And here is the question: We come back around to still life, in the final lines of Kimmelman’s essay, and from Dutch painters and their lemons to Thiebaud and his baked goods. Along the way we took diversions to South India and the video art, but it strikes me that what almost everything we have discussed this semester has in common, is it is all about valuing and examining the ordinary–the family (Roy), the object (Doty), the bath (Bonnard), the moment (Miranda July). How does this almost unintentional focus confirm/change your ideas about Art?

Wayne Thiebaud: Brown River

Horace Pippin: Domino Players

Pippin: Harmonizing

Christmas Breakfast

Ellsworth Kelly: Dominican, 1952

Ellsworth Kelly: Black, Brown & White, 1951

Chardin

The Smoker’s Case–Chardin

Chardin–Soap Bubbles

Wayne Thiebaud–Eight Lipsticks

Thiebaud–Hot Dog Row (2000)

Thiebaud–River Farm Study (2001)

Thiebaud–Man Sitting–Back View

Thiebaud–Pies

Thiebaud–Cakes

_________________

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.”

Here are two links from me:

BLDGBLOG is one of the coolest web sites ever. Here’s that story about the giant eddies I was talking about in class today.

We haven’t yet talked about the artist Joseph Cornell, subject of Octavio Paz’s poem “Objects and Apparitions. Cornell was recently the subject of a traveling art show–amazing images available here (need Flash, I believe.)

Portrait of the Artist in a Mirror, 1939-1945

La Table de Toilette

Crouching Nude in the Tub

La femme au chat (Woman with cat)

Le Salle de Bain

Marthe in the bath

Pierre Bonnard c. 1906

The Almond Tree in Blossom

The dining room

The Window, 1925

Bathing Rituals

Joan Mitchell: After April, Bernie

Mitchell: Sunflowers

Joan Mitchell

The Bath, 1925

Young Women in the Garden, 1923

For Wednesday, please look over these two Robert Hass poems (coursepack pp. 39-42) in addition to commenting on your peers’ essays. The Gerhard Richter paintings that Hass discusses are in a post farther down. Unfortunately, they don’t get bigger when you click them, so there is also a link to a website with more of his work. Here’s Vermeer’s milkmaid, who also appears in John Berger, from long ago. Click it to enlarge it big time. It’s a good digital reproduction, so you should be able to see it in great detail.

See you soon.

Please choose a passage from this section of reading (89-177) in which the writing, that is to say the language itself, does something interesting. I’ll let you decide and explain what “interesting” means.

You can comment on each others’ responses, but you need not feel obligated to for this post.

Obviously Arundhati Roy is taking some liberties with syntax and grammar. Choose one instance where language corresponds with the tone of the story so far in an interesting way. You may like or dislike her style–choose one quotation and explain why.