Art versus Words => Art hearts Words. Huh.

So... I'm taking a writing class right now. It's on how to write certain kinds of feature stories, but the textbook had a nice opening quotation that I think applies to art crit as well:

Words are but the images of matter;
and except they have life of reason and invention,
to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a picture.
—Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book I, IV.3

Increasingly, I think of words as something existing in opposition to the wordless art object, or the art object that is meant to go "beyond words". (Conceptual/post-conceptualist art being the exception that sometimes proves the rule.) But this quotation ties them back together again. Huh. Thanks The Bigger Picture: Elements of Feature Writing! And thanks Francis-Bacon-not-the-painter!

Image from Keith Becker

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