Collecting 101

Language and art have been bonded for centuries – from the symbolic visual cues of Renaissance art to the cryptic allusions to virtue and vice embedded in paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.

Words only became central features of visual art in the early 20th century. When French Surrealist René Magritte wrote Ceci n’est pas une pipe under an image of a pipe, words found a new genre – text was not used to explain, but to question.

As art in the mid-20th century slipped into abstraction, so too did words, and many artists began spinning this basic communication tool into their raw material. As the sophistication of advertising matured, artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were on hand, armed with words to challenge, and channel, this new age of consumerism.

For some artists, text was used in the conception of works, as instructions or thought processes, which became as much a part of the art as the final work. For others, words are treated as objects: celebrated for their form, but devoid of meaning.

In many cases, words are vehicles for self-confession, cultural or social critique, shock factor or political expression. In the case of American artist Barbara Kruger, feminism, consumerism and language co-habit to provocative effect. Her confrontational work, often comprising large-scale photographs, is overlaid with boldly declarative captions. Kruger has forged her own subversive brand, critiquing desire, mass media and prescribed gender roles.

For Ed Ruscha typography and graphic simplicity fuse with pithy phrases often deriving from colloquial or commercial sources. These cryptic word combinations draw on Pop Art culture clichés, advertising and the noise of everyday life.

As art consumption increasingly shifts from gallery walls to screens, the immediacy of text-based work is enjoying a surge of market interest says Bonhams Senior Specialist Clemence Tasiaux about the works. The Post-War & Contemporary Art department highlights 5 trailblazers using language in their art, illustrated with works coming up for sale on 22 October 2020.

1.

Banksy

For Banksy, the writing is not only on the wall but also at the core of his work. Since the 1990s, the anonymous British artist has blurred the line between art and vandalism. His work employs dark humour and political activism in street-based images, prints and canvases through his signature stencilling technique. Banksy also makes use of subversive epigrams as political commentaries, particular anti-war, and anti-poverty sentiments.

Oh My God (2006) epitomises Banksy’s deft use of text. Painted using emulsion and stencil on found metal, a female figure stares vacantly out from the surface, accompanied by the line, Oh my God, that’s so cute the way you just draw on stuff and think about yourself all the time. The piece, branded with Banksy’s legendary tag, was exhibited in the artist’s show, Barely Legal held in an industrial warehouse in Los Angeles in 2006.

Banksy is known for articulately incorporating existing environments into his work. No Trespassing (2010), on a wall in San Francisco sees a Native American Indian sitting under a street sign that reads No Trespassing.

Banksy’s ever radical and unpredictable approach sees his work continue to enjoy a market crescendo, particularly following his 2018 coup at auction, where his Girl With Balloon self-shredded in front of bemused onlookers.

2. Anselm Kiefer

German artist Anselm Kiefer has a long and complex relationship with the written word. This tension began in adolescence when he had to choose between a career as a writer or artist. He pursued the latter, but literature remains firmly ingrained in his practice.

Sources of inspiration derive from the Old and New Testaments, Kabbalah mysticism and Norse mythology. Most notably, he draws on fragments of history and culture from his native country: art history, myth, philosophy and poetry.

Kiefer has never been afraid to dissect the complex history of Germany, often alluding to the verbal and visual propaganda of the Third Reich, as well as the Holocaust and National Socialism. These layers of history are mirrored in the layering of materials like broken glass, organic matter and dense impasto.

Kiefer also demonstrates his deep affinity with books, which are recurring motifs in his sculptural work. He writes prolifically in his journals, which offer insight into his thought processes, musings, and context for his visual output.

Many works attest to this symbiotic relationship between painting and language. He frequently imposes excerpts from novels, poems, nationalist slogans and names of influential figures onto the surface of paintings, handwritten in a gestural scrawl. These take the form of long passages of text, or single words or numbers, which appear to annotate specific elements in the work as seen in his mixed media work, Sefiroth (2002).

3. Christo

Christo, and his partner in life and art Jeanne-Claude, spent an entire career wrapping and taking over large-scale monuments and public spaces. It’s no surprise that their relentlessly ambitious installations require years, and sometimes decades, of preparatory work.

The pair famously declined grants, scholarships, donations or public money, and instead funded projects through the sale of architectural sketches and written annotations for their installations. Christo’s technical solutions are well documented, and are works of art in their own right – language frames and explains the technical challenges that go into making his monumental installations.

For Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the priority wasn’t meaning, but public enjoyment: art for art’s sake. Their Store Fronts series marked a switch from object-based work to environmental intervention. Created in the 1960s, the duo would construct illusive facades on roadside buildings prompting suspense and public intrigue.

Other notable projects include Valley Curtain (1972), in Colorado, a striking curtain of orange fabric strung between two mountains and Mastaba (2018) on London’s Serpentine. Among their many wrapped monuments was The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1985). Bonhams sold an intricate preparatory drawing for the ambitious project in 2020 for £206,312.

Though ephemeral, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work is everlasting in the public imagination. Their meticulous planning through drawings and written documentation establish a sense of permanence and their works continue to achieve impressive results at auction.

4. Mario Schifano

Deemed one of the most prominent members of Italian Postmodernism, Mario Schifano was a radical experimenter and one of the few Europeans to leave a mark on the Pop Art tradition.

He is best known for collage work, which samples imagery from kitsch pop culture, advertising and ubiquitous brand logos or names like Coca-Cola and Esso. In the seminal New Realists show at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York in 1962, Schifano exhibited alongside Pop Art giants such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

In the 1960s, his work took a political turn and he began referencing the global wave of political protests through paint, films and photograms. His Compagni, compagni series (1968) sees spray-painted silhouettes of protesters carrying hammers and sickles, referencing communist party symbolism. In 2016, Bonhams sold a prime example in the series for £50,000.

This new interest in social change saw the artist incorporate political slogans in his work, a commentary on the repetition and mass dissemination of political mantra.

Schifano defied classification and often blended stencilled forms, coloured Perspex, glued wrapping paper, and block-like painted elements overlaid with fragmented text. As with other Italian post-war artists including Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, Schifano’s continues to enjoy exceptionally strong results and broke the £1M mark for the first time in 2019.

5. Mel Bochner

For American conceptual artist Mel Bochner, words are peeled back and deconstructed to their raw form.

In the 1960s, Bochner found the overbearing Abstract Expressionist movement in the US restricting and began to forge a new path. In his early career, he was one of the proponents of photographic documentation, and also experimented with temporary and performance works. But Bochner found his creative rhythm in words, making works that continue to resonate with collectors.

He’s best known for his Thesaurus paintings, which comprise lists of synonyms rendered in a vibrant rainbow-like palette. Other text-based works feature extensive repetition of single words in capital letters. His BLAH BLAH BLAH paintings epitomise his investigations into the cerebral and pictorial associations of words. With a textured paint surface and inventive use of colour, the emphasis is placed on the letters themselves, as opposed to the significance of words. He explores how we assign emotions to objects that are devoid of meaning and throws the entire perception of language into question.

Bochner’s commitment to semiotic representation and ability to dissect and eliminate the very essence of communication gives his work a distinctly contemporary edge, which feels more pertinent today than ever.

For more from our Post-War & Contemporary Art team, follow @bonhamscontemporary on Instagram.