curator’s essay | ariadni A. liokatis
In the course of art history, visual artists have often turned to literature and text as a source of inspiration. Artists have incorporated language in their works from antiquity: from hieroglyphs enlightening paintings on Egyptian tombs; inscribed notations on funerary steles, vases and architecture in classical times, and Byzantine icons, where the written word elucidated and enhanced the understanding of visual art. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts, where word and image enhanced each other, became other striking examples of this relationship. Literary sources, from classical literature and religious history, and writers such as Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, and Milton, to name but a few, informed numerous paintings of the Renaissance, the Baroque era, to the 18th century— enduring well into the 19th century with pre-Raphaelite and Victorian narrative works relying upon literary references.
curator’s essay
The reactionary movement and spirit of experimentation that came to define the 20th century led artists to free themselves from academic and patronage constraints, and challenge institutional authority and established artistic conventions. Language came to play a prominent role as it opened up new possibilities for conceptual innovations, and its use became a characteristic aspect of visual art in the 20th and 21st centuries. George Braque’s 1911 introduction of stenciled letters and numerals in Cubist paintings, and the Cubists’ papiers collés helped radically