Mona Lisa is the most-viewed painting in the world.
And by art, I mean visual art: paintings, sculpture, photographs, mixed-media, films, buildings, installations, even furniture. Writers need art as much as any other source of inspiration. Art objects are things, and as William Carlos William said, “no ideas but in things.” Art is evidence of ideas made visible, as well as evidence of removal: to complete a painting, or a work of sculpture, for example, the artist had to make hundreds or even thousands of decisions about what to include and what to delete, the identical process writers engage in.
“Ekphrasis,” the process of writing about art, should be part of every writer’s practice. It’s a fantastic way of never running out of things to write about.
Writing ekphrastic poetry can take many different paths. To those new to this process, I suggest choosing a work of art that is familiar and straightforward, one you may have seen many times in your life. According to CNN, the most well-known work of art is the Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo DaVinci in the early 16th century. Here’s the list of the top 10:
- “Mona Lisa,” DaVinci, Louvre, Paris
- “The Last Supper,” DaVinci, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan
- “The Starry Night,” van Gogh, MOMA, New York
- “The Scream,” Edvard Munch, National Museum, Oslo
- “Guernica,” Picasso, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid
- “The Kiss,” Gustav Klimt, Upper Belvedere Museum, Vienna,
- “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” Johannes Vermeer, The Hague, Netherlands
- “The Birth of Venus,” Sandro Botticelli, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
- “Las Maninas,” Diego Velazquez, Museo del Prado, Madrid
- “Creation of Adam,” Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel, Rome
Clearly, this is a very Euro-centric list, but it’s also a great resource for a writer just getting started with ekphrasis. Representations of these paintings are easily available, in libraries, on the Internet, or if you are lucky enough to see them in person, in museums. I’ve seen only two: “The Starry Night,” at the MOMA in New York City, and “Girl With a Pearl Earring” at the DeYoung in San Francisco. But many of my students have been lucky enough to see more of these artworks in person.
How does a writer begin an ekphrastic piece of writing? I tell my students to just spend some time looking at the painting. Note the colors, figures, how the painting is arranged. What do you think the artist wants you to see? How does it make you feel—happy, frightened, intrigued, bored? Can you imagine yourself as one of the figures in the painting? Can you give voice to Mona Lisa, or the horse in “Guernica,” or one of the royal children in “Las Maninas?”
Now start taking notes about the art. As you write, a story will begin to take shape. For example, when I first saw a group of five black-and-white photographs taken by Edward S. Curtis, I imagined the voices of the person or people in the photographs speaking back to Curtis. Who he thought he was photographing was very different from my construction of their inner monologues. This was an early experiment with ekphrasis, and it moved my work in a whole new direction. You can read the poem, “Five Photographs by Edward S. Curtis,” at The Ekphrastic Review. (It was first published in Ekphrasis, Spring 2009, and resulted in my first Pushcart Prize nomination.)
If you live in the Eugene, Oregon area, I am offering two opportunities for you to enhance your writing practice with visual art:
I’d love to know if you’ve seen any of the paintings on the top ten list above. Please share when and where you saw them in the comments below.
I’ve seen the Mona Lisa in person, but not the others. My wife and I regularly go to our local art museum to see art. And my wife is a great visual artist and I’m lucky to have her oil paintings and water colors on our walls all the time.