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I believe one can only develop one’s visionary awareness by close contact with the vision itself; that is by knowing pictures, real vision pictures, and by dwelling on them, and really dwelling in them. It is a great delight to dwell in a picture. (Lawrence 65)

Intermedial interaction, especially between literature and visual arts, seems to have become a trademark of contemporary literature: real paintings are placed in the very foreground of art fiction, they are culturally thematised and historically theorised and often play a constructional role in the written story itself. According to van Alphen, the medium is important only as a means by which “the mechanisms of representation can be explored, shown, and challenged” (836). Representation in this case becomes the result of communication between “the sender and receiver […], the relations between subjects and the subject positions in the representation, the historical and spatial contexts in which representations circulate, and the role these contexts have in the production of meaning” (836). By exploring the role and function of a real artwork, contemporary art fiction constructs a new version of the ‘reality’ of an art object, placing it in historical context and giving it fictitious interpretations. In discussing the accessibility of the past, Hutcheon suggests that

We only have access to the past today through its traces – its documents, the testimony of witnesses, and other archival materials. In other words, we only have representations of the past from which to construct our narratives or explanations. In a very real sense, postmodernism reveals a desire to understand present culture as the product of previous representations. The representation of history becomes the history of representation. What this means is that postmodern art acknowledges and accepts the challenge of tradition: the history of representation cannot be escaped but it can be both exploited and commented in critically through irony and parody […]. (55)

Extant works of art serve as a starting point for many writers of contemporary art fiction. Hepburn points out that “contemporary writers represent artworks to reinforce the concept of representation as enchantment” (3); they speculate on what a work of art is, what it means and what it does; they question historical and critical interpretations of the paintings in a fictional form. Writers themselves confirm that it is always the painting that is the ultimate source of inspiration for their work, and through careful examination of pictorial elements in novels it is possible to study how “the paintings are transformed by their imagination and [we] can understand how their creative process works” (Meyers 2). The writers of the texts this study deals with turn to the subject of Impressionism; they create a portrayal of famous French Impressionists and their models while focusing on re-presenting the paintings by describing the process of their creation, and exploring this process from both the artist’s and the model’s perspectives. This particular genre has been referred to as “fictions about painters” (Bowie), “the portrait-of-the-artist novels” and “artist novels” (Beebe), “atelier narratives” (Joyce) and most recently “art-historical fiction” and “art fiction” (Chapman). According to Chapman, art-historical fiction “reveals a parallel extra-academy, extra-museum art history” (129) by illuminating the past, which can be “conventional and comfortable [as] we know the history or the story already” (132). The term art fiction is used in the bookshop in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London to refer to a particular book section with a special selection of fiction about art (painting, architecture, music, dance), schools of painting, artists, studios, models and the artistic milieu; among other variants these are also referred to as art in fiction or art and artists in fiction. In this study the genre will be referred to as art fiction as the analysis includes novels about modern art and artists. Bowie points out that art fiction has nine main characteristics: the description of a painter’s development; the description of the artistic milieu (studio, settings for his paintings, contact with other artists); encounters with other artists, models and dealers; discussions about aesthetic ideas and painting techniques; criticism of art institutions; the description of exhibitions; the existence of a contemporary literary figure; the presence of real artists’ names of the time and, finally, making real artists leading characters (5-6). Research in the genre of art fiction is mostly focused on the psychology of the artist, as exhibited in his/her relationship to the model and the artwork – in other words, the traditional composition of the Pygmalion myth. However, since art fiction addresses an artist’s aesthetic struggle in creating an artwork, and reproduces the painting by describing the process of its creation, the spotlight is on the painter as much as the painting itself. The focus of the present study is on the artwork, specifically on an artwork’s re-presentation and re-interpretation by means of a verbal rendition in ekphrastic art fiction based on actually existing art objects.

The work of art is a historical representation or testimonial of what a painter wants to illustrate, and what the painter believes she/he sees while creating the piece. The writer-observer of the painting exploits a ready-made image, comments on it, places it in a historical context and eventually provides the reader with a new interpretation of it. By doing so, the writer confronts a historical representation of a painting (which has already been interpreted and commented upon by various art historians) with a subjective, fictive re-presentation of the process of creation of the painting. Does it presuppose, however, that the ekphrasis of real paintings is different to the ekphrasis of fictional works of art? The answer to this question may be found in the theory of picture perception.

