Ekphrastic poetry

For those of us working in all kinds of genres: Moonrise, Aurora, Nebraska by Twyla Hansen No Ansel Adams but the snapshots we captured through the open car window on our eight megapixel cell phones on the side of the road off an exit ramp as truck taillights streaked eastbound opposite the earth’s rotation in…

Notes on Melancholy, part 1

A depressive illness or a passing feeling? Mental detachment or a precursor to genius? Melancholy is a critical part of what it is to be human, yet we all seems intent on removing all signs of sadness, depression, or, quite simply, low moods from our own lives. In  A Field Guide to Melancholy  Jacky Bowring studies melancholy…

Art instigate art

Lately Edward Hirsch has been influencing my way of thinking about art. Hirsch says things like “the purpose of poetry is not first and foremost to inspire the writer, but to inspire the reader”, and “there is not enough talk about emotions in contemporary criticism”. He is preoccupied by – and gives great importance to – the reader’s experience….

add sound

Yesterday I went to visit an exhibition showing works by: CHARLES GAINES, CARLA GUAGLIARDI and FRANKA HÖRNSCHEMEYER. When entering the gallery you are first met by a loud clacking noise. I walked towards the sound, and found Franka Hörnschemeyer Oszilloskop, to be the originator.  Oscilloscopes are used to observe the change of an electrical signal over time I stood…

in Bergen

– spending my morning mulling over: Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting…

What Light Can Do

Ekphrasis, writes Marjorie Munsterberg, is a particular kind of visual description and the oldest type of writing about art in the West. The goal of this literary form is to make the reader envision the thing described as if it were physically present. The ability to reproduce works of art has reduced the importance of ekphrastic…

naturalistic aesthetics

– looking at art from a darwinistic point of view Ellen Dissanayake says: Art is not a set of objects or compositions or paintings Art is the behavior that leads to a set of objects or compositions or paintings Art is not handed down only to a select few sensitive souls. Art, she says, is “making…

«I mostly think of my work as a painting»

Not being convinced that art is therapy, I will again turn my mind to the study of ekphrasis. Ekphrasis – representing a work of art in a literary language – makes explicit the connection between visual art and literature. So lets start with a little excerpt from an interview Kevin McNeilly made with the Canadian author Anne Carson KM:…

art is not therapy

Last week I went to Amsterdam to see and review Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s exhibition “Art is Therapy” at the Rijksmuseum. The immediate result of my trip was a review written and published in the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet. (A weekly, national newspaper focused on culture, politics & arts). For 7 years I have…