Ekphrasis now

Ekphrasis Now

As long as art has existed, people have responded to it with the written word—with ekphrasis, from the Greek “to recount or describe.” How do we reconcile the ancient human impulse to describe the visual in words with the contemporary decline in art criticism? Has art criticism been replaced by a shift to other forms, such as poetry, in the broader cultural landscape? This panel examines ekphrasis, other forms of creative writing that respond to works of art. We welcome scholarly studies of ekphrastic texts (John Keats’ poem, Ode to a Grecian Urn, and W. H. Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts are two well-known examples), as well as informal talks and readings from practitioners of the genre, including poets, filmmakers, screenwriters, novelists, and others. We aim to explore the relationships between works of art and creative writing, evaluating the formal, representational, and expressive intersections that generate meaning and provoke emotion. We ask how ekphrastic practices add or subtract cultural, social, and political value to images and words—and whether the only response to art is, in fact, art.