contains the digitized images found in the book.

A highly illustrated survey of the use of words (or language) in art. Art, Word and Image asks what it means when a painting is 'invaded' by language - how do the two forms converse and combine, and what messages are intended for the viewer?

"It sounds like a simple thing, to say what you see," Mark Doty begins. "But try to find words for the shades of a mottled sassafras leaf, or the reflectivity of a bay on an August morning, or the very beginnings of desire stirring in the gaze of someone looking right into your eyes . . ." Doty finds refuge in the sensory experience found in poems by Blake, Whitman, Bishop, and others. The Art of Description is an invaluable book by one of America's most revered writers and teachers.

"America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek) trains his satirical eye on Modern Art in this "masterpiece" (The Washington Post) Wolfe's style has never been more dazzling, his wit never more keen. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. The Painted Word is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).

The medieval liturgy was in many ways a performance in which the worshipper was transformed into both actor and audience--an act of intense involvement steeped in spoken words, music, and images alike. Of all these elements, art was arguably paramount: it transformed the physical setting of this ritual, shaped the medieval sense of belief, and guided the faithful toward a fuller comprehension of the word. The complex and always evolving relationship between the liturgy and the wide range of art that it influenced is the subject of the thirteen scholars who present their recent work in this richly illustrated volume. The authors' approaches are as varied as the objects they examine, which range from sumptuous codexes, altarpieces, metal shrines, ivories, and the expansive stained-glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle to more humble artifacts such as baptismal fonts, choir stalls, and drinking horns. One of the many conclusions that emerge from these essays is that "liturgical art" was far from being a rigidly controlled or formulaic genre. Throughout the Middle Ages it could--and did--respond readily and in nuanced detail to the changing expectations of the devout, the taste and demands of individuals, and even the lingering presence of secular and pagan objects. The contributors are Adelaide Bennett, Elaine C. Block, Lisa Victoria Ciresi, Michael Curschmann, William J. Diebold, Julian Gardner, Alyce A. Jordan, Peter Lasko, John Lowden, Carol Neuman de Vegvar, Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens, Elizabeth C. Teviotdale, and Beth Williamson.