our introduction

Okay, y’all, here’s my first crack at stringing together the ideas we discussed in class this morning. Comment away–criticisms more that welcome!! What do you think?

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This is a collection of individual ekphrastic responses created by students in LHSP 130: Writing/Responding: Art and the Ekphrastic Impulse. The word ekphrasis simply means writing that respond to visual art. Our expanded use of the term here is reflexive, however, and includes visual pieces that respond to writing as well.

This semester we have attempted to understand both writing and visual art by putting them in conversation with one another. Why do we respond a certain way to a painting or a poem? How can we shape that response into an interesting object in its own right? At times this conversation can become layered, so that a painting responds to a poem that is in turn responding to another painting. Like a real conversation, these layers then begin to overlap and murmur to each other.

Visual and written forms each have their own languages. Visual art speaks to the viewer through color, line, composition, and so on, while a poem or an essay uses adjectives, characters, and setting, to name just a few techniques. Sometimes words seem inadequate as a way to express what a visual piece makes us feel. Other times, visual images can provide for a multitude of interpretations—something words can help clarify. Sometimes, the act of response itself can be enough. It can help to bridge the gap between our aesthetic appreciation and our articulation of those feelings.

The artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher say, “The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response.” Our responses as presented here are intensely personal. They convey the artists’ (our own) emotions and thoughts. Since you are not us, you may have a different response to the original works, and we hope that you do: if we all had the same opinion, there would be no point. As the art critic John Berger explains, we come to art with our own backgrounds, knowledge, and assumptions: “although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.”  This freedom of interpretation is one of the most exhilarating aspects of art.

Finally, we hope that you enjoy the ways these images and words speak to one another. We aim to approach the sense of wonder described by the poet Seamus Heaney, “A hurry through which known and strange things pass/ As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways/ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.”