Art and Text Experiment

Language – or the written word – is the primary medium in literature and other text-based disciplines and media, but it can also serve as a primary media in art practice. Despite the fact that text had long been used in visual art of the past, conceptual artists from the 1960s onward emphasised the importance of text in expressing their concepts and ideas.

Many conceptual artworks from Yugoslavia in the late 1960s and early 1970s dealt with text, creating some of the masterpieces of Yugoslav art history. Working and experimenting with text took various forms: textual statements, visual poetry, art installations, body art, performances or interventions in open spaces or galleries.

Conceptual art practice from the Vojvodina region largely approached and employed text as an experiment, in which it constituted a kind of stream, an intersection between literature and visual art known in art history as 'Vojvodinian textualism'. Some examples of post-neoavantgarde art practice since the 1980s continued in this manner, often including multimedia in their approach. You can find some such examples in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina. 

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  Slavko Bogdanović

  Swamp / Močvara, 1970
  

  Typewritten text on paper

  28x(29x21cm)

  © Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, photo Marko Ercegović

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  Atilla Csernik

  Body Poetry / Tjelesna poezija, 1975
  

  Black and white photograph

  3x(51.5x35cm)

  © Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, photo Marko Ercegović

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  Slavko Matković

  Visual poetry in spatial setting / Vizualna poezija u slobodnom prostoru, 1971
  

  Black and white photograph, text on paper

  29 x 21cm, 64 x 43 cm

  © Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, photo Marko Ercegović

   

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  Tibor Bada (Bada Dada)

  Brown Dada, 1986
  

  Collage

  41.4 x 27.7 cm

  © Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, photo Marko Ercegović