Early in this century, Futurist and Dada artists developed brilliantly innovative uses of typography that blurred the boundaries between visual art and literature. In this text, Johanna Drucker shows how later art criticism has distorted our understanding of such works.

Acknowledgments Introduction: Background Parameters, and Terminology 1: Semiotics, Materiality and Typographic Practice 2: Visual and Literary Materiality in Modern Art 3: Experimental Typography as a Modern Art Practice Marinetti: Materiality and Sensation: Mechanical Synaesthesia Apollinaire: Figuring the Vernacular Zdanevich: Inachievable Essentialism and Zaum Typography Tzara: Advertising Language of Commodity Culture 4: Critical History: The Demise of Typographic Experiment Notes Bibliography Index