Imaging Inscape

This iconography was obtained after a prayer to the spirit of intelligence and of light to reveal itself by a form. A shower of lights and of intelligences. Luminous olives with trails and bent stem. Projected rays. These falls of lights, intelligences, understandings, according to the degree of their virtue will constitute the spirits of varied hierarchy and the beings which will reach carnal incorporation.

'Imaging Inscape: The Human Soul' is the title of Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc's 1913 book whereby he discloses the results of his experiments with photography and its ability to capture images of the invisible spirit world, as in the image above. 'Imaging Inscape' is also as a title, perfect for my research into the visualisation of interoception. 

The 'inscape' is what I am visualising when I mentally delve down below the skin. It was the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who I think first defined the "Inscape", using the word to refer to the unique, inner identity of a thing, as well as a human being's interior mental landscape. Baraduc's use of the word I presume is in acknowledgement of Hopkins, who coined the word "inscape" to describe the inner essential character or "thisness" of a natural object, person or landscape. For him it was the distinct, dynamic pattern that constituted a being's identity, often perceived by Hopkins, as a fleeting, sacred and intense moment of beauty that revealed that everything was the result of God's creation and therefore at its core it had to be beautiful and wonderful. Hopkins uses 'inscape' to wondrous effect in his poetry. In 'As Kingfishers Catch Fire', each element has a special something that is essential to its being. the kingfishers catch fire as opposed to the dragonflies drawing flame. Just close your eyes and think of them both and their differences. The sudden dart of a kingfisher is like a flash seen against the dark of a river bank, the dragonfly flits along, its wings drawing flame as it crystallises the sunlight and dances with it from flower to flower. Hopkins sums up his idea in the phrase, 'Each mortal thing does one thing and the same', telling us that everything has a unique something that is essential to its identity. 

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: illustration in 1862 letter to Charles Luxmoore

It is no surprise therefore that Hopkins loved drawing and was in his drawings looking for that unique something that was essential to a thing's identity. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Landscape: Flowing water

Text and image flow together in Hopkins, his awareness of the visual nature of reality penetrating his words as well as his eyes. His landscape is an 'inscape' as well as an 'outscape'. His drawings being very straightforward, with no pretension, simple records of a few moments of looking.

Beech, Godshill Church behind Fr. Appledercombe

Drawing of flower forms

Hopkins also draws in his letters, in my mind perhaps at exactly the same time that Van Gogh was drawing in his letters. Both men were of a religious cast of mind, Van Gogh wanting to become a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church. His intense piety leading him at one point to work as a missionary in Belgium, Hopkins converting to Catholicism and working in both England and Ireland as a priest. Both men found a way to embed their piety into their art, one into painting and the other into poetry.

The 'iconography' as Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc termed his images, that sits at the top of this post, was obtained after a prayer to the spirit of intelligence and of light. Baraduc is like Van Gogh and Hopkins of a religious cast of mind. I tend to think of my own work as touching upon some sort of secular idea of the other, of spiritual forces that are more in common with the findings of contemporary physics, both which nevertheless seek to probe beyond what we can see and feel with the limits of our outer perceptual organs. Our inner feelings it seems to me are still surrounded by mystery and never fully open to objective clarity. It is in that gap between knowing and intuiting that art can operate and as it does I make no apologies for it touching upon the spiritual, an admission that I know will be for some readers also an admission of failure and I will be accused of hiding behind the mumbo jumbo of mysticism but if so, so be it.

An exploration of interoceptual feelings: Painted glass

I'm writing this post in a hotel room in Ganz, resting up after a day hosting workshops and working with the curators at Forum Stadtpark. The installation that houses my work, is one that is in my mind designed to echo the environment of an older man, like myself, who lives in a room of his own, unlike myself, that is composed of furniture he bought back in the 1980s. As the environment was constructed I was reminded of an older post, whereby I was reflecting upon how then current exhibitions were being hung. As the installation evolved, minds were changed many times but hopefully we got there in the end. Today there is going to be a 'round-table' and I get to speak about what I'm doing. Tomorrow the exhibition opens. 

Poster advertising tonight's talk

As I put the talk together for this evening I begin to wonder about 'instress': If 'inscape' is about that inner unique identity of things, 'instress' is the force or energy, that holds the inscape together and allows the viewer to experience it. Instress was seen by Hopkins as the power that carries the inscape into the mind of the observer. I wonder of that could be another name for 'art'. Thinking of which, here are a few shots of the exhibition.

