Letters of intent: seven artists who use text in their work

‘Words-in-Freedom!’ wrote F.T. Marinetti, the Italian philosopher, poet and proselytiser in his 1909 Futurist Manifesto. Among the many radical demands expounded by that magniloquent document was a typographical revolution. The Futurists wanted to emancipate language from the constraints of sentence structure, syntax and grammar and let it run free, like ball bearings ricocheting across a bagatelle board. Through wordplay, multiple fonts, scale and repeated letters — TUMB, TUUUMB, TUUUUM — the Futurists broke down the barricades between art and written language.

The idea was carried forward by Guillaume Apollinaire, pioneer of Concrete poetry, who famously invented calligrammes, or ‘word pictures’, that subverted the harmony of the page. He inspired his friend Picasso to incorporate everyday words into his Cubist paintings: the daily newspaper or the maker’s mark on a bottle of spirits, for example. Meanwhile, the artist Sonia Delaunay and the poet Blaise Cendrars set out to describe a conversation in colour and shape in their 1913 graphic masterpiece La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France.

Since then, many artists have used text to explore modes of communication and the relationship between words and images. The revolutionary Dadaists attacked pictorial conventions through collage, cutting out words and liberating them from a coherent message. In the 1960s, a group of conceptual mavericks in America used text to question the authorship of a work of art. Artists such as John Baldessari wrote out instructions for participants to make the work for him, while Carl Andre typed out poems, arranging the words to form bold patterns on the page, almost like little pieces of sculpture.

To mark the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale on 6 March 2025 at Christie’s in London, we present seven artists who have made art speak.

On Kawara, Dec. 24, 2006

On Kawara started making his ‘date’ paintings in the 1960s and took the decision to follow the typographic conventions of whatever country he was in. If he found himself in the US, the date would begin with the month, whereas if he was in Europe, it started with the day. These were just a few of the many rules the Japanese conceptual artist set for himself, which determined the size of the canvas, the width of the letters, the shade of black and the number of layers of paint used. An enigmatic figure at the best of times, On Kawara used to send telegrams to his friends with the words, ‘I am still alive’. Today, these simple, yet strangely unsettling, date paintings are the only real record we have of his existence. This example has a double significance, the date shown being both Christmas Eve and the artist’s 74th birthday.

Cy Twombly, Untitled (Rome), 1962

The American artist Cy Twombly often quoted from Homer or Virgil on his paintings, the words skittering across the image with a frenetic energy. Here, the word ‘CAIRO’ is visible, as is the name of the artist’s son, Alessandro. A painter of passion with a lyrical sensibility, Twombly left America for the Mediterranean in the late 1950s, so that he might absorb Europe’s art history. He settled in Italy, where he remained for the rest of his life. His paintings are like epic classical poems, vast and complex, featuring quick-tempered marks and images carried on a current of rising italics.

Alighiero Boetti, Leaving the certain for the uncertain, 1987

A roving star of the Arte Povera movement, the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti delighted in constructing games and installations that were as eccentric and unfathomable as a light bulb that only shines for 11 seconds each year. He used text in his art in a similarly perverse way, devising incomprehensible codes and symbols in ballpoint pen and writing manifestos that took the form of the alphabet. In the 1970s, he spent time in Afghanistan, where he commissioned embroiderers to sew cryptic messages in Farsi into colourful textile artworks.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Only the unborn have your right to life), 1986

Barbara Kruger’s terse assessments of contemporary society are written in large capitals and splayed across photographic images. For most of her career, the American artist has only used the typeface Futura Oblique and the colours black, white and red; but that has changed in recent years, as greens, yellows, blues and oranges have crept into her palette. This artwork features an image from Steven Spielberg’s movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, on which she has overlaid the words ‘Only the unborn have your right to life’, which foreshadows her later protest picture, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), designed for the Women’s March on Washington in 1989.

Lawrence Weiner, A SPECIFIC SPACE FILLED WITH PARTICLES OF A SORT AT A SPECIFIC TIME, 2006

The conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner had a unique ability to make art speak. The New Yorker began using text in the late 1960s, when he realised that describing a work of art was just as good as making one. This resulted in enigmatic phrases and poetic fragments written on gallery walls, street corners and ephemera such as beer mats, in his trademark typeface, Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed. Weiner was interested in making art that was defiantly anti-commercial: he liked that that the ownership of the text was shared by anyone who chose to look at it.

Jenny Holzer, Blue Corner: Lustmord, Erlauf, Arno, Blue, Oh, 2002

In a career that spans five decades, the American artist Jenny Holzer has used her art to speak truth to power, writing provocative statements on the sides of buses, on stone benches, till receipts and even a re-programmed LED advertising board in New York’s Times Square. Her text art has highlighted issues surrounding women’s rights, the AIDS crisis and gun crime in America. She began working with electronic signs in the 1990s, saying that it was their capacity to move content that attracted her: ‘I love that, because motion is much like the spoken word: you can emphasise phrases; you can roll and pause, the kinetic equivalent to inflection.’ The work above uses five texts from different phases of her career: Lustmord, 1993; Erlauf, 1995; Arno, 1996; Blue, 1999; and Oh, 2001.

Tracey Emin, This Is Another Place, 2007

Tracey Emin’s neon signs often articulate her deepest emotions. She began using the medium in the early 2000s to convey her thoughts and fears, and sometimes — in works such as Never Again! — her regrets the morning after. It is a seductive medium, made all the more so by the artist’s confessional tone. This Is Another Place (2007) is constructed in Emin’s trademark slanted handwriting, the thin neon tubes glowing with the hope of better days. The phrase recalls the title of her 2002 exhibition at Modern Art Oxford, which featured a number of her neon wall hangings.

The Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale takes place on 6 March 2025 at Christie’s in London, with Post-War and Contemporary Art Online open for bidding until 12 March. Find out more about the preview exhibition and sales