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ART AND LITERATURE SEASON – ACADEMIC RESPONSES
In conjunction with Birmingham Book Festival (Thursday 6 October – Sunday 16 October 2011) the Barber highlighted the relationship between art and literature in a series of special events and workshops during October 2011. As part of the Art and Literature Season, the Barber asked academics at the University of Birmingham to write about the links key works in the art collection have with the literary world. Scroll down to see the works and hear the responses.
Nicolas Poussin (1594 - 1665)
Tancred and Erminia
Rome, about 1634
Oil on canvas
Hear Dr Hugh Adlington, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Birmingham discuss Tancred and Erminia.
Click here
‘Tancred, the Christian hero of Tasso’s epic poem La Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), lies prone after slaying the giant Argantes, who is depicted in the background right. The Saracen princess, Erminia, unrequitedly in love with Tancred, cuts off her hair to bind his wounds, thus betraying her people by aiding the wounded Christian. The raising of Tancred’s left arm by his squire Valfrino, and the presence of the winged putti, signal that the hero will recover and the couple will eventually be united. Tasso’s hugely successful poem inspired frequent adaptations by poets, playwrights and musicians in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, and by painters such as Delacroix, Tiepolo, and Tintoretto. At the heart of the poem lies the crucial emotional dilemma faced by all romantic epic heroes: the internal struggle between the competing calls of love and duty. Poussin dramatises that dilemma here, as Erminia’s love saves the crusader enemy of the Saracens, Tancred. At the same time, by giving his subject the traditional form of a Lamentation over the Dead Christ, Poussin alludes visually to the religious theme of self-sacrifice implicit in Erminia’s act of love.’
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665-1747)
A Woman Looking for Fleas
Bologna, about 1715/20
Oil on canvas
Dr Hugh Adlington, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Birmingham discuss A Woman Looking for Fleas. Click here
‘It is night, and a young, half-undressed woman searches her bosom for fleas, ready to drown them in the pot of water placed at her feet. Two boys spy on the woman from an upper window, impish avatars of our own voyeurism. The flea, and the erotic possibilities of its position on a woman’s breast, featured frequently in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European poetry; French poets in particular, such as Pierre Ronsard, exploited salacious puns on puce, ‘flea’, and pucelle, ‘virgin or maiden’. The most famous and much imitated English poem on the subject, John Donne’s ‘The Flea’, written in the 1590s, puts this tiny insect in the service of seduction, urging its imagined female addressee to ‘Mark but this flea, and mark in this / How little that which thou deny’st me is’. Literary and visual art traditions of the flea’s titillating connotations clearly lie in the background of Crespi’s painting, which knowingly invites us to ‘Mark but this flea’, yet tantalisingly conceals the flea from view.’
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 - 1867)
Paolo and Francesca
Rome, about 1814-20
Oil on canvas
Hear Prof Steve Ellis, English Literature, Department of English, University of Birmingham discuss Paolo and Francesca Click here
‘When Ingres painted this work, in the 1820s, the story of Paolo and Francesca, from the fifth canto of the Inferno, had become one of the most celebrated episodes in Dante’s poem. Artists had the choice of depicting the lovers in Hell, or as here in the scene which led to their death, or in both locations, as with Rossetti’s painting of 1855 in the Tate. The scene is the climactic moment that Francesca recounts in her story when ‘la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante’ (‘he kissed my mouth all quivering’). Here the kiss is given and received rather more demurely, though the strong lines of thrust seen in Paolo’s legs, cloak and sword suggest no lack of erotic possibility. On the other hand, the sense of a quasi-religious veneration could be read into his supplicant posture and the cross symbolism of the sword-hilt at the centre of the painting. To read the painting thus as a confluence of love sacred and profane – with the lurid figure of the assassin, Paolo’s brother Gianciotto, as he creeps out from the curtain, also influencing our reactions – would be to perpetuate some of the ambiguities Romantic commentators saw in Dante himself.’
