And perhaps it involves the mediation of experience: A still-life, for example, is an account of reality that has already passed through one mediating art...
I don't relate to art as a mediated account of reality, but as a communication by the artist. When I interact with a work of visual art, my response is a response to what the artist has to say. This is qualitatively different, but fundamentally the same sort of thing, as the magic that happens between performers and audience in performance art.
A good ekphrastic poem, it seems to me, uses the poetic art to express the response of the poet to what the artist used the visual art to say. As such, it lets me in on that usually private dialogue between artist and viewer. I may or may not need to see the painting in order to really appreciate the poem, just as one part of an overheard telephone conversation may or may not make sense.
Victoria Gaile
|