Some of the lino cuts made as votives

I'm seeking to find visible symbols of invisible truths, attempting to externalise what are inner sensations and making feelings concrete, by embedding expression into imagery. All facets of a way of thinking that I have for a while now, thought of as animist. Rather than treating the non human world as a passive resource, animist thinking engages with it in terms of reciprocal relationships, therefore the objects I make also have their own agency, possessing powers that can engage with others and become agents for change. 

Reference:

The Human Soul: Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc

See also:

From making votives to visualising interoception

Witnesses of the invisible

Lines as symbols of invisible forces

Drawing into installation

Bob Dylan and Drawing

John Lennon

Of my two main adolescent musical influences John Lennon was the only one who I was aware of at the time that drew as well as made music, but it was Bob Dylan who opened my eyes, because his music was as much visual as verbal, as much about image as melody. I'm reminded of this because Bob Dylan was performing in Leeds this last week and at exactly the same time as he was on stage at the First Direct Arena, I was sitting in the City Varieties Theatre listening to O'Hooley & Tidow performing one of their last shows before formally ending their musical collaboration. At one point during the evening Heidi Tidow reminded us that Dylan was playing at the same time within a few hundred yards and thanked the audience for choosing to see them instead. Their song 'Two Mothers' is about the universal experience of having a mother and becoming one and as a lesbian couple they are very aware of situations where a child is given away to new mothers, who will now have to undertake the responsibility to sing lullabies. They are regarded as being part of a continuing folk tradition and are artists local to my West Yorkshire area; Dylan's example still encouraging others to get on stage and perform songs about their lives, even though they may be very different to the one that Dylan told us about. In many ways I felt that I was honouring my debt to Dylan by being there rather than going to see him, he doesn't need my support and if I had been to see him, it would have been more about being in the same room as him, than about hearing new stories from folk songs. His model, one he inherited from Woody Guthrie and many others, of making musical poetry out of the condition of the world, is hopefully one that will continue to be passed on, generation to generation.

 'Two Mothers': O'Hooley & Tidow

It was Dylan that opened my mind many years ago to the possibility of making art out of experience. My teenager mind was listening to lyrics such as "Put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground", (from 'Ballard of a Thin Man': Highway 61: Revisited), and as it did it visualised the words for me, I could clearly see that image of eyes sitting in a pocket and a nose pressed to the ground; it was a bit like being on an acid trip without having to take acid. Dylan's voice was for me the voice of a contemporary poet, it was authentic in a way that 'good' singers never were for me. Perhaps I don't have a very musical ear, but there was an edge to how he came across that said, "I mean this, like it or not, this is how I see the world." 

One thing I learnt quite early on was that you shouldn't try to analyze his songs. Friends who just didn't get it, would say to me, "But what does it mean?" At the time I found it hard to explain that the meaning emerges as a feeling that you get from the interplay of lyrics, melody and his voice and is never fixed. His writing was I felt and still do, deliberately ambiguous and when embedded into his music the totality creates an overall atmosphere that I would as a teenager sink into and use to leave the world behind. I liked the fact that he could be surreal, a documentary maker, a poet that would write about a memory or a heartache, be outraged, be funny or perhaps be just trying to capture a feeling that he had. I felt I wanted to say stuff about all these things too, but I was tongue tied. Above all, I felt that his art (and I really did feel that what he was doing was art), was an expression of what it feels like to be a human being, trying to make sense of being alive and that it seemed to me was probably the most amazing thing that any human being could want to do. His records shaped me, my decision to be an artist, was very much made because I recognised something about the creative spirit in myself, something I first saw as I glimpsed myself through the lens of his words. 

I still listen with eager ears to any new recording that he might make, especially as we have both continued to make art as we have aged. I dread to hear that he might have died, as I fear that something of myself will die with him. He has in my mind, been a fellow traveller for over 60 years and I feel I understand why he still needs to tour, even though he is now in his 80s. Each time he plays those songs, he must find something new in them. The times that his work emerges into change and as they do, reception morphs; the song never remains the same. The older I get, I think I work harder. The more work I do, the more I realise there is more to say. I sense that he feels that too. Why stop, what else would you do? 

