Encounters with Visual Art in contemporary literature

Aims

This course aims to:

• introduce learners to ekphrasis and contemporary literary texts which deliberately respond to visual art
• facilitate discussion, exploration, and interpretation of the connections between modern literature and art
• closely read literary texts alongside visual artworks with attention to language, form, and meaning.

Course content

This course focuses on contemporary writing in English and thinks particularly about how contemporary writers engage with visual art. Beginning with an introductory session on classical examples of literary ekphrasis – the detailed description and recounting of a visual artwork in poetry or prose – we will explore a variety of ways in which contemporary writers respond to visual art. Some of these examples enact ekphrastic ways of writing and thinking but also refer to and even embody visual art in other ways too. Beginning with poetry, we will then explore fictional and essayistic texts which are inspired by and responsive to visual art. By exploring the relationship between visual art and contemporary literature, the aim of this course is to come out with a better understanding of both, as well as reflect on how both spotlight perspective and ways of seeing contemporary experience and society.

This course will introduce you to different literary genres as well as an international range of acclaimed contemporary writers. Contemporary writing has become particularly interested in questions about what art can do and why it matters, and as such this course provides a specialised entry point into studying literature from this period. As a week-long course, these sessions will introduce you to studying literature from the historical moment we are currently living through in the early twenty-first century. With its focus on visual art, this course provides a space to reflect on the interconnections between literature and art to foreground questions of perspective and perception in our particularly complex and technologically mediated moment.

What to expect on this course

In these immersive in-person seminar-style sessions, we will attend to literary texts together in a discursive and exploratory classroom environment (see below course structure for each session). These works will range from poetry and fiction to nonfictional essays and criticism (as well as texts which straddle between these categories). In class, these texts will be put into dynamic dialogue with the visual artworks they cite and encounter. 

The course will be guided by an expert/teacher to introduce the texts and artworks and open these ideas to the responses, ideas, and unique perspectives of all participants. These sessions will be welcoming and aim to encourage a lateral classroom dynamic for shared interpretation and discussion of the relationship between visual art and writing in contemporary society in a spirit of mutual respect and intellectual curiosity.

For the first two sessions, the set texts will be read and introduced in class: you can read these in advance if you wish, but it is not compulsory. For sessions 3-5, these are based on set texts which I would like you to read in advance of the class (see below “Reading and resources list”). These texts are very short and can be read or re-read during the week-long course to prepare for each session.

Course sessions

1. Invoking Art: Introduction to Ekphrasis: In this first session, you will be introduced to ekphrasis as a term with a short lecture style presentation and class discussion. This will open the course’s considerations of visual art in literature before moving to some classic examples which we will explore as a class. Alongside their visual source artworks, we will explore together John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819), Rainer Maria Rilke “Archaic Torso of Apollo” (1918), and Sylvia Plath’s “The Disquieting Muses” (1957). No reading preparation is required for this session, but you may read these poems in advance if you wish.
   
    

2. Contemporary Ekphrastic Poetry – Anthony Vahni Capildeo and Padraig Regan: Next, we will turn to two contemporary poets who encounter and respond to visual artworks. We will examine selected works from collections by Anthony Vahni Capildeo (Venus as a Bear [2018]) and Padraig Regan (Some Integrity [2022]). Building upon the introductory session, we will explore and discuss these unseen texts as a class. We will begin to think about what is distinctive about contemporary poets engaging with art and the generative ways that art can act as a subject for contemporary writing.

    

3. Artistic Possibility – Ali Smith, “Green” (2014) / The Etang des Soeurs at Osny (1875), Paul Cézanne: The first of set texts for the course is Ali Smith’s creatively critical hybrid piece “Green” (2014). This piece combines fictional and essayistic writing styles. “Green” is a piece of writing about encountering art which explores both the life of Paul Cézanne and the vitality of his paintings as they are met by viewers today. Written in an engaging and original prose style, this lesser-known text by Smith is an exciting demonstration of how visual art can open writing up to new imaginative possibilities.
   
    

4. The Experimental and the Everyday – Eley Williams “Smote , or When I Find I Cannot Kiss You in Front of a Print by Bridget Riley” (2015) / Movement in Squares (1961) Bridget Riley: In the fourth session, we will discuss as a class another set text to be read in advance of the session. This time, a virtuoso short story by Eley Williams which is set in a gallery and about seeing a painting by abstract artist Bridget Riley. The story is set in a gallery and proceeds through playful and experimental language which transposes the mind bending effects of Riley’s optical art into a distinctive mode of storytelling about identity, subjectivity, and perception.

    

5. Image Culture – Teju Cole “There’s Less to Portraits Than Meets the Eye, and More” (2018) : In the final session, we will discuss an essay about portraiture and photography by novelist, critic, and photographer Teju Cole. This essay closely attends to a photograph by Dawoud Bey while ruminating on the significance of human faces at a time of mass photography and surveillance. As the concluding session, we will also reflect on the texts and artworks encountered across the week and think about how contemporary writing can affect and enrich the ways we see and think about art.

Learning outcomes

As a result of the course, you will gain a greater understanding of the subject and you should be able to:

• consider and question assumptions about the relationship between literature and other art forms
• engage with contemporary writing which draws upon and responds to visual art in novel ways across forms (such as poetry, fiction, and essays)
• think critically about how both visual art and writing correspond with contemporary experience and society

Required reading

The below texts are required reading for the course. Electronic copies of texts will be provided in advance to those registered of the course. 

* Smith, Ali, “Green” Creative Criticism: An Anthology and Guide, edited by Stephen Benson and Clare Connors, (Edinburgh University Press, 2014, pp. 249–56)

* Williams, Eley, “Smote, or When I Find I Cannot Kiss You in Front of a Print by Bridget Riley” (The White Review 2015): https://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction/smote-or-when-i-find-i-cannot-kiss-you-in-front-of-a-print-by-bridget-riley/ 

* Cole, Teju, “There’s Less to Portraits Than Meets the Eye, and More.” In Art Essays: A Collection, edited by Alexandra Kingston-Reese (University of Iowa Press, 2021, pp. 42–8).