Illustrating poems

I decided to do my paper on the combination of poems and illustrations. I think that this is a unique approach to painting with words because poems can be expanded in two directions: first, poems are meant to be read aloud (excluding concrete poems), as well as read silently. Reading poems aloud adds to their effect. Second, poems can be augmented with illustrations. This expands on their visual aspect, not only the length of lines and quality of words, but also the visual images that the poems present.

William Blake's poems are interesting to look at, because he was an artist as well as a writer. Here's one of his poems from Song of Innocence and Experience, called "The Tyger." Here, his illustrations enhance the poem because they add to the general dark mood, with the red-eyed tiger, sharp, thin branches, and dim colors.

When interpreting someone else's poems, the process is different. What would you suggest as a strategy for doing this?

different approaches to using ruins

I found this bottom painting also by Hubert Robert called "Imaginary View of the Grande Galerie in the Louvre in Ruins." It makes me wonder what the effect of showing such a prominent building in ruins has. Robert's piece contrasts sharply with the top one, by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, called "Ancient crossroads of the via Appia and the via Ardeatina." While Piranesi seems to emphasize the great detail of the ruins and their towering magnificence, Robert instead uses them to create a mood of mystery and sublime melancholy. His building fades away into the haze of the distance, while Piranesi's stays distinct and clear. Also, in Robert's piece, the people and the foreground have more importance than the people in Piranesi's peice do. In his, the clutter of the architecture overpowers the people in it.

What elements do you think ruins bring to both these paintings? What elements, besides the ones I've already mentioned, do you think are used in one but not the other? What should I mention about the paintings that I haven't already? Color? Texture?

Comments

I've been trying to comment a dozen times, but every time I click [Post Comment] the comment evaporates. (If anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know!) So here are my comments:

1. A Secret- Lil' G

Secrets... that's a really interesting way to look at how/why we interact with words and images. But I think enlightenment and sense of belonging are not always essential to appreciating a painting or a poem. Sometimes, they leave me completely confused (Rothko's color field paintings, for instance) but that doesn't prevent me from enjoying those works. I think a painting does offer more than words because it's immediate. Whereas we have to process and at least try to understand a written work, we tend to react more immediately to a painting based on its aesthetic cues. Between creating an image for writing and vise versa, I don't really prefer either one; I think we do both at the same time. Writers/poets don't share the entire secret and we often times have to fill in the gaps ourselves (i.e. create a story, or at least, narrative details). Similarly, I think we "create an image" when we look at one. For instance, people see different things in a cloud (carrot, rocket, fish, etc.). Even if the image is a more concrete painting, I think we notice different things and essentially see a different painting based on our biases/interests/preferences/etc.

2. Video to Text Comparison - Kyra

Wow! It's vastly different from what I thought it would be. I read the text version with a different pace and understanding of the tone. But one of the major differences between the two that most struck me was volume. Unless it's a movie script, writers don't tell us how to read their text, but volume in the performance really added to the meaning of the poem. There's a difference between "What do you want?" and "What do you want?". Similarly, performance italicized parts of the poem and highlighted the poet's attitude, which due to this poem's subject matter, was especially important to understand. The performance didn't necessarily change the meaning of the poem, but did add to my interpretation of it because it was more direct.

Although this doesn't really fall within the scope of your paper, I thought it might be interesting to consider an additional category. In addition to poem vs. poem + performance there's poem + music (i.e. hip-hop/rap) which is pretty distinctive from the other two.

Here's an example of poem + music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACg8T5eliTE&feature=related
(words being around 1:15)

Not every song has a "poetic" feel to it but what makes a poem a poem is like discussing the definition of "painterly" so we'll save that for later :p.

And lyrics (or the poem):

All causes and all effects.
No college shit necessary to acknowledge it.
Some call it love and some call it sex. Opposites.
Call it what you want, but with one touch and you’re gone, so call in sick.

Human politics, from whispered hushes and distant crushes.
Mental fits breakin’ pencil tips and inkin’ brushes.
Simple rushes.
God makes man, and this is the devil’s finishing touches.

From dukes to duchesses and kings to queens.
From dust to dust, this is the sinful theme.
The scene for crack fiends and gun-packin’ teens
High on vaccines, magazines and saccharine.

From dukes to duchesses and kings to queens.
From dust to dust, this is the sinful theme.
The scene for crack fiends and gun-packin’ teens
High on vaccines, magazines and saccharine.
Lovescream.

Surrealism

I would have liked to compare this passage from "Walking Around" to Francis Bacon's "Pope Screaming," which is an adaptation of Velasquez's "Pope Innocent X." Do these depictions of religious symbols offend you at all? DO you think both artists had the same intention?

"Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold."