In Love minus Zero no Limit', there is a line "With your mercury mouth in the missionary times", an image I remember arose in my mind as I first heard it; a certain languid feeling, slid into a taste of metal and as it did it poisoned the image I had begun to draw in my mind, making it awkward and difficult to accept. Out of those moments of difficulty I began to get a handle on what this art stuff was about, it was making the familiar strange and it was hard work. As I got older and became 'professional', I continued to find images in his lyrics that would inspire me, especially when he left me surprised by how he put things. I have even made drawings in the past responding to what critics have said is Dylan's worst song, 'Wiggle, Wriggle', from 'Under a Red Sky; the line ''Wiggle 'til you're high, wiggle 'til you're higher, Wiggle 'til you vomit fire', somehow hit me splat in my insides. I always did wriggle too much, my father said I suffered from St. Vitus Dance, I could never keep still and even now I find it difficult to sit down and watch a TV programme, without having to jerk my leg around, raise my arms or keep twisting my neck. It was that album that reminded me of the power of nursery rhymes and that sometimes you just had to go back to being a child if you wanted to renew yourself. I suspected Dylan had children around at the time, as I did and somehow I had to let their world into mine. 

Sketchbook page: Idea for fire/eye vomit

I'm still making images about vomiting up what's inside

Over the last few years we have seen more and more of Dylan's visual artwork. He sometimes couples his hand written out lyrics with his own illustrations, as in the image and text pairing below of 'Lay Lady Lay'. But these images although competent enough, are not going to open any new perceptual doors for me. I can see that he enjoys making them and everyone needs a way of releasing those images that stack up in your head but at the end of the day it is still his lyrics and the way he sings them that move me. 

Bob Dylan: Lay Lady Lay

Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself," contains the line, "I contain multitudes" and in 2020 Dylan revisited the idea himself, this time listing the people who crowd within him, it was as if they were all trying to get out. But as they do they climb over each other and a multi-headed creature begins to emerge; all push and shove, all masters but no leaders. We are all like that, underneath the thin skin of ourselves lives a congregation of others and this is perhaps Dylan's main legacy. He reminds us that we are all multiples of the many, that we inherit the forms of others and that there is no such thing as a truly unique individual. We take what we are given and we reweave the elements into new clothes. An attempt to get those clothes to fit perhaps being what many artists spend most of their time doing.

There is also something about Dylan's voice, that rough and worn thing that is not at all lovely, but which gives authenticity to the lyrics. It is for myself a sensibility akin to Cézanne's touch, sometimes crude, harsh and ugly and yet at other times exquisitely sensitive but always totally sincere. When at its best art is 'artless', it just is what it is. Style it seems to me is art's enemy, an infiltrator that snuck into the building via aesthetics. I was never a gifted draftsman, always a clumsy maker and it took me a long time to accept that, but once I did, I felt the work I began to do became more honest and less an attempt to cover up visual weakness with intellect. 

Bob's voice when young was the sound of my adolescent mind

So yes I'm still an adolescent in some ways, never getting over a first love. I remember that I used to watch snails in the garden when I was very small, I was fascinated, I wanted to know them and inhabit their world.  I still love snails and sometimes make images based on them, defenceless, without their shells. Something old and yet always new. Dylan was often accused of plagiarism but we are all plagiarists, if not we would never be able to communicate with each other, he takes Whitman's line and re-digests it, acknowledging the fact that without Whitman there would be no Dylan, but without Dylan many of us, including myself, would never have read Whitman. We are all interconnected and inseparable from the world, something we should acknowledge or else we pretend that we are self determined isolationists, a self conceit bolstered by Capitalism, one that it seems to me, has led us to destroy the very ecosystems that we evolved within.  

The nearest Bob Dylan recordings to a sketchbook are perhaps the Basement Tapes and the song within that double album that sums up Dylan's effect on myself is 'Lo and Behold'. Three words that suggest something wonderful is happening, but when you look again at the lyrics they are all about just ordinary things, but ordinary things going somewhere strange.

I bought my girl
A herd of moose
One she could call her own
Well, she came out the very next day
To see where they had flown

No explication, no explanation, just plain odd. 

Snail votive

See also:

Drawing and wellbeing

Eye music

Andrew Lister Another artist who listened to Bob Dylan

A review of Pushing Paper A reminder to myself of how often Dylan comes to mind

Fine art?

