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If You See Something, Say Something: a Look at Experimental Writing on Art City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 If You See Something, Say Something: A Look at Experimental Writing on Art Charlotte Lucy Latham Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/442 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] If You See Something, Say Something: A Look at Experiments in Art Writing By Charlotte Lucy Latham A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 i ©2014 Charlotte Lucy Latham All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the Dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Dr. Wayne Koestenbaum 8/20/2014 Date Chair of Examining Committee Dr. Giancarlo Lombardi 8/20/2014 Date Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Dr. Wayne Koestenbaum Dr. Mary Ann Caws Dr. Andre Aciman THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract If You See Something, Say Something: A Look at Experiments in Art Writing by Charlotte Lucy Latham Adviser: Professor Wayne Koestenbaum Signs all over New York City state, “If you see something, say something,” but museum studies repeatedly find viewers do not attend to pictures, just as eye witness testimony is invariably skewed. Ways of seeing have been limited to known ways of discussing. Alternative approaches offer new insights. The first section, “Experiments in Art Writing,” examines two texts: T.J. Clark’s The Sight of Death, a journal of his daily visits looking at two Poussin paintings, for which he maintains the ambiguity of exploration and argues to keep visual images from their dissolution into political symbols; and, Charles Simic’s Dime Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, which foregrounds the imaginative as necessary to a critical reception of art. The second section, “Literary Ekphrases as Art History and Theory,” examines a passage in Proust and a poem by William Carlos Williams to suggest that poetry and prose fiction not only introduce readers to art history but are extensions of the discussed visual works’ own art history, and then turns to Don DeLillo’s Point Omega to study the arguments around representation as voiced and experienced by the characters, and to suggest a move away from the concept of representation. The final section, “The Writing on the Wall,” analyzes captions from Tate Modern’s little-known but significant caption project Bigger Picture to develop a theoretical validation for such an experimental program. These authors show us how they see rather than simply what they see, iv and so reveal the advantages and dangers in their choices, recommending we develop renditions of what we see, where to see means both a visual ability and an articulate response. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are several whose presence was more than intellectual as they guided my development. I got to see and hear and share their intellectual practice. I should name Grant Franks and Barry Goldfarb at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, and Giancarlo Lombardi, Evelyn Ender, and Joan Richardson at the CUNY Graduate Center. But, André Aciman made me do it. He made me start, he reminded me not to worry about things of secondary importance, and he taunted me to finish as only a true friend can. In addition, I couldn’t have imagined this project without the support of Mary Ann Caws. The strength and charm of her work assured me that the strangest elements can be brought together, that warmth is key to celebrating those disparate parts, and that one often doesn’t wind up where one expected. And, that is for the good of the work. Lastly appeared Wayne Koestenbaum. I’m not at all sure how to thank him for his teachings. He leaves me in a bit of awe. I can never quite find the right words–mine seem syrupy, excessive, or too finely wrought. So... Thank you for suggesting that I might have a reader who wants to know what I think, that the weirdness of what I have chosen might be worth reveling in and thus revealing, that I might simply adopt the first person to say what I think rather than complicating it in passive sentences. I am still learning. There are friends of course who kept me sane and refused to allow my occasional dissatisfaction with academia to halt my course. LaVon Kellner gave me a place to work, Diet Cokes in endless supply, and a constant friendship that made me want to write something that would matter. Jen Corns let me be honestly angry, despondent, proud, without ever shaming those feelings that will arise in reading, and writing, and thinking some more; she supported my work even as it differs from the tremendous analytic capacity she brings to philosophy. Lee Hallman’s interest in my curious project helped me believe that there might be a small audience in the field of art history who would not disparage what I wrote, who might be intrigued even if only for amusement’s sake. Beth McGuire keeps me human, from the tips of my toes, through the depths of my past, into the voice I select. Meir Gal makes me think about what kind of human, what kind of scholar and teacher, student and artist, I want to be. Joan Kavanaugh helped me keep ahold of myself whatever life, or the work, brought. Sulynn Taylor makes me take the whole thing less seriously, which was seriously needed throughout this process. Lastly, I met Tim Kent a few weeks before starting graduate school. He has been through every step of the last five years with me, and surely deserves some honorary degree for his unfailing interest in a topic forced upon him across innumerable dialogues, and the occasional monologue. He is always there walking our dog Pitunia, feeding our cat Wooster, listening to me as I try ideas then reject them with dismay, fear, anger, or adopt them with trepidation, excitement, conviction. His conversation, his questions, his paintings underlie the best that is here. In the realm of cliché, it’s trite but true, I couldn’t have done it without him. Thank you all, Charlotte Lucy Latham, soon to be Kent August 20, 2014 vi If You See Something, Say Something: A Look at Experiments in Art Writing By Charlotte Lucy Latham TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction 1 II. Experiments in Art Writing 25 Chapter II.1 – “Viewer Like Me”: T.J. Clark’s The Sight of Death 26 Chapter II.2 – Labyrinth of Analogies: Imagination in Charles Simic’s Dime Store Alchemy 71 III. Literary Ekphrases as Art History and Theory 110 Chapter III.1 – Proust’s Provocation: Vermeer, Swann, and the Reader 111 Chapter III.2 – Ways of Seeing William Carlos Williams’ “Pictures from Breughel” 120 Chapter III.3 – Possible Rendition: Aesthetic Politics in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega 137 IV. The Writing on The Wall: Tate Modern’s “Bigger Picture” Caption Project 179 Chapter IV.1 – The Writing on the Wall at Tate Modern 180 Chapter IV.2 – Bigger Ideas for Tate Modern’s Bigger Picture 196 Chapter IV.3 – Remapping the Museum Visit: An Interdisciplinary Tour 225 Chapter IV.4 – Critical Cuts Expands Spectatorship 235 V. Conclusion: Attention Now! If You See Something, Say Something! 250 VI. Bibliography 257 vii I. INTRODUCTION I foresaw the possibility of raising myself to a poetical understanding, rich in delights, of manifold forms which I had not hitherto isolated from the total spectacle of reality. - Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol 2 In a Budding Grove Looking back, I think I started reading stories about art because I tired of eros and arate. In the wrath of The Iliad or Woolf’s The Waves, through the passion of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Nabokov’s Lolita, humanity’s highs and lows were exhausting. I had tired of bildüngsroman too and sought something else. Novels, stories, poems, and later essays around works of art provided an account of something other than the endless waking, worrying, working, warring, and worshiping of my own life. These ekphrastic texts certainly included their fair share of wrath and passion—Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Grey being perhaps a perfect aesthetic rendering of both—but more often the works of art seemed there to evoke a sense of something lost, desired, or not yet understood, which might not be resolved by the end of the text, but spoke to my own experience of wandering, in and beyond museums. As a child, I followed adults around rooms filled with art, uncertain what I was looking at or why they cared so much, until the summer when I was told to roam for myself and expected to report in the evening over dinner on what I had found. I had all the Smithsonian museums to observe, from the Air and Space to the Hirschhorn. While my father was at work, for eight hours a day, for five days a week, I roamed the halls of art and space— 1 aimlessly the first week. But that got dull, so I started looking for something that I wanted to look at. When I found it, I stared. I found that my mind would often make up stories about the people in the picture, or what I might see around the bend in the road, or what the breeze might feel like on a riverbank in the summer, or find strange ideas surfacing as I gazed at a large canvas of black and white stripes.
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