The practical aspects of painting and poetry compared. A detailed look at some leading names in British poetry and European art: Botticelli, Veronese, Tiepolo, Fragonard, Monet, Sargent and Orpen with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Susan Wheeler. Download the free 290 page pdf ebook.
The art of painting consist of extracting visual elements of whatever is to be the subject of the painting, modifying those elements according to various rules and customs, and then arranging these modified elements in a meaningful and aesthetically pleasing manner. All three actions, extraction, modification and arrangement, depend on the skills and intentions of the artist, but are commonly influenced by other artists, i.e. by the styles of the period. More importantly, all three actions are fused together in a successful composition, each depending on the others. All three are present to some degree in any artwork, moreover, though that obviously varies with purpose, whether utilitarian like a workshop diagram or the spiritual uplift of a semi-abstract landscape painting.
Analogies should not be pressed too far, but literature is not essentially different. Writing anything consists of choosing what to say, putting that appropriately and then arranging the choices in some meaningful and aesthetically pleasing manner. Prose tends to be more utilitarian, and poetry more aesthetically pleasing, but both need to have something important to say.
Aesthetics, the philosophy of art, looks at the generalities, and literary criticism at the practicalities: what works, what doesn't and why. As in painting, all three are fused together in the final draft, as what is chosen and crafted is guided by the end in mind. Only contemporary poetry and music, which have greatly reduced aesthetic concerns, may introduce randomness in the first action, seeking originality, i.e. saying what has not been said before.
A free pdf Painting and Poetry ebook.
We start with a common experience. Art-class beginners generally arrive with a photo that they wish to paint, and which they do paint, meticulously, the tutor helping them over the difficult bits. The sky in the photo is blue, and, prompted sufficiently, the beginner lays in the appropriate mixtures on the canvas. Ditto for the green fields, and the church tower emerging from the wooded hill. Each feature of the photograph, skills permitting, is carefully transferred over, item by item. A few weeks later, perhaps with some deft touches from the tutor, and the picture is finished.
Unfortunately, no thought having been given to composition, to tonal values, to colour schemes, or even to the way that paintings grow out of the perceiving and depicting process, the picture ? through of course delighting the beginning artist - is no better or worse than the other offerings that exasperate us in going round the annual amateur art show. A painting has not come about, only a transcription of the photograph, usually a rather laboured and prosaic transcription. Yes, it is an honest and conscientious attempt, just as is a beginner's work in a
poetry workshop, but it hasn't used the medium in its own terms to create something compellingly alive and individual.
A free pdf The Poet and his Palette ebook.