--Neruda

Walking Around

I chose to do a creative piece where I combine vignettes describing my own experiences walking in the streets of Colombia with analysis and description of Pablo Neruda's "Walking Around." Originally, I wanted to compare some sort of visual artwork but that, I decided, would take away from the narrative.It would have been interesting to juxtapose the differing styles of these two pieces (Guernica and Mystery and Melancholy of Street) with their similar moods and how they may relate to the surrealist attitudes in "Walking Around."



vs




Do you get a similar mood from this:

"There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords."
-- Neruda

Surrealism in Children's books

An interesting subject that I would have liked to address in my paper but didn't find a place for is the comparison between the surrealism employed in children's illustrations (I noticed that few illustrations attempt to convey direct realism, at the very least using a style of representation that made it clear that the images were drawn, as in H.A. Rey's Curious George) and that of the surrealist art movement. Though the main differences would likely be the level of sophistication, depth of meaning and intent involved in the work of art, there are certainly similarities to be found in terms of the way in which they both convey visual ideas. In my paper I discussed the aspects of children's illustrations that distance them from other art, but I think that looking at the ideas and motivation behind surreal elements in some illustrations can serve to bring the genre closer to other forms of art. The next thing to consider would be where is the distinction drawn between nonsense and surrealism?

Alice in Wonderland, John Tenniel

Vs.

Giorgio de Chirico, "The Uncertainty of the Poet", 1913

Could you find this in an art gallery?

Assuming you don't know where it's from, would you be surprised to find the above work in an art gallery? What about this:


Personally, I think I might be more surprised by the latter than the former; the first reminds me of the artwork of the Harlem Renaissance. However it's the latter work of art, a piece by Cy Twombly entitled Souvenir that is more likely to receive attention as a work of art than the former, an illustration from Ezra Jack Keats' children's book, The Snowy Day. For my paper, I'm exploring the distinction between children's book illustrations and other forms of art, including why we generally don't value illustrations as works of art separate of their place in children's literature. I compared Keats' illustration to a Cy Twombly piece in particular because to me it seems reminiscent of something that a child could create (which is not to demean its artistic value), and I find it curious that particularly in the realm of modernism, we can place more value on art that can be likened to that created by a child than on that created for a child. Children's book illustrations serve a unique purpose in supporting the development of a child's mind, but given the beauty and innovation of some of those illustrations I don't think that they should be limited to that purpose. What are your thoughts?

Video to Text Comparison

In most cases of spoken word performances, though  the author of the piece may perform their work many different times in different venues, their work is only meant to be heard once. It is not meant to be repeated to the same people over and over again for them to analyze and pick apart and do close readings—viewings?—of in order to find their own meaning in it. I feel that spoken word poetry is meant to be a personal statement that others can identify with, at times, but the author is not opening up their emotions for discussion. The way they perform it, as the writer, is the only way it ought to be interpreted.

That being said, here  is the link to the video of the performance from which I transcribed the text (watch it! It's only 3.5 minutes long!).

Is it vastly different from what you thought it would be? Did you think it added to the poem? Distracted from it? Did it change the meaning or your interpretation of it?

Music & Painting

The above painting is called Composition VII by Kandinsky, who's quoted to have said,Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. He supposedly saw color when he heard music. Not everyone's a synesthesiac, but I think there's value in understanding the relationship between color and music. I've doodled before with a song in mind, letting that song take over my hand. You may be familiar with the Windows Media Player visualization in which random bars or waves are generated based on the song you're listening to. *Questions* How do painters use color to add sound to their painting? Do you think this is effective? Between painting and writing, which is more effective for describing music? What elements would you emphasize if you were to paint a sound?

Silence in Painting

We have adjectives like small, loud, fragrant, sweet, and silky to describe our world, but similes and metaphors are more helpful for this purpose. We can compare _______ with sunset, caramel, just about any "thing" that has a name. But even then, it's difficult to describe visual and tangible things like a leaf or an insect, let alone something more abstract like a feeling. And compared to vision, there are fewer sounds in the realm of hearing we can refer to in a simile.

A writer can use devices like auditory imagery or alliteration (especially if spoken) to describe a sound. While the writer has the advantage of referring to a sound that already exists in reader's memory and prompt the reader to retrieve and play that sound, a painter lacks the kind of auditory, figurative language of a writer. But this doesn't stop them from attempting to visually describe a sound. Munch actually turns his medium's weakness -its silence- to accentuate his point. *Questions* How would you paint a "scream" (or any other sound)? How is sound described in painting vs. writing? Which one do you think is more effective and why?

the mood embodied by the aesthetics of ruins in paintings

Hi guys, I wanted to investigate what effect ruins have in painting. These two paintings ( the top one is called "View of Gothic Chapel in Ruins" by Carl Georg Adolph Hasenpflug; the bottom one is "Architectural Landscape with Canal" by Hubert Robert). It's clear that both these paintings have a distinct atmosphere, and the ruins play an important role in creating this mood. I get a strong feeling of decay and impermanence, but yet I also feel there is a sense of strength conveyed by the stones. There's also a feeling of the sublime, like there's this awesome construction from another time, and the painter's compositions, specifically the placement of the ruins, demonstrates this. I feel there is also an interesting contrast between the architectural and natural imagery in the paintings.

What do you focus on when looking at these paintings? What interests you the most? What would you write about?