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824 - 1898)
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
Paris, 1869
Oil on canvas
Hear Dr Jim Mussell, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Birmingham discussing The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. Click here
‘More used to being looked at, Salome here gazes on the figure of John the Baptist, having secured the right to his head. For Oscar Wilde, Salome was a figure of desire who dared to desire in her own right. Here, she is in the background, fully-clothed, and showing no signs of the energetic (and erotic) performance that she has just given for her stepfather. Instead of Salome, our gaze is drawn to St John who, radiant with devotion, kneels naked to the waist with his palms open, waiting for the blow that will send him to heaven. A figure of stillness, a fragile masculinity, he is contrasted with the dynamic executioner, muscles rippling as he performs his grim task. These two figures dominate the composition, but it is Salome’s partially-hidden red gown, the colour of blood and wine, that tells both of the coming of Christ and the violence about to unfold.’
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)
The Blue Bower
London, 1865
Oil on canvas
Hear Sarah Parker, PhD student, Department of English, University of Birmingham discussing The Blue Bower. Click here
‘The viewer has stumbled into The Blue Bower, an unreal and timeless space. We are instantly ensnared by the alluring, even unnerving glance of a femme fatale. She fills the space of this close-quartered bower and she is sumptuously-dressed; her broad, fleshy frame is almost overwhelmed by a green fur-lined robe. Curious jewellery crowns her profusion of gold-red hair, and balances delicately above her exposed chest. Her fingers are poised at the strings of a Japanese koto. This unheard music hints at the rhythms of her lover’s poetry; another medium in which Rossetti sought to create beauty for its own sake. Rossetti captures his mistress in an eternal, frozen moment; the cornflowers in the foreground play on her name. The ‘bower’ is the setting for numerous seductive encounters in literature. The anticipation of such an encounter pervades The Blue Bower; passion-flowers encroach on the sitter as her unwavering gaze forever appraises her victim.’
Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)
The Battle of the Beaux and the Belles
London, about 1896
Pen and black ink on paper
The Beardsley image illustrates The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope.
Hear Dr Valerie Rumbold, Reader, Department of English, University of Birmingham discussing The Battle of the Beaux and the Belles. Click here
‘The Baron, gesturing apologetically, is borne down upon by an enraged Belinda. He’s just taken advantage of her absorption in drinking a delicious – and expensive – cup of coffee to snip off the lock that used to trail symmetrically over the shoulder we can’t see! Belinda looms down upon him menacingly: she frowns and grips her fan like a woman who means business. Behind her the other characters at this exclusive party gather with expressions of hostility, amusement, or alarm – but perhaps closest to the mood of Pope’s artfully ludicrous mock-heroic poem is the small smirking page-boy leaning out from behind the enormous petticoats that guard Belinda’s oh-so-valuable chastity. (Could this centrally-placed figure even stand for Pope himself?) Beardsley’s exaggerated furbelows offer a visual counterpart to Pope’s verbal artifice, which gleefully narrates a silly but potentially sinister practical joke with all the pomp and drama of an epic battle.’
Edmond Xavier Kapp (1890-1978)
Noël Coward
Britain, 1930
Pen, wash, chalk, charcoal on paper
Hear Dr Deborah Longworth, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, University of Birmingham discussing Noël Coward below. Click here
‘‘Why am I always expected to wear a dressing-gown, smoke cigarettes in a long holder and say “Darling, how wonderful”?’, Noel Coward once asked. Edmund Kapp, a caricaturist renowned for his skill in distilling ‘the perfume of personality’, sketches Coward at the height of his celebrity in 1930, the year of Private Lives, a comedy of manners in which a divorced couple, on honeymoon in Deauville with their new spouses, discover they are staying in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. That Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne recognise they still love each other is a not unpredictable outcome of this delicate situation, but as usual with Coward’s plays the intricacies and plausibility of plot are entirely subordinated to fast-paced dialogue with a sting in its tail. Cue three acts of the sophisticated wit and highly mannered cynicism of which Coward was by now the master. The critics, Coward later recalled, described it as ‘“thin, brittle, gossamer, iridescent, and delightfully daring”’. All of which connoted in the public mind cocktails, repartee and irreverent allusions to copulation, thereby causing a gratifying number of respectable people to queue up at the box office’. The critics may have thought what they liked; Private Lives was a sell-out on both sides of the Atlantic.’
