In the history of English Literature, the bond of painting and poetry has been given many forms; most common of all is Ekphrastic poetry, in which poems were written through inspiration from painting.
Meanwhile, much of the poetry has been used as an inspiration to create an art of painting and is termed as Painted Poetry. In both the art forms, painting along with its respective poetry can be read as a language, through in depth analysis of colors, figures, shades and shapes. Nonetheless, when we teach certain poetry or painting in the curriculum of our institutes, we focus on either form of art ie poetry or painting. Hence we fail to strengthen their sisterhood which otherwise can help to illuminate the respective artforms in a more detailed and comprehensive way.
American poet Kenneth Patchen said, “It happens that very often my writing with pen is interrupted by my writing with brush, but I think of both as writing.”
In both the cases, the inspiration for art comes from an art and so one of the two provides the stimulus which is developed into a new work. In Painted Poetry, a poet colors his imagination and feelings with the words and creates a rhythm of poem. On the contrary, a painter through the colors and strokes of a brush gives new dimension to the words, hence gives a new perspective to the audience who might not otherwise identify the ideas and thoughts weaved in the poem.
Italian painter Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Painting is mute poetry and poetry is blind painting.”
Philosophers like Dufrenne, Goodman and Langer had been skeptical about treating painting as language on the grounds that either paintings lack syntactic elements and rules, or that paintings are ordered differently from language units. However, The Visual Arts Companion by Larry Smolucha provides detailed guidelines on how to read image as a text. According to Smolucha, the idea of objects as cultural texts, is a concept from Anthropology. To an anthropologist, any handmade object can be read like a book or document, providing that the reader knows how to interpret it. And so the writer ensures that he provides his readers with the instructions necessary to know while reading a painting on various levels.
Marquette University Philosiphy Professor Curtis L Carter regarded painting as a subspecies of picture language that can be properly considered a “pictorial language of art in more than a loosely metaphorical sense”.
In Painted Poetry, a poet colours his imagination and feelings with the words and creates a rhythm of poem. On the contrary, a painter through the colours and strokes of a brush gives new dimension to the words, hence gives a new perspective to the audience who might not otherwise identify the ideas and thoughts weaved in the poem
“Shapes act as syntactic elements in the languages of painting styles,” he said.
In Painted Poetry, generally there have been two kinds: one in which the poet himself takes the task of painting the counterparts of poetry. While in other an artist facilitates the poet by adding a piece of his own to the poetry.
Much of the works can be seen where the poet himself takes the pen and brush to set the bird of his imagination free. Like Jalaluddin Rumi, Sadequin and William Blake. They worked both as a painter and poet in their works.
However, some poems like “Paradise Lost”, “The Raven” and “Divine Comedy” inspired few painters and illustrators to make a piece of art as an extension to these works. Hence painters like Edmund Dulac, JR Neill and Gustave Dore took the task of transforming these works into Painted Poetry.
English painter Joshua Reynolds said, “Since the art of painting, like the art of poetry, demands the use of the intellect.”
It cannot be gainsaid that artist while giving colours and image to the intent of the original poem, often brings something of his own to the depiction, thus creating not an illustration but a version of the poet’s vision like Gustave Dore created the engravings of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”. On the other hand, when poet himself gives colours to his words, he simply creates an illustration that is rephrasing his idea in the forms of figures and colours. In both the forms ie the version and illustration, the idea of poet’s imagination remains the same whereas the difference is that in the former the thematic content is a bit hidden or modified while in later, is obvious or repeated.
Painting like poetry has metaphors and symbols which are to be read through colours, figures and lines. The purpose of this collision of Painting and Poetry is to create an extension of otherwise limited approach towards both artforms, and to create the metaphorical understanding among the readers so they can question the things around them which are not as simple as they seem to be.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, February 3rd 2019.