E-Book, Englisch, Band 145, 260 Seiten
Impressionist Figure Paintings in Contemporary Anglophone Art Fiction
E-Book, Englisch, Band 145, 260 Seiten
Reihe: Schweizer Anglistische Arbeiten (SAA)
ISBN: 978-3-7720-0213-7
Verlag: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Introduction
Intermediality: Narrative Texts and Visual Arts
2.1. Verbal and Visual Overstepping of Boundaries
2.1.1. Evolution of the Definition of Ekphrasis
2.1.2. The Diversity of Ekphrastic Relationships
2.2. Perception, Re-presentation and the Making of Meaning
2.3. Intermedial Interaction in Contemporary Art Fiction
2.3.1. The Communicative Category
2.3.2. The Re-presentational Category
2.3.3. The Interpretive Category
Communication
3.1. Verbal Elements
3.2. Visual Elements
Re-presentation
4.1. The Process of Making an Artwork: Labour
4.1.1. Inspiration for the Painting
4.2. Models and Modelling in Art-fictional Figure Paintings
4.2.1. The Boating Party
4.2.2. Opportunists, Dancers, Lovers
4.3. Selected Visual Details and Colour
Interpretation
5.1. Perceived versus Intended Meaning
5.2. Paintings Viewed on Display
5.3. Revisiting Images and Looking at Collections
5.4. Art Criticism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 2. Intermediality: Narrative Texts and Visual Arts
2.1. Visual and Verbal Overstepping of Boundaries
[P]ainting and writing have much to tell each other; they have much in common. The novelist after all wants to make us see. (Woolf 22) Visual art has never been as quantitatively and qualitatively available as in the twenty-first century. Due to its accessibility beyond the traditional gallery walls, art has become a desired, inseparable part of one’s everyday life. It is no longer possible to speak about an artwork being unique, nor is it necessary to go to the gallery to see the original, as “the uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction” (Berger 21). Not only are the most famous masterpieces copied, photographed and reproduced, but due to the advent of online galleries, they are also visible on a round-the-clock stage. The fact that works of art are reproducible and easily accessible allows for them to be used and recycled in many possible ways. Therefore, it is not surprising that visual art penetrates the works of contemporary writers, whose texts serve as representative examples of intermedial relations between visual works of art (paintings) and narrative texts. However, the semiotic differences between the two media have given cause for serious concern among scholars: “A great concern with the production and understanding of painting as a visual text to be decoded seems to lie at the heart of the [contemporary] novel, constituting as it does one particular form of a general epistemological questioning” (Wagner, Icons – Texts – Iconotexts 9). This concern demands that the very concept of intermediality be defined. Wolf proposes two definitions of intermediality: an ‘intracompositional’ definition that dislimits intermediality in a narrow sense while focusing on “the participation of more than one medium within a human artefact” (“Relevance of Mediality and Intermediality” 19) and, opposing it, an ‘extracompositional’ definition of intermediality, which, taken in a broad sense, “applies to any transgression of boundaries between conventionally distinct media […] and thus comprises both ‘intra-’ and ‘extra-compositional’ relations between different media” (19). Intermediality in its narrow sense deals with a concrete cultural product and its functions in a literary text, such as in evocative descriptions of a work of art, formal imitation through structural analogies to an artwork, reproduction or re-presentation of a work of art, and discussions about it within a novel (32). Since the ‘intracompositional’ definition of intermediality presupposes directing all attention to the actual subject matter captured directly in both media, it is more suitable for the purposes of the present study, which brings the variety of ekphrastic relationships in contemporary art fiction into sharper focus. In the same vein, in discussing intermediality, Horst emphasises not only the idea of the “fusion of the different media” (19), but also recognition of the fact that a combination of two media gives birth to something new (19). In general, therefore, it seems that an artefact that integrates two or more medial forms may be regarded as intermedial, and can be expected to produce new meaning in a cultural product in any given medium. However, since each medium carries a dissimilar semiotic system in itself, any combination of media inevitably provides potential for new interpretations. Wolf maintains that in the process of framing and transmitting information, media extend and intensify the message as well as become an integral part of its meaning: In fact, media inevitably channel and shape information, and in the process of communication this is as relevant for the sender as for the recipient. From the point of view of the sender, this shaping quality of media manifests itself in the fact that, with reference to similar contents, different media can function as limiting filters but can also provide powerful extension and intensification. From the point of view of the recipient, media possess tendencies that prestructure certain expectations. Thus one will not always expect illustrations within the