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Including words (and to some extent, numerical and/or alphabetical characters in general) on the picture plane usually disqualifies a work as art, effectively relegating it to artifice or illustration; in short, it's a tough rule of aesthetics to break successfully.
By large, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Warhol, Rauschenberg, and Johns, are some artists that could bring it off, and Jean-Michel Basquiat may be one of the last to do so with any real artistic significance. Although there have been and always will be wonderful folk artists that play art well with words and characters.
It's my feeling that the majority of fine art instructors discourage the practice, unless collage or the like is the specific focus, I suppose.
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Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959. Combine on canvas 81 3/4 x 70 x 24 inches.
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