The poetry of the body

Gaston Bachelard's 'The Poetry of Space' was at one time an essential text to read. It gave artists a rationale that they could use to value the poetic (i.e. non scientific) way that they shaped lived experiences and his text demonstrated how emotional responses to spaces like attics, cellars or even drawers, could be communicated through a more poetic understanding.  

What I'm looking for is a companion volume, 'The Poetry of the Body'. Something that like a dérive, eventually finds purpose in wondering about. My unsettled mind, as it flitters around and alights on stuff and then dips into things, never quite settles. I cant seem to drill down and deeply focus on one thing or another, each of my posts skips around an idea, but never quite settles down and I'm looking for some sort of confirmation that this is ok, this is normal.

I was watching a butterfly in the garden yesterday. It seemed to be randomly drifting around, following the shifting air currents as a light breeze passed through the hedge. Then it settled on an old stuffed textile. The cloth was now a pale yellow, a ghost of its former self, but it  offered a moment of warmth to the butterfly, that then spread out its brown spotted wings as a gift to the world. As it bathed in the sun, the surface it had happened upon became something else, a spot for sunbathing. It was a sunbathing spot that hosted a sunbathing moment, like all the billions of moments that butterflies of this sort had had in their pasts and futures. A moment that I now thought was what that old thrown out stuffed cloth had been made for. It was already degrading, it had the grime of nature already woven into its texture, touches of green were now growing through its tight matrix of fibres and this moment, was perhaps the moment of its transformation, woven back into the matrix it had emerged from. 

The speckled wood

 A moment of inconsequence, but it felt more real to me than the many systems of thinking and categories of connections that I had been wrestling with over the last few years. 

I sitt in a plastic red chair, writing about something I felt yesterday. As I lean forward to write, I'm aware my shirt lifts away from my lower back and I feel the cold air that this lets move across my skin. The chair exerts pressure to my upper thighs and I can rock slightly from one side to the other to make myself more aware of this. I cough occasionally, I am getting over a nasty viral infection that I have had to struggle against over the last two weeks. I wonder how many more I will succumb to in the future, before one takes a hold that I cant shift. I have an itch that I cant really get at as it sits between my shoulder blades, but I don't mind, it helps make me aware of that part of my body and it guides me to an ache that sits across the top of my shoulders. My attention, like that of the butterfly's, flits around and then I forget these body sensations because something else takes my attention. The flow of awareness, the impact of constantly occurring qualia on my perceptual screen, is like a mist that I walk through and as things appear to solidify themselves as they emerge out of this mist, I tend to mostly let them fade back again, unless it feels as if they hold some sort of importance. 

For a brief moment this morning I saw something come into focus as I was looking at the work of Flora Joan, who is an acupuncturist and artist. She is part of 'The Nature of the Points' a group based in Amsterdam who have been thinking and acting within a territory that straddles visualisation and healing.

Tongue and diagnostics: Flora Joan

Tongue reflexology

The tongue can be used as a diagnostic tool and it can be used to assess the flow of Qi (energy) in the body. I was interested in Flora Joan's illustration because she was bringing together elements from both inside and outside traditional Chinese medicine, in particular her own focus on a return to nature. Looking at the range of activities that take place under the umbrella of 'The Nature of the Points', also helped me develop my own thoughts on how useful my work on the visualisation of interoception was and I could see a clear link between the work they do and what I'm attempting. 

Visualisations of subjective models of the body's interior

I have cardiac arrhythmia and certain medical and music scholars have speculated that Beethoven may also have had the same condition. In his musical scores he sometime uses asymmetrical rhythmical patterns and changes in tempo, that could possibly mirror the effects of an irregular heartbeat. This aspect of his work has also been linked to a correlation between the known times when it is argued he would have experienced stress or a very high emotional connection with what he was engaging with. It is impossible to prove this of course, but it is another of those possibilities or what ifs, that help me frame up what I'm thinking about in relation to emotion and its communication. 

An invisible hand about to close on the chest

Sometimes I dream about my inner body being squeezed and then realise its my heart trying to tell me something. Out of dreams, sometimes emerge images that sit between the conscious and the unconscious mind, they can be an alternative poetry of the body. 

I think of Beethoven is a giant of poetry, particularly in the way his music's expressive power and ability to evoke emotions, goes right down to my body's core. I 'feel' his emotional intensity, as a type of 'sound poetry', something that I intuitively feel ought to be possible as 'visual poetry' as well. 

