Abstract

In the thesis Històries de paraula plàstica, we intend to study the use of the written and storytelling languages in the field of visual arts. In this sense, the inclusion of the verbal register in the art discourse marked a turning point for the first avant-gardes and, since then, words have become a resource for the current plastic processes of creation.  In this way, and taking as a starting point a historical revision of the interweaving between language and the art object, we will discover how the advertising poster triggered off this relationship. We would like to point out that, throughout the essay, we will quote a number of artists who develop a conception of art as a means of communication, leaving aside the purely objectual and formalist discourse. 
We will review how the typography, media, handwriting or the composition and layout of text have influenced the creative possibilities. We will finish this section with a study of two artists who use writing in their works: Robert Frank and Shirin Neshat, continuing with a group of creators who take advantage of advertising techniques to send messages, meaningful sentences designed for public spaces such as those by Guerrilla Girls, Barbara Kruger or Jenny Holzer. These are artists who, by means of strategies taken from the advertising world, mass-culture, poster design, etc., have used language as a mediation tool, so as to transform art into a social sign and question the established values of ethic and sexual identity or cultural diversity.
Little by little, words have been stretching their meaning and turning into longer sentences. This is the reason why we will study reading as a vehicle for comprehension, and text as a facilitating element for the understanding and enjoyment of a work.
The path we have followed makes it necessary to introduce the second element which we think will help to understand the stories: images. Nan Goldin and Richard Billingham will illustrate this section where narrative images play a leading role. Obviously, being text and image, individually, two elements we use to promote the communication between work and audience, it was convenient to analyse them when they occur together, studying this combination of photographies and words through the works of the artists Rogelio López Cuenca, Hamish Fulton or Lorna Simpson.
Also, a brief revision of the history of titles shows us that they have been narrators or anticipators of the narration, offering sometimes key elements that make the reading easier.
Little by little we get closer to the key point of our study, which looks for a mechanism that improves the understanding of artworks in the act of telling stories. 
How to tell a story, which structures and characters will be taken into account in the narration. Clarifying the meaning of the stories, and which artists mostly follow this strategy will be the way of closing this chapter before going on to the last one, where we will use different forms of narrating or building stories to get a wider perspective of this approach mechanism.
In this way, and in parallel with the study of an art that uses the word as a protest weapon, other creators, more influenced by its narrative power, have made use of the linguistic resources to produce ambiguous interpretations, to recreate a fictitious world about real life:  Sophie Calle and Gillian Wearing or, on the other hand, to instil veracity into the stories: Rosângela Rennò, Donna Ferrato, Alfredo Jaar and Hans Haacke. Finally, we would like to say that throughout this thesis we have tried to study some creative practices with the purpose of overcoming the strictly artistic act, with the aim to elaborate and transmit stories, either imaginary or real, through the persuasive power of word.