Over the last decade text has forced its way into visual art with a frequency not seen since medieval allegorical paintings. The faith contemporary artists put in words is an odd development in an age of troubling illiteracy. For these artists, most of them politically inclined, text fills the gaps on what viewers might have missed from the visuals alone, reducing art to its most literal meaning. For those who use words to obfuscate, like the legions of artists who fill canvases with non sequiturs, written language becomes a mysterious symbol, like Masonic signs to the uninitiated. At its worst, the use of text brutalizes both the viewer and the artist, since it allows neither to complete, or completely experience, the work of art at hand. It is the artist saying either he is too inept to communicate or the viewer is too dumb to understand. From either point of view, words on a canvas are a desperate act.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Snodgrass hopes the fund-raiser will ensure the continued publication of the journal, now that public support for the arts is shrinking. Another pioneering little magazine, Margaret Anderson’s Little Review, eventually left the city for want of local support. Performance artist Brigid Murphy, star of Milly’s Orchid Show, will conduct the auction.