The externalisation of an idea of a headache

I have attempted to visualise inner sensations in a variety of ways and after running several workshops with people looking at how others can visualise interoceptual experiences, am now very aware of the necessary time it takes for people to confront the difficulties that face them when attempting to learn a new or developing language. Often you need to show a cliché in order to open a pathway towards an alternative.

Headache

Sometimes I have to rely on existing conventions and deal with clichés, as in the image of a headache I came up with above. This was an image arrived at by consensus but which I now feel could go on the side of a packet of Anadin. Which in itself might be a good thing, but I have never thought of my work as graphic design for pharmaceutical companies. 

An image of sinusitis intuitively feels to me that it is much more interesting.

Headache: Sinusitis

This is a more personalised image, one made as a consequence of a conversation, so it is an actual 'portrait' of two people's interoceptual experience, rather than a generic visual idea. Perhaps this is where the value of the work lies and that by tapping into individual experiences and trying to make them visible; am I finally making some sort of embodied visual poetry?

See also:

Drawing the internal body

Drawing and healing

Drawing and urban acupuncture 

Sensuous aggregates 

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis is the verbal or written representation of a visual representation. It is often used as a way to stage an encounter between mediums, a sort of test bed whereby you can gage either the effectiveness of one or the other in terms of its communicative ability, or to judge the poetry of the experience. Therefore in terms of writing, ekphrasis is often thought of as a poetic form, but it doesn't have to be and there was much, I think I remember, written about the difference in approach to ekphasis between Greek and Roman writers. The Greeks insisting that recited poetry was the pure form and that prose was a more debased form of writing. True ekphrasis therefore being a verbal representation of a visual representation.

The use of ekphrasis as a rhetorical device is usually traced back to Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad. Homer uses a long description of the shield and its making as a sort of interlude in the poem, a space in a fast paced narrative, whereby the everyday scenes that make up the decoration of the shield, give us a vision of the ordinary lives of non-heroic Greeks. (Ordinary in those days still including lots of gore and fighting) This interlude gives us the necessary mental space to contemplate the coming horror of superhuman action and emotions. Achilles has heard that Patrocolus his old friend from boyhood is dead, not just that but he died pretending to be Achilles, as he thought by doing this he could galvanise the troops to follow him in a Greek victory; as Achilles had at the time refused to fight. The armour Achilles had lent him now stripped from the body by Hector, and because of this Achilles now falls into an intense rage striding out in front of the battlefield with flames burning from his head, terrifying the Trojans as he screams both for vengeance and the stupidity of his own actions.

Perhaps time to set up that encounter between mediums. Achilles' mother the sea goddess Thetis, goes to the God Hephaestus and pleads for him to make new armour to replace that taken from the body of Patrocolus by Hector. Hephaestus agrees to make the armour and as he does Homer develops a vivid description of the shield as it emerges from his workshop forging. This is the passage in full:

