Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis

1.     Oldest type of writing about art in the West.

a.     Created by the Greeks.

2.     The goal is to make the reader envision the thing described as if were physically present.

3.     Ekphrasis can be a combination of imagination and the skill of the writer.

4.     Homer and the description of Achilles shield.

a.     A comparison of the visual and verbal. 

                                               i.     What could and could not be part of the shield.

1.     Physical descriptions versus its usage.

b.     The thing seems real in the imagination of reader, despite the fact that it could not exist.

5.     In the Renaissance, rhetoric became fashionable and artists used ekphrastic descriptions to make art that never existed.

6.     Coffee table books use Ekphrasis to guide the reader throught the art.

7.     Flowery language of a work that creates a visual for the reader.

a.     Heavy use of adjectives, size, color, dimension, etc. 

b.     The writer is interpreting for the reader.

c.      Rich in language.

d.     Sentences build on what came before.

e.     Details build on one another, so the relationships among them are made clear.

Marjorie Munsterberg - Art 561 - Week 1 Notes