covers of a new novel but would be surprised if a film consisted entirely of moving pictures, sounds and music without verbal text. This shows that media function not only as a material basis for transmission purposes but also as cognitive frames for authors as well as recipients and are therefore not merely a neutral means of communication but, indeed, part of the message itself. (“Relevance of Mediality and Intermediality” 22) Hence, the value of the form of the medium is enormous; it constructs, develops and regulates the meaning: “Form is constitutive of content and not just a reflection of it” (Eagleton 67). By merging different semiotic forms, the sender transfers the meaning from one semiotic system into another and by doing so disrupts the conventional homogeneous practice of producing meaning; this, in turn, is relevant to each of the forms independently, and bewilders the receiver by applying heterogeneous or multiple perspectives to the construction of meaning. Albers points out that […] uniting word and image and merging them into a new type of work will at first have a confusing and even defamiliarising effect on the reader, an effect that will eventually be evened out when new meaning is created from the merged product. This new meaning is unique and impossible to construct from non-intermedial works, which points at the salient possibilities that intermediality can provide. (19) However, the combination of the verbal and visual elements has not always been treated as a mutually profitable alliance. The most eminent supporters of the idea of disruption of the unity of arts are known to be Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1482) and Lessing (1766). Both set clear limits to the verbal and the visual: da Vinci delineates an opposition of eye and ear; Lessing suggests the dichotomy of space and time, which correspond to painting and literature respectively. Their oppositions contradict Horace’s tradition of ut pictura poesis (“as a painting, so a poem”) and, as a result, deny analogies between painting and literature. Moreover, da Vinci and Lessing believe in the inferiority of one of the arts to another – da Vinci subordinates literature to painting, whereas Lessing subordinates painting to literature. The latter refers to the visual arts as fundamentally spatial in that their “signs or means of imitation can be combined only in space” (Lessing 90). Furthermore, he defines the verbal arts as fundamentally temporal due to the fact that their signs “can express only objects which succeed each other … in time” (90). In other words, the natural barrier between visual arts and literary texts is manifested through the unequal nature of the method of the perception of ultimate artefacts. In effect, one is perceived simultaneously in space, the other successively in time. Although Lessing’s distinction between space and time has been challenged by a number of art critics and art historians, its validity cannot be denied – one art can never faithfully mirror another: “Writing cannot represent the visible, but it can desire and, in a manner of speaking, move towards the visible without actually achieving the unambiguous directness of an object seen before one’s eyes” (Said 101). Speaking to the profound difference between words and images, Mitchell sees their relationship as essentially paragonal, a contest for dominance between the visual and verbal arts: [D]ifferences between words and images seem fundamental. They are not merely different kinds of creatures, but antithetical kinds. They attract to their contest all the dualism that takes as one of its projects a unified theory of the arts, an “aesthetics” which aspires to a synoptic view of artistic signs, a “semiotics” which hopes to comprehend all signs whatsoever. […] Words and images seem inevitably to become implicated in a “war of signs” (what Leonardo called a paragone) in which the stakes are things like nature, truth, reality, or the human spirit. (1) Comparative work in the field of intermedial studies of literature and art aims to breach the historical boundaries between verbal and visual arts by focusing on the complementary function of different forms of art. As Mukarovský notes: “the real development of art shows that every art sometimes strives to overstep its boundaries by assimilating itself to another art” (207). Even if arts do not assimilate to one another, they do complement each other by offering new productive approaches and additional resources, thus enriching each other. Unity and complementary interrelation of arts is what interests Hagstrum, who uses the metaphor of kinship when referring to word and image relationship as sister arts. By the same token, Meyers points out the advantages of aesthetic analogies between literature and the visual arts: Aesthetic analogies express this inherent relationship of the arts, and add a new dimension of richness and complexity to the novel by extending the potentialities of fiction to include the representational characteristics of the visual arts. The novel is essentially a linear art, which presents a temporal sequence of events, while painting fixed reality and produces simultaneity of experience. Evocative comparisons with works of art attempt to transcend the limitations of fiction and to transform successive moments into immediate images. (1) Although both painting and...