First fashioned he a shield, great and sturdy, adorning it cunningly in every part, and round about it set a bright rim, threefold and glittering, and therefrom made fast a silver baldric. Five were the layers of the shield itself; and on it he wrought many curious devices with cunning skill. Therein he wrought the earth, therein the heavens therein the sea, and the unwearied sun, and the moon at the full, and therein all the constellations wherewith heaven is crowned—the Pleiades, and the Hyades and the mighty Orion, and the Bear, that men call also the Wain, that circleth ever in her place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean. Therein fashioned he also two cities of mortal men exceeding fair. In the one there were marriages and feastings, and by the light of the blazing torches they were leading the brides from their bowers through the city, and loud rose the bridal song. And young men were whirling in the dance, and in their midst flutes and lyres sounded continually; and there the women stood each before her door and marvelled. But the folk were gathered in the place of assembly; for there a strife had arisen, and two men were striving about the blood-price of a man slain; the one avowed that he had paid all, declaring his cause to the people, but the other refused to accept aught; and each was fain to win the issue on the word of a daysman. Moreover, the folk were cheering both, shewing favour to this side and to that. And heralds held back the folk, and the elders were sitting upon polished stones in the sacred circle, holding in their hands the staves of the loud-voiced heralds. Therewith then would they spring up and give judgment, each in turn. And in the midst lay two talents of gold, to be given to him whoso among them should utter the most righteous judgment. But around the other city lay in leaguer two hosts of warriors gleaming in armour. And twofold plans found favour with them, either to lay waste the town or to divide in portions twain all the substance that the lovely city contained within. Howbeit the besieged would nowise hearken thereto, but were arming to meet the foe in an ambush. The wall were their dear wives and little children guarding,  as they stood thereon, and therewithal the men that were holden of old age; but the rest were faring forth, led of Ares and Pallas Athene, both fashioned in gold, and of gold was the raiment wherewith they were clad. Goodly were they and tall in their harness, as beseemeth gods, clear to view amid the rest, and the folk at their feet were smaller. But when they were come to the place where it seemed good unto them to set their ambush, in a river-bed where was a watering-place for all herds alike, there they sate them down, clothed about with flaming bronze. Thereafter were two scouts set by them apart from the host, waiting till they should have sight of the sheep and sleek cattle. And these came presently, and two herdsmen followed with them playing upon pipes; and of the guile wist they not at all. But the liers-in-wait, when they saw these coming on, rushed forth against them and speedily cut off the herds of cattle and fair flocks of white-fleeced sheep, and slew the herdsmen withal. But the besiegers, as they sat before the places of gathering and heard much tumult among the kine, mounted forthwith behind their high-stepping horses, and set out thitherward, and speedily came upon them. Then set they their battle in array and fought beside the river banks, and were ever smiting one another with bronze-tipped spears. And amid them Strife and Tumult joined in the fray, and deadly Fate, grasping one man alive, fresh-wounded, another without a wound, and another she dragged dead through the mellay by the feet; and the raiment that she had about her shoulders was red with the blood of men. Even as living mortals joined they in the fray and fought; and they were haling away each the bodies of the others' slain. Therein he set also soft fallow-land, rich tilth and wide, that was three times ploughed; and ploughers full many therein were wheeling their yokes and driving them this way and that. And whensoever after turning they came to the headland of the field, then would a man come forth to each and give into his hands a cup of honey-sweet wine; and the ploughmen would turn them in the furrows, eager to reach the headland of the deep tilth. And the field grew black behind and seemed verily as it had been ploughed, for all that it was of gold; herein was the great marvel of the work. Therein he set also a king's demesne-land, wherein labourers were reaping, bearing sharp sickles in their hands. Some handfuls were falling in rows to the ground along the swathe, while others the binders of sheaves were binding with twisted ropes of straw. Three binders stood hard by them, while behind them boys would gather the handfuls, and bearing them in their arms would busily give them to the binders; and among them the king, staff in hand, was standing in silence at the swathe, joying in his heart. And heralds apart beneath an oak were making ready a feast, and were dressing a great ox they had slain for sacrifice; and the women sprinkled the flesh with white barley in abundance, for the workers' mid-day meal. Therein he set also a vineyard heavily laden with clusters, a vineyard fair and wrought of gold; black were the grapes, and the vines were set up throughout on silver poles. And around it he drave a trench of cyanus, and about that a fence of tin; and one single path led thereto, whereby the vintagers went and came, whensoever they gathered the vintage. And maidens and youths in childish glee were bearing the honey-sweet fruit in wicker baskets. And in their midst a boy made pleasant music with a clear-toned lyre, and thereto sang sweetly the Linos-song with his delicate voice; and his fellows beating the earth in unison therewith followed on with bounding feet mid dance and shoutings. And therein he wrought a herd of straight-horned kine: the kine were fashioned of gold and tin, and with lowing hasted they forth from byre to pasture beside the sounding river, beside the waving reed. And golden were the herdsmen that walked beside the kine, four in number, and nine dogs swift of foot followed after them. But two dread lions amid the foremost kine were holding a loud-lowing bull, and he, bellowing mightily, was haled of them, while after him pursued the dogs and young men. The lions twain had rent the hide of the great bull, and were devouring the inward parts and the black blood, while the herdsmen vainly sought to fright them, tarring on the swift hounds. Howbeit these shrank from fastening on the lions, but stood hard by and barked and sprang aside. Therein also the famed god of the two strong arms wrought a pasture in a fair dell, a great pasture of white-fleeced sheep, and folds, and roofed huts, and pens. Therein furthermore the famed god of the two strong arms cunningly wrought a dancing-floor like unto that which in wide Cnosus Daedalus fashioned of old for fair-tressed Ariadne. There were youths dancing and maidens of the price of many cattle, holding their hands upon the wrists one of the other. Of these the maidens were clad in fine linen, while the youths wore well-woven tunics faintly glistening with oil; and the maidens had fair chaplets, and the youths had daggers of gold hanging from silver baldrics. Now would they run round with cunning feet exceeding lightly, as when a potter sitteth by his wheel that is fitted between his hands and maketh trial of it whether it will run; and now again would they run in rows toward each other. And a great company stood around the lovely dance, taking joy therein; and two tumblers whirled up and down through the midst of them as leaders in the dance. Therein he set also the great might of the river Oceanus, around the uttermost rim of the strongly-wrought shield. 

