Roland Barthes

”Rhetoric of the Image”

(1964)

The nature of images II

Dorothea Lange, Pea Pickers (1936)

Dorothea Lange, Pea Pickers (1936)

Raphael, Madonna and the Child (1504-5)

Dorothea Lange, Pea Pickers (1936)Rogier van der Weyden, Madonna and the

Child (1450-60)

Bennetton advertisement (1989)

Jo Spence and Terry Dennett, Madonna and Child (1982)

Andres Serrano, The History of Sex (1995)

The nature of images II

W.J.T. Mitchell, ”Pictures and Paragraphs: Nelson Goodman and

the Grammar of Difference” in Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology

Characteristics of the verbal and the visual messages/signs

VERBAL• temporal• successive• linear• hierarchical• chronological• causal• fluid/mobile

• diachronic• digital (Mitchell 53)• symbolic (Mitchell 53)

VISUAL• spatial• simultaneous

• fixed/stable/solid

• synchronic• analogical (Mitchell 53)• iconic (Mitchell 53)

Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533)

Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533)lute with a broken string

Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533)

the undistorted skull

Jasper Johns, Flag (1954-5)

Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood

László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled (c. 1927)

László Moholy-Nagy, Dolls (1926)

Martin Munkácsi – First fashion photo for the

Harper’s Bazaar (1933)

Images in Texts/Ekphrasis

Laura M. Sager Eidt, ”Toward a Definition of Ekphrasis

in Literature and Film” in Writing and Filming the Painting: Ekphrasis in

Literature and Film

The shield produced by Hephaestus described in

the Iliad, Book 18 by Homer

The first thing he created was a huge and sturdy shield,all wonderfully crafted.  Around its outer edge,he fixed a triple rim, glittering in the light,                                                attaching to it a silver carrying strap.The shield had five layers.  On the outer one,with his great skill he fashioned many rich designs.There he hammered out the earth, the heavens, the sea,                   the untiring sun, the moon at the full, along withevery constellation which crowns the heavens—the Pleiades, the Hyades, mighty Orion,and the Bear, which some people call the Wain,always circling in the same position, watching Orion,the only stars that never bathe in Ocean stream.

The shield produced by Hephaestus described in the Iliad,

Book 18 by HomerThen he created two

splendid cities of mortal men.                                     In one, there were feasts and weddings.  By the lightof blazing torches, people were leading the bridesout from their homes and through the town to loud music                  of the bridal song.  There were young lads dancing,whirling to the constant tunes of flutes and lyres,while all the women stood beside their doors, staringin admiration.

Historical overview of the verbal visual paragone (~ comparison, debate)

Plato (424-348 BC) • inferiority of words to images (regarding the mimetic faithfulness of

representation). Aristotle (384-322 BC)• parallel between poetry and painting: both imitate human nature in action

but with different means (11)Augustine (354-430 AD)• greater difficulty of receiving poetry → it is more valuable than painting• writing encompasses the spiritual more effectively → greater moral and religious value→ devaluation of painting (it is absent from the seven liberal arts in 5th century

AD)Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) (Della Pittura, 1435)• reasserts the painter’s primacy (the painter excites imagination) (12)Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)• reclaimed the prominent place of the visual arts → to prove the superiority of

the visual(Gotthold Ephraim) Lessing (1729-1781) (Laokoon, 1766)• Attempts to reverse the hierarchy by strictly distinguishing the

representational realms of poetry and painting• Poetry: best suited to represent actions in time (temporal nature of its

reception). • Painting: represents a single pregnant moment in space (perceived as a

static object).• Strongly opposes to ekphrasis (it mingles painting and poetry)

Definitions of ekphrasis I—the aesthetic approach/paragone

• Generally, it refers to works of poetry and prose that talk about or incorporate visual works of art. (9)

→ verbal to visual • Verbal discourses that directly verbalize

one or more visual images. (9) • As a rhetorical device defined in terms of

its effect on an audience: as ”expository speech which vividly brings the subject before our eyes” (Theon [335-405] qtd. in Seidt 11).

