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The Rise of Ekphrasis During the 20 Century

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The Rise of Ekphrasis During the 20 Century Voices of the Exhibition: The Rise of Ekphrasis during the 20th Century through Imagism and Visual Art Museums Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Humanities By Zachary Moore B.A Wright State University Spring 2015 Wright State University WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL April 17, 2015 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY Zachary Stephen Moore ENTITLED Voices of the Exhibition: The Rise of Ekphrasis During the 20th Century Through Imagism and Visual Art BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Humanities. ________________________ Valerie Stoker PhD Thesis Co-Director ________________________ Dennis Loranger Ph.D Thesis Co-Director ________________________ Valerie Stoker Ph.D, Master of Humanities Program Committee on Final Examination: ______________________________ [Valerie Stoker, PhD] ______________________________ [Dennis Loranger, PhD] ______________________________ [Andrew Strombeck, PhD] ______________________________ [Karla Huebner, PhD] _____________________________ Robert E.W. Fyffe, Ph.D. Dean, Graduate School Moore iii ABSTRACT Moore, Zachary Stephen. M.Hum. Masters of Humanities Graduate Program. Wright State University, Voices of the Exhibition: The Rise of Ekphrasis during the 20th Century through Imagism and Visual Art Museums The purpose of this research is to identify main causes for the expansion of ekphrastic poetry during the 20th century and how it became a more widely used genre. The goal is to show how ekphrasis contributed to the growth of the interdisciplinary partnership between museums and poets. By evaluating two factors that led to a growing interest in the genre and increased accessibility to poetry and the visual arts. This is done by looking at ekphrastic work by Imagist poets like Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. as well as the growth of 20th century museum accessibility and educational practices. The expansion of ekphrasis’ use resulted in a wider exposure to poetry, the visual arts and museums. Ekphrasis assisted in accomplishing mutual goals of exposing and educating the public to both mediums, which resulted in better understanding of the genre and its influence on museums throughout the 20th century. Moore iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page I. INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE………………………….……..1 The Rise of Imagism…………………………………………....5 Ekphrasis………………………………………………….…….8 20th Century Museums…………………………………….…....11 II. IMAGISM……………………………………………………….….13 The Image……………………………………………….……...17 First Tenet: “The Emperor’s Garden” and “The Picture”……....22 Second Tenet: “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” and “Autumn”………………………………………..…28 III. THE MUSEUM………………………………………………….....37 Accessibility: “At the British Museum,” “The Three Cantos” and “Sea-Heroes”…………………………..….42 Exhibition Practices: “To Whistler: American”…………..…….55 CONCLUSION……………………………...…………..……..61 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………..…….65 Moore 1 I. INTRODUCTION My experience and fascination with ekphrasis is connected to the use of the genre within museums. In my time interning at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio, I was able to experience firsthand how ekphrastic poetry enhanced an ongoing exhibition while educating and exposing the visitor and reader to the visual arts. The event brought together around a dozen poets from the community and invited them to the special exhibition Andy Warhol: Athletes and the Art of Sport. Poets selected a work or works to respond to and translated their experience using language. The event took place towards the end of the exhibition and welcomed guests from different demographics and levels of knowledge of both poetry and the visual arts. The ekphrastic poems informed, entertained and gave a voice and motion to the paintings, sculptures and artifacts within the exhibit. The audience left more aware of not just the visual art and artists but the historical background of the movements and the figures portrayed within them. Ekphrasis demonstrates the bond and partnership between the visual and literary arts that advanced the goals of museum practices. Ekphrasis developed into a tool, a technique and a genre that pulls from two mediums and displays the relationship between the visual world and that of language. While the relationship between visual art and poetry dates back to the time of Homer, it wasn’t until the 20th century that the visual arts impacted it on a greater scale. In the beginning, Greek sculpture depicting gods and heroes inspired poets, giving them a voice that would tell their story. These bronze and marble masterpieces powered poets’ Moore 2 inspiration