Ekphrasis and Plot Readings

Mitchell

Ekphrastic indifference is our initial response to the notion that visual and textual mediums could represent the same thing – we feel it is impossible for writing to perfectly describe a picture, or for a picture to perfectly illustrate a piece of writing. Ekphrastic hope occurs when we recognize the possibilities offered by the tools of writing, such as metaphor, to depict indirectly what we see in a picture (and vice-versa, in considering the visual tools of different artistic mediums). This phase also involves our realization that in language, or “linguistic expression,” we are often attempting to represent something that is not there – something visual, or an idea. In this sense, ekphrasis becomes more of an everyday thought and speech process. Ekphrastic fear is a resistance to the possibility of a total overlapping between visual and textual representation, with ekphrasis being utterly successful and the idiosyncratic aesthetic value of each medium adulterated.

Advantages/Disadvantages for a Collaborative Project

Ekphrastic indifference:
This approach is useful because it reminds the two creative minds involved that their work is inevitably going to vary. They should not attempt to fully illustrate the other piece of artwork or writing because it cannot be done. Therefore, they should work to convey a sense of meaning related to the work they are partnered with, or attempt to do something completely different, but in some way tangentially connected. A disadvantage to this approach could be going too far with it, and expecting that there is no possibility of a positive interaction between the two mediums because their conveying of the subject matter cannot be aligned at all. This would certainly be a fallacy and eliminate a lot of fascinating possibilities.

Ekphrastic hope:
This is probably the most positive approach to work from, because it involves respecting the tools of each medium to figuratively convey another piece of work. It acknowledges the creative possibilities of each medium, and looks for the best methods specific to the medium for portraying or otherwise alluding to another work. Disadvantages could involve relying too heavily upon these tools, so that what you are trying to do as an artist becomes to readily obvious to the viewer. One might also be too descriptive, and “tell” literally what is going on in a picture or text rather than “showing” it through more innovative ways or providing a tangential description or story.

Ekphrastic fear:
This can be positive in that it reminds the artist/writer that there is value inherent in each medium that can be preserved, so that the work is not merely illustrative, and the two works do not simply mesh in their portrayal. This could also be a limiting view because it might engage the artist in the binary opposition that Mitchell describes in the second half of his article. In fearing overlap between the two forms of expression and consciously pulling away from this, the artist might elevate his/her own medium and the role it can play in analyzing another artwork. The artist then becomes a voiced “self” projecting itself into a voiceless “other,” his/her role “masculine,” acting upon and disrespecting the resistance of a “feminine” artwork.

Travis

We continue to make narratives out of spaces because we have hope for the way our own eye will see them as distinct from how they have been seen before. We recognize immense possibility in spaces (especially as artists, visually minded people). We angle ourselves in juxtaposition with the subject to create new shapes and perspectival distortions, imagining them within a four-edged frame. There are so many possibilities of different objects to align, and so many possibilities for statements (or disorienting uncertainties) to be made by doing this.

The photograph exists between the matter of fact and the narrative world. It is possible to separate the “where” and “when” of the photograph’s creation, as Travis describes in Joel Sternfeld’s different projects. This has to do with the “temporary permanence” of what is behind the frame, as it is captured in a sort of death-like state, though we view it at a time in which that place or subject has changed. We then, as viewers, revive the “death” by filling in the time element, and a narrative or explanation – with or without the aid of text given to us by the photographer – through our subjective consciousness. Unlike the matter of fact world, Travis explains, photography withstands time, and new knowledge doesn’t discredit it. It maintains a relevance and meaning, unlike outdated mathematics or biology. Though the photograph appears, originally, very “matter of fact,” humans throughout history have learned about their world through narrative. Our inclination to this form of understanding causes us to project narrative into a still image, though not fully independent of the photographer’s intent as expressed through framing and juxtaposition.

Regarding Valery’s comment, all art forms have something to offer that no other art form has. For example, though both have and use the tool of metonymy, it is going to look very different in a Cubist painting versus a poem by Gertrude Stein. Although the ekphrastic process can create very tight parallels between mediums, they are still going to materialize very differently – resulting in very different material objects. Valery also engages in the fallacy of assuming language must be descriptive. He says that language has been “released” from having to convey anything accurately, as if the only purpose of language were to provide explanatory accounts of natural phenomena. Language can also convey imaginative/unnatural phenomena that cannot be seen with the eye (or camera), or convey natural phenomena in a distinctive way.

Winogrand’s statement involves the idea that we are freezing a certain juxtaposition of reality within a non-natural, rectangular frame when we photograph. Having been born in the last hundred years, we have grown up with photographs and family albums, let alone experienced four-edged paintings and drawings. We have been conditioned to value this shape as a representative art form. We want to think of ourselves as creative individuals, and we are, so we expect our “framing” of reality to be unique. Winogrand’s comment also alludes to the camera’s viewfinder – we are looking through it as we photograph, scanning reality until we freeze it just how we want. We have to be looking through the viewfinder, however, to reach this “controlling” of reality and determination of our creative process and its potential outcomes.