Definitions of ekphrasis II—the aesthetic approach/paragone

Murray Krieger: • a device to ”interrupt the temporality of discourse, to

freeze it during its indulgence in spatial exploration” (12)• ”Ekphrastic principle: poems that seek to emulate the

pictorial or sculptural arts by achieving a kind of spatiality.”

Leo Spitzer:

• ”the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art, which description implies [...] the production through the medium of words of sensuously perceptible objets d’art [...]”. (13)

Wendy Steiner:

• a description of a ”pregnant moment in paintings,” an attempt to imitate the visual arts by describing a still moment and thereby halting time (13-4).

What are the implications of ekphrasis in its conventional/antique sense?

• for the Greeks it implied a visual impact on the mind’s eye of the listener

→ enargeia: vivid description; bringing before the eyes/actualization, a way of speaking/writing that makes the lifeless living via metaphor

• there is a less tangible visual object/not necessarily something existent or actually visually embodied

• a visual capacity of language

Definitions of ekphrasis III—the ideological approach/paragone

• From the late 80s as a social and ideological struggle – the opposing terms have different ideological roles (14)

Ernest B. Gilman:• ”if the image lurks in the heart of language

as its unspeakable other, then [...] images harbor a similarly charged connection with language—as an invisible other” (14).

Grant F. Scott:• Ekphrasis is the appropriation of the

”visual other” and as an attempt to ”transform and master the image by inscribing it” (14)

Definitions of ekphrasis III—the ideological approach/paragone: the

implicationsWhat are the implications of such

claims or formulations?• hierarchy of the verbal and the visual media• power relations • It is a means of demonstrating dominance

and power. (15)

W. J. T. Mitchell and James Heffernan: • Ekphrastic texts project the visual as ”other to

language”.

What does the other (or Other) imply?

Expanding the definition of ekphrasis

Claus Clüver:• the verbalisation of real or fictitious texts

composed in a non-verbal sign system (17)Sigling Bruhn:• The representation in one medium of a real

or fictitious text composed in another medium (17)

→ visual representation of a verbal representation (18) vs verbal representation of a visual representation (cf. Heffernan’s definition 13)

Laura M. Sager Eidt:• the verbalisation, quotation or dramatization

of real or fictitious texts composed in another sign system (19)

Visual Ekphrasis:Thomas Struth, Galleria dell’Accademia I,

Venedig [Venice], 1992 (184.5 x 228.3 cm)

Visual Ekphrasis:Thomas Struth, Kunsthistorisches Museum

III, Wien [Vienna], 1989 (187 x 145 cm)

Visual Ekphrasis:Thomas Struth, National Gallery 1,

London; 1989 (182 x 147 cm )

Thomas Struth, Museum Photographs

He often implies auditory or kinetic elements into the photographs

→ temporal elements• gestures• conversations• slipping out-of-focus visitors• blurred contours of figures → movement• body positions• gaze of the viewers Frozen in a pose of movement the visitors in fact seem to

represent tableaux vivants.The paintings’ spaces and figures often seem to extend to the

spaces and people of the photograph.Many of Struth’s photographs blur the boundaries between

photograph and painting [...].

Thomas Struth, Museum Photographs

Seeing these photographs as mise-en-scène or film stills makes it possible to interpret them as examples of visual ekphrasis in two ways.

First, most of them imply or even directly show instances of verbal ekphrasis, where museum visitors hear, read or talk about the art works shown, often with accompanying gestures or bodily movements. With their implication of speech and movement, these photos are a dramatization of different forms of interaction between paintings and people. In so far as ekphrasis is a kind of reception, the subject of these photographs, then, is ekphrasis in various forms and varying degrees of intensity.

Second, in representing the museum visitors in a tableau or an extension of the paintings in the museums, Struth provides a type of visual ekphrasis of the art works. By photographing the people in poses and colors resembling those of the paintings and from a camera position that fuses the two levels, Struth updates the paintings, and indicates the bond between art and life as well as the relevancy of and need for art in contemporary society.