ART REVIEW : IMAGE PLUS WORDS MAKE A MESSAGE

In the beginning, there was the image. With Cubism came the word, often printed on bits of newspaper that were collaged to still lifes. Language proliferated in the ironies of Dada, Surrealism and Pop, and by the time Conceptualism hit its stride, printed text and ideas enjoyed such a widespread cachet that they threatened to render pictures extinct.

But now that painting has returned to the foreground of contemporary art, the word has waned. Not to the background but to a provocative state of assimilation, reflected in “Verbally Charged Images,” an exhibition at Cal State San Bernardino through May 10.

This latest merger of writing and pictures isn’t new. Exhibited works were made from 1967 to 1983, and the show itself, organized by Independent Curators of New York, began its tour about a year ago. The West Coast arrival of “Verbally Charged Images” is a case of better late than never, however, because the exhibition is a cohesive, comprehensible little package that makes its point wisely in about 50 well-selected artworks.

Even the most familiar pieces are worth reconsidering in present context. Jasper Johns’ concept of “The Critic Sees”--seen here in an embossed print of eyeglasses, with mouth printed across the lenses--has been done in various media and widely shown, but exposure hasn’t diluted its witty impact. Without its title, the piece is a generalized criticism of all people who see with their mouths and, by implication, talk before they think. The glasses are embedded in a brick; no head supports them and no eyes peer through their frames. With its name, “The Critic Sees” aims directly at the note-scribbling folks who disseminate their analyses by means of art talk or written reviews.

Johns’ 1967 print is among the smallest, most unassuming pieces in the show, but it sets a humorous tone for the rest. As the oldest, it also provides a historical link to Pop and earlier attempts to detonate images with words.

In selecting 15 artists for the show, guest curator Nina Felshin chose representatives from both coasts. Except for Luis Camnitzer’s brick-and-sand “Path” and Vernon Fisher’s three-part remembrance of Jackson Pollock urinating in Peggy Guggenheim’s fireplace, she concentrated on small, portable photographic or graphic work. Within the small enclave of visual verbalists selected for the show are sensibilities based on everything from social criticism to fantasy and droll wit.

The “charge” of language is a constant force, but it can emanate from the mere tweak of a title or from the weight of ponderous text. William Wegman, for example, is at the top of his conceptual form in “Crow,” a photo of a perched parrot whose shadow is that of another bird. Appearing infinitely more serious, Douglas Huebler pits “literal information” (flat planes or stripes of vivid color) against “referential information” (great blocks of explanatory text) within large, framed works. His pretensions look like big guns only if you don’t read the text; they are pressed into service as a means of poking fun at vaunted theories and styles.

Like Huebler, Anne Turyn strikes a near-equal balance between art and words. In a series of color photographs, pairing pictures of man-made objects with boldly penned letters on lined pads, she assumes the naively supercilious stance of a young American writing to a foreign pen pal. “We don’t just grow food. We manufacture it,” one letter brags, while a row of cellophane-wrapped suckers parades above. “Here in America, we are a nation of consumers” blares another missive, topped by an army of gaudy plastic toys.

Catchy pictures accompanied by such declarations as “We Americans have plenty of education,” “Here in America, we love machines” and, most pointedly, “We love to talk” clank along like cars on a colorful toy train, leaving viewers to ponder the tortuous line between infantile exuberance and noxious superiority.

Karen Shaw’s social comment takes a subtler turn. She uses lowly cash-register receipts as a springboard to little poetic abstractions through a system of equating numbers to letters of the alphabet. Barbara Kruger’s familiar photos of collaged pictures and words clipped from magazines lend an ominous edge to a generally lighthearted show, yet even her work has its comic side. Her grotesque close-up of an open mouth--tagged with the words, “You are a captive audience”--changes from an image of torture to one of necessary health care, once you realize that the subject is in a dentist’s chair.

Marcia Resnick’s narratives evoke the embarrassment and poignancy of youth in her “Re-visions” series of black-and-white photos. “She was repeatedly told to stop looking at her feet while in the company of adults” labels an image of a girl’s pigeon-toed, white-stockinged legs. The girl’s skinny limbs are echoed by a picture of flamingos, whose unlikely proportions give them a gangly sort of grace. The visual relationship between the two sets of legs is amusing enough to stand alone, but the accompanying sentence loads the picture with the aura of childhood memories and the pain of growing up inside a body that seems out of control.

Among other perpetually intriguing talents on view, Alexis Smith lifts quotes from Raymond Chandler novels and gives them new life by attaching them to tiny images, set off as precious objects. You read, “She writhed under the piercing scrutiny of his mocking stare” as you look at a jewel-like Christ, inset in a red velvet mat. “His icy eyes cut into her and froze her heart” accompanies a little picture of a cartoon hero framed in silver lame. Smith’s genius for recycling pulp novels and throwaway bric-a-brac is well known, but it rings so true here that it seems absolutely fresh.

Cal State San Bernardino’s gallery is open Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.