Inspiration On Text and Images

The Act of Letting a Person into Your Home

1983

oil on canvas

84 x 137 3/4 inches

Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha is a pop artist, who had contributed as a part of pop art movement. He was worked with painting, printing, drawing and photography. In his career of artist, most of his artwork, he was interested in typography and words. He started his very first word painting in 1961, because he was inspired by his commercial art.

The very first of Ruscha's word paintings were created as oil paintings on paper in Paris in 1961. People asked Ruscha what is your inspiration, he replied, "Well, they just occur to me; sometimes people say them and I write down and then I paint them. Sometimes I use a dictionary.” In the 1970s, Ruscha and a few other artist began using phrases in his works, and using sunset, night skies as background making a distinctive characteristic of the post-pop art generation.

The focal point of the artworks is the text, located in the middle of the artwork.The textile is slim and boxy, has a contrast of soft and stiff. The colour contrast of the background and text made the text even more obvious. Even though I’m not particularly sure what the artist is expressing through the text, but I think he has a good knowledge of typography, his knowledge allows him to achieve the combinations.

I am very inspired by his usage of colour and the combination of the text, in most of his collection, he has a well control of the space and the placement of the text. In his introduction it also explains that he was interested in typography, which is why he has a good knowledge of the font and the size.

Buick

1962 oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches

Untitled (I Am A Man)

Glenn Ligon

Glenn Ligon is a conceptual artist, who is greatly influenced by his African American identity and as a gay man. Ligon was interesting working with multiple media, such as painting, photography and digital media. "His paintings incorporate literary fragments, jokes, and evocative quotes from a selection of authors." In Ligon's first solo show "How it feels to be coloured me", he established his reputation for creating text based paintings. This artwork is one of his first example of using texts in painting.

Through this artwork, Ligon uses text to establishes his status as a gay man living United State.

As I look at this piece of artwork, I also think the font has a strong impact on the overall effect and meaning to the artwork. Ligon used boxy and straight typeface, which can imply the seriousness of his attitude, in some way it even shows me a positive vide to the whole atmosphere of this artwork. Ligon underlined “am” in the text, adding extra emphasis on who he truly am.I admire his clever usage on text to express defensiveness for stereotyping problems for racial and gays.

Citations:

http://www.edruscha.com/featured-works/

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=5086

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/GlennLigon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Ligon

#inspiration #textandimage