LETTERS, SIGNS & SYMBOLS
November 10 - January 25, 2002

While communication and allegory lie at the heart of the visual arts, words and signs have held a broad role in 20th century artistic practices. The insertion of letters, signs, and symbols has become particularly prevalent in art made since 1960, and these forms have evolved over that time into a genre of their own. The idea of communication has become a conversation, symbols now signify other symbols, and in some instances, language itself has become the subject of the artist.

With paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by more than 30 artists, this exhibition explores some of the ways contemporary artists have physically adopted language to specific visual ends. In the Renaissance, artists drew their symbology from the Bible and Classical mythology. Moving beyond these conventional references, contemporary artists have chosen various forms of our everyday language and transformed them into new symbols that have the dualistic power to be either universal or personal. Artists of today have adopted words, typography, common objects, cartoon figures, and advertisement graphics to "speak" to us.

Josef Albers and Kurt Schwitters are two earlier practitioners of this visual alchemy, replacing the brushstroke with typography and graphic design. Philip Guston uses a national symbol of hate, the white-hooded member of the Klu Klux Klan, to possibly stand as a self-portrait, showing the artist separated from society, as an outlaw so to speak. Another kind of example is Jasper Johns. In Periscope I, the handprint becomes a "device" showing the limits of reaching into ones own creativity, of the passage of time, and perhaps desperation. Johns also uses flags and numbers to confuse and collide subjectivity, objectivity, and status. Conversely, Matt Mullican is an artist who seeks to create an entirely new visual language. Through his choices of color and his repetition of invented symbolic imagery, Mullican speaks through sign. Bruce Nauman takes the words we use and dissects them, showing us how thoughtless, and violent, language can be.