A month ago I traveled to Jackson, Wyoming, to participate
in a conference devoted to art and patronage. My job? To provide a brief
overview and discussion of ekphrasis, the practice of writing about visual
art. Sponsored by Arts Without Boundaries, the conference
focused on representational art and featured four top-notch artists, Clyde Aspevig, Jacob Collins, T Allen Lawson, and Tucker Smith, all considered
“representational” or “realistic” artists. Featured speakers included Peter Trippi,
editor of Fine Art Connoisseur,
who spoke about collecting and patronage with an overview of contemporary
realists, and Adam Duncan Harris, curator of the National Wildlife Museum in Jackson, who
hosted the event and spoke about wildlife art as well as a George Catlin
exhibit on loan from the Smithsonian.
I listened, watched, and wrote notes as quickly as I could.
It was a kid-in-a-candy-store experience for me to get an inside scoop on the
artists’ world. There are plenty of parallels to writing, but because of my
limited knowledge, the medium seems magical. For example, I learned about a
kind of paint casually referred to as “stringy white.” It’s no longer available
but apparently just the right thing for the crest of waves, and as I listened,
I was thinking about the rhythm and sound of the words, "stringy white."
Then it was my turn. I had never spoken before an audience
of artists and other art experts, and I was pretty nervous. My examples came from
the same broad category of realistic or representational art. I read Auden’s “Musee des
Beaux Arts,” various responses to Brueghel, Madeline DeFrees’ response to “Vermeer’s
A
Woman Holding a Balance,” and Greg Pape’s “American
Flamingo,” a poem written about Audubon’s painting by the same name. I
relied on John Hollander’s substantial book, The
Gazer’s Spirit, for definitions and read the poems with interspersed
discussions about the limitations of language and visual art.
In language, we work in image but can’t literally create
image. Visual art works with movement,
depth and narrative, though literally it’s impossible to create these elements
on a static, flat surface. What’s fascinating to me is how the imagination allows
us to reach beyond the limitation and how the artists and writers create illusion
and rely on gesture to facilitate the work of the imagination. The
artist/writer offers, and the viewer/reader reaches, and if all goes well,
somewhere in the middle things become clear. Recent developments in neuroscience are equally fascinating for what they have added to our understanding
of this process. The brain can rely on the information provided in a given
medium and respond with specific mirror neurons that
would be involved with the direct experience of an action or image. For
example, an image or a word-picture of someone drinking tea will tip off the
specific part of the brain associated with this action. We identify with the
action, then fill in the gaps with our imagination.
One misconception about landscape painting, I learned, is that
the artist simply arrives at the perfect spot and “copies” what is there. This
reminds me of the common misconception that a first-person poem represents the writer’s
personal experience. In both cases, these literal assumptions ignore the
breadth of the imagination. While creative work can represent actual
experience, poets and artists make choices. They delete and
recreate to find the rhythm required by the work, which may later guide the
viewer or the reader through the piece.
We talked about training, the attempts and failures. We
asked about sources of inspiration, and what we do when something isn’t
working. Tucker Smith mentioned that he sometimes holds a mirror to his work to
help him find what’s not right. I wondered what the mirror would be for
writing. Reading in front of an audience? For me this is very different from speaking
the poem aloud behind a closed door. Does the audience reflect the effect of
the poem back to its author?
We also talked about the shaping that may allow a piece to
have the appearance of simplicity and provide the viewer and reader with an
entrance to the work, whatever the medium. But we also mentioned the many mistakes
and shortcomings behind that, and always the continued pursuit.