just as medieval tapestries and painted landscapes did as time went on. As literature and visual arts scholar James A. W. Heffernan argues in his book Museum of Words, “The production of Ekphrastic poetry has become nothing less than a boom…ekphrasis in modern and post-modern poetry becomes still more striking when we consider that at least one poem about a work of visual art has come from almost every major poet of our time” (135). His argument centers on the increasing amount of ekphrastic work written over the course of the 20th century that is cataloged in chapbooks, anthologies and even museum collections. This ranges from Amy Lowell’s ekphrastic series based on lacquer prints to Richard Aldington’s poems from his visits to the British museum to later works like Anne Sexton’s “Starry Night” and Wallace Stevens’s Picasso-inspired “Man with the Blue Guitar”. The sheer volume of ekphrastic poetry grew as the century progressed, the growth of museums expanded and the visual arts became more easily accessible within museums. Heffernan is not alone. The interest in and use of ekphrasis proliferated during the last half of the 20th century as it began being used in museums, education programs and in publications. Poets, scholars and museum curators have all joined the growing interest in this genre as they trace back its influence throughout the last century. Scholar Barbara Fischer states, “Ekphrasis has become not simply a subgenre but a pervasive poetic strategy” (187). She says this in reflection of the growth of ekphrastic poetry from the opening stages of modernism to the later 20th century. The result was that ekphrasis, once considered a subgenre due to its minimal use, became something larger. Modernism, but primarily Imagism, attached itself to visuals or sensory ideals, which lay the groundwork Moore 3 for ekphrasis to become a poetic genre in itself. It became a symbol of the growing relationship between the visual arts and poetry. The question is, why was this the case in the 20th century and not before? Scholars assert multiple reasons for the rise of ekphrasis on a wide scale, including technology, easier country-to-country mobility, artistic movement and changing cultural and political landscapes. Advances in technology provided easier and faster capability to view and document the visual arts while giving the capability to preserve both visual and literary work. Technology also made travel from one location to another quicker and easier, be it miles or hundreds of miles. Technology provided increased mobility and distribution while artistic movements and the social and political landscapes allowed for ekphrasis and interest in the cross-disciplinary arts to grow. Literary and artistic modernism emphasized cooperation between the different arts, which is seen through movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism and Imagism. The social and political landscape contributed due to the rejection of elements of prior movements, and political and social events such as World War I. They looked towards new ways to represent and reflect on the modern world by using elements of the physical world, past and ancient cultures and relationships between the different creative disciplines. All played a role in the development of 20th century ekphrasis; but why did it flourish so much in the 20th century and not earlier? I will argue for two factors. First, the rise of Imagism allowed poets to change the way they see the world, but also to document it. Second, in public museums, the changing curatorial, educational and exhibition practices gave these poets the objects, the environment and a growing mutual partnership Moore 4 to use. Imagism provided a style that centered on tangible and concrete experiences and images for ekphrasis, while museums gave to ekphrasis an increase in accessibility to the visual arts, and a goal to promote awareness and education to the visual arts. Both provide essential components that allowed ekphrasis to expand its influence. Scholars argue and highlight problems relating to the success of the genre. Arguments and contributing opinions include Stephen Cheeke’s on the negative effects of museums’ intrusion into ekphrasis or Murrey Krieger’s on ekphrasis as more of an illusion to the reader and not a true representation. My argument relies on the origin story that laid the framework for the arguments of Cheeke and Krieger. The argument on the influence of Imagism on ekphrasis is supported by numerous scholars, including Slawomir Wacior, James Heffernan, Elizabeth Loizeaux and Catherine Paul. Their research into different issues provides similar support for the major role that I believe Imagism had on the initial attraction to the visual arts and how the style had a ripple effect across the artistic medium. In the second part of my argument, Catherine Paul and Barbara Fischer provide support to
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