Art=Text=Art: Private languages/Public Systems

ART=TEXT=ART: PRIVATE LANGUAGES / PUBLIC SYSTEMS explores the advent of language in the visual arts in post-war America and the simultaneous emergence of concrete poetry. These practices embraced language’s ability to carry multiple, even contradictory meanings, thus creating a space for individual acts of anti-conformist thought. Through words in art, flirtations with ideas unauthorized by then-dominant socio-political realities were allowed expression, especially among an early generation of LGBTQ artists.