The Iliad Book 18, lines 478–608

Ekphrasis allows Homer two layers of communication, the first and most important via the scenes as they are laid out around the shield, which are set out rather like the script for a graphic novel and secondly those references to the metalwork that has been worked on in the forge of Hephaestus, whereby Homer points to the selective use of tin, gold, silver etc. thus materially reenforcing the narrative. 

I have thought myself that the structure of the shield might have been based on one of the forms of memory recall devices that were used before the development of writing as an everyday recording device. Memory palaces or theatres as they have been called, all of which are basically structures you can mentally walk through and as you did you could retrieve parts of a long complicated narrative that you needed to remember. (All described in detail in Frances Yates: The Art of Memory). 

One way of visually organising the shield

The text feels quite long, but it was originally meant to be spoken, or recited, a particular 'poetic' voice would have intoned this epic poem and as it is such a long piece, I suspect specialists would have developed all sorts of 'tricks of the trade' to ensure they both remembered what they had to declaim and that they had the necessary voice control to ensure a proper emphasis was placed on the different emotional encounters we are taken into.

The translation of this passage into a visual object is another fascinating aspect of the ekphrasis encounter.

Alexander Pope
Diagram for Achilles’ Shield 

The poet Alexander Pope decided to rewrite the Iliad for an 18th century audience and as part of his research he decided to make a diagram of the shield, one not unlike the diagram already used. What is interesting here is that a visual methodology, the diagram, is being used by a wordsmith, the poet in order to come to a better understanding of another poet's words.

The Victorians were fascinated by Classical Greek culture and as they prided themselves that their own culture had great craftsmen too, copies of what was an imaginary object were commissioned.

Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, the London-based royal goldsmiths and jewellers, used 24 drawings and 5 models drawn up and made by John Flaxman over a period of approximately seven years, to create a copy of the shield. He received a first payment of 100 guineas 'for the beautiful design of the shield of Achilles' and a further payment of £200 for the designs on 4 January 1817 and a payment of £525 for the models on 20 January 1818. (Approximately £80,000 in today's money) The final model probably made in wax or clay, was then cast in plaster, and the finer details carved into it. Three bronze casts were made, followed by five cast in silver, one of which was bought by George IV in early 1821 and which remains in the Royal Collection.

Rundell, Bridge and Rundell: The Shield of Achilles

John Flaxman: War: Design for the shield of Achilles

1832 illustration: Unknown artist

Angelo Monticelli (1778 – 1837)

As well as Flaxman's designs and Rundell, Bridge and Rundell's recreation, several artists were commissioned to make illustrations based on Homer's text. What is fascinating is that eventually the shield settles down into a visual idea, one fashioned by drawing, rather than making, which is interesting, especially that I haven't seen any references to recreations trying to make for example; "a vineyard fair and wrought of gold; black were the grapes, and the vines were set up throughout on silver poles"; a series of visual effects that were made, I presume, in Homer's imagination, by welding and / or embedding different materials together.

So what was made initially "out of a mouthful of air", as the poet Yates would put it, was eventually written down in Greek, translated into English via Latin and French versions and this one particular imaginary object, was then reverse engineered via its visualisation through drawing, to be eventually reconstructed as an actual metal shield.

As to the encounter between mediums, and being able to gage the effectiveness of one or the other in terms of communicative ability, I think the issue is that the idea was first and foremost poetic, and the natural medium for the description was a verbal one. As we read the text, we get a glimpse of what it would have been like to hear it recited, and when we see the reconstruction, we begin to realise no matter how well the words are used as a pattern from which to create an actual artefact, the complexity of Homer's original thinking is over simplified and what we are left with is a shallow version of a God's design, which could never be copied by mere mortals, because it was an idea and never a reality. 