Gold Teapot and stand
Engraved with the arms of William Beckford (1759-1844), author of the gothic novel Vathek.
London, 1785
Hear Dr Kate Rumbold, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Birmingham discussing William Beckford’s gold teapot stand. Click here
‘Nothing says luxury like a gold teapot, and William Beckford, described by Lord Byron as ‘England’s wealthiest son’, had several. When he inherited his father’s Wiltshire mansion in 1781, he filled it with an abundance of gold, silver and jewelled objects. His novel, Vathek, is an exaggerated imitation of life, focussing on a proud, spoiled youth, Caliph Vathek, who lives in the Palace of the Five Senses and devotes himself to the pleasures of the flesh. Like the teapot, the novel’s descriptions of sumptuous meals and magic potions turn eating and drinking into a heightened sensory experience. The novel evokes the hedonistic celebrations that marked Beckford’s coming of age; a subsequent public scandal sent him and his wife to Switzerland, where had had this teapot sent to him in 1785. Vathek, published in French the following year, fuses literary genres: the Gothic novel, fascinated with the supernatural, and the Oriental tale, inspired by Arabian Nights. The teapot, likewise, fuses the exotic and the domestic, English design and oriental tea, in one beautiful and striking object.’
Ivory Casket with scenes of chivalry and love
French, Paris, about 1310-40
Ivory, metal fittings
Hear Dr Philippa Semper, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Birmingham discussing the Ivory Casket with scenes of chivalry and love. Click here
‘The tournament scene on top provides a chivalric context; the other images are concerned with unhappy love, often in relation to beasts. For Pyramus and Thisbe love is thwarted by the lion; elsewhere, its potential dark sides of lust and violence are represented by the beast-like wild man from whom the knight must rescue his damsel. Aristotle’s shameful masquerade as a horse to demonstrate his love for Phyllis shows the extremes to which love can bring a man, as does Lancelot’s painful progress across the Sword Bridge. Gawain’s experience of the ‘Marvellous Bed’ is far from delightful, ending in a lion fight. Alongside troublesome beasts are women just as troubling: Isolde with her lover Tristan while betrayed husband Mark watches from a tree, paired with a similarly placed man dispatching a unicorn ensnared by a woman’s beauty. These scenes from medieval romance literature are crammed into sections as if to control their disorderly activity, and unified by the detail that ivory carving allows: patterns of swords and chainmail, leaves and drapery. The casket offers an overarching commentary on the demands and nature of love; a high-born lady, placing her jewels inside, might have been given pause by the message it conveys.’
Robert Nanteuil (about 1623-1678)
Portrait of John Evelyn
Paris, about 1650
Engraving
Hear Carly Watson, PhD student, Department of English, University of Birmingham discussing the Portrait of John Evelyn Click here
‘John Evelyn, the diarist and omnivorous scholar, looks out arrestingly from within a simple oval frame. He’s wrapped in a cloak that hides all but a glimpse of his fancy cravat, and our eyes are drawn to his composed and characterful face. Evelyn was a connoisseur of knowledge in the arts and sciences, and his intellectual habits are summed up perfectly by his Latin motto, meaning ‘Explore everything, keep the best’. The second half of this motto is proudly inscribed on the drapery underneath Evelyn’s portrait, where it says more about him than just the calibre of his learning. Evelyn kept the best of what he found in books, but he also valued people and made friends in the most influential circles of his time. His portrait shows a man whose curiosity and openness put him at the centre of the seventeenth century’s search for knowledge.’