See also:

Drawing with words

Drawing as writing

Drawing as translation

Translation: Drawing between languages

William Blake at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge

Casper David Friedrich: Sea at sunrise

William Blake’s Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge is a wonderful exhibition, so good that I had to spend two days in Cambridge, so that I could go back and look twice. The quality and range of the images is extraordinary and it is not just Blake's work that you need to see. For instance there are images by Casper David Friedrich, that reminded me that it is possible to create landscapes that glow with mystic spirituality, such as 'Sea at sunrise', images that need to be seen in the flesh if you really want to get an idea of their intensity. The issue about 'Sea at sunrise' being that the image is stripped down to almost nothing, except the play of light as it vibrates through the air and dances on water. Light of course in Friedrich's case, being a metaphor for the constant presence of God, but for myself a reminder that the Sun is the shaper of all life on Earth, and that life originated in the sun energy charged chemical soup that we call the sea.

I was also fascinated by the diagrammatic work of Jakob Böhme. Some of the plates illustrating his ideas were printed onto layers, so that flaps could be lifted and you could see underneath. 

The Third Table

As soon as I began researching Böhme, I found a theosophical hermetic illustration of the fiery soul. The soul is, according to Böhme, in 'its natural condition' when burning. When the heart is represented upside down, it is immersed in the fire of anger. However, through the sacrament of baptism, the soul receives the fire of love and anger is transformed into love. I was very interested in this, as I'm working on how to visualise emotions, and it seems to me that they can migrate, and as they do, I begin to see affinities between them, anger being very close to love, the one often being triggered by feelings instigated by the other. His diagrams reminded me that we haven't really moved on that much further since then, an article from the Dark Energy Institute about how the Quantum of the Void compares to the Quantum of the Physical Universe, when diagrammed, would I suspect look very like one of Böhme's ideas. 

The fiery soul 

As well as being introduced to some things I hadn't come across before, perhaps it was the 'intensity' of people's visions that I was most impressed with in this exhibition, all of the works and artists represented, managed to communicate a total commitment to some sort of psychic command of visual language. Blake is of course the most well known of the artists in England and his influence on Samuel Palmer, who is also represented in this exhibition, was clear to see, but it is the chance to see a collection of Blake's images, exhibited in sequences that has the most powerful effect. I was soon wondering, because of the sequential nature of his art, how he would have responded to the comic book tradition, would he have been a sort of mystic Robert Crumb?

Robert Crumb: Genesis

Thoughts of this type still emerge from my brain, as it was shaped like so many children of the 1950s by having to go to Sunday School for most of our formative years. Therefore the Bible, whether or not we eventually decided to be atheists, would loom large in our creative imaginations. No matter how hard I try to intellectually move beyond notions such as 'good' and 'evil', an all seeing God and a Saviour who died for us all, my neurological wiring from those experiences, is still in place. 

William Blake: America

I had not seen all of Blake's work in the flesh and in particular had not seen a collection of prints from his 'America' plates before. After looking at them and thinking about how intense the images were and how much could be achieved within such a small surface area, I was fired up to get back to making some prints of my own, this time to perhaps use the new Risographic machine that has just been installed in the university. Good exhibitions always excite me to make more work of my own, they remind me of how wonderful art can be and of how it doesn't seem to go out of date. What Blake was trying to communicate, seemed to me to be as powerful as anything done today and it hit home, right to the heart; but not only Blake, other artists from the same era who had also been selected for this exhibition such as Philipp Otto Runge, all of whom were trying to find visual metaphors for a difficult time of revolution and changing social order. 

Philipp Otto Runge

Philipp Otto Runge

I thought Blake stood up very well in comparison to his European counterparts, in particular I thought his visual language was more expressive, especially in the way he pushed the human body into dramatic shapes and positions designed to heighten the body's expressive potential. The exhibition also includes some of Blake's classic images, as well as others I was not so familiar with, such as his satirical portrait of the Pope.

William Blake: Albion’s Angel Rose from Europe: A Prophecy

Blake: The Dance of Albion

The exhibition is open until the 19th of May 2024, so if at all interested do find time to get down and see it before it closes. 

See also:

Crosshatching as energy carrier

Diagrams from Dante

The Quantum of the Void compared to the Quantum of the Physical Universe

Fuseli and the modern woman