Most recent studies on picture perception acknowledge two simultaneous experiences that occur in the process of ‘looking into’ a picture. These experiences are directly related to the dual nature of pictures: “pictures can generate an in-depth spatial impression of the scene depicted while at the same time appearing as flat two-dimensional surfaces hanging on the wall” (Mausfeld 20). Indeed, in addition to depicting objects in spatial relationships, and representing events, pictures remain physical objects, with a distinctive size and shape as determined by their canvases and frames, an individual location in physical space and an exclusive price value. In other words, a work of art presupposes a clear distinction between three-dimensional and two-dimensional perceptual space – the former is a pictorial space that is perceived in depth, the latter is the understanding of the painting as a physical object perceived as being flat in the real space outside the canvas. While looking at an artwork the observer realises and accepts both these aspects. Therefore, the dual nature of picture perception must be taken into account when analysing static pictorial images and any represented pictorial space (the illusionary space that provides an idea of depth and distance on the flat canvas surface). Mausfeld discusses the challenges of the dual nature of any given picture and distinguishes between two general aspects of this notion: the problem of “cue integration” and the problem of “conjoint representation” (21). The former relates to the concept of depth or spatial representation, the three-dimensional effect of which is analysed in visual psychophysics. The latter refers to the simultaneous experience of two different types of objects, “each of which seems to thrive in its own autonomous spatial framework” (25). On the one hand, there is “the picture surface as an object – with corresponding object properties such as orientation or depth” (25); on the other, “the depicted objects themselves with their idiosyncratic spatial properties and relations” (25). The observer is therefore involved in the internal complexity of a relationship between pictorial space and perceived physical space, constantly switching back and forth between them but also conscious of the painting as a physical object in and of itself. Moreover, the viewer’s interaction with an art object unlocks the cultural dimension of picture perception (19). The first interaction comprises intricate combinations of “perceptual faculty and various interpretative faculties” (19); the second is culturally bound and, as such, is able to facilitate myriad interpretations. Seen in this light, picture perception appears to be radically different to the experience of perceiving non-pictorial static objects in space. Bearing this in mind and turning to the practice of visual arts in narrative fiction, it can be assumed that intermedial artefacts incorporating the ekphrasis of real works of art suggest an altogether different experience to those based on the ekphrasis of fictional artistic creations. In contemporary art fiction art objects are embedded into a narrative of the process of their creation and, consequently, the events surrounding it. As this information is only partially based on documentary recollection, which is accessible via painters’ letter correspondence, archival materials of art exhibitions of the time, chronicles, and art-historians’ testimonies, it becomes fictional. Thus, while creating a fictional account of the past, art narratives pursue meaning-making of the artworks through their re-presentation.

The meaning of any painting can be changed according to what one sees or prefers to see in it. According to Alberti, a painting contains three divisions: circumscription, composition and reception of light (68). Circumscription stands for the way the objects represented in the painting are seen and outlined by the painter (68); composition is what the painter creates by “drawing [the planes of the observer body] in their places” (68); finally, reception of light is the result of the representation of “the colours and the qualities of the planes” (68). In order to produce an image the painter goes through the toilsome process of invention, selection and elaboration: “When an artist chooses a given site for one of his landscapes he not only selects and rearranges what he finds in nature; he must reorganize the whole visible matter to fit an order discovered, invented, purified by him” (Arnheim, Visual Thinking 35). By using circumscription, composition and reception of light the painter transforms what is seen and projects his/her personal interpretation onto the canvas, while the viewer is invited to test “those contents against his perception and his cognition of the visible world” (Bilman 9). Gombrich points out that the form of representation “cannot be divorced from its purpose and the requirements of the society in which the given visual language gains currency” (90). Just as the creation of an artwork takes time to be processed, the perceiving of this artwork is not accomplished immediately. According to Arnheim,

the observer starts from somewhere, tries to orient himself as to the main skeleton of the work, looks for the accents, experiments with a tentative framework in order to see whether it fits the total content, and so on. When the elaboration is successful, the work is seen to repose comfortably in a congenial structure, which illuminates the work’s meaning to the observer. (Visual Thinking 35)

In reference to perception and understanding of a painting, Goodman suggests that “what a picture is said to represent may be denoted by the picture as a whole or by a part of it” (28). A serious weakness with this argument, however, is the fact that seeing a part of a painting or analysing even just one detail in the painting may influence the interpretation of the whole: “every detail of information about the representational content of a picture not only adds to what we know but changes what we see” (Arnheim, New Essays 7). Therefore, the painting has to be seen as a whole, separated into segments, which are then examined and re-seen as a whole.

Arnheim maintains that “[t]he intellect has a primary need to define things by distinguishing them, whereas direct sensory experience impresses us first of all by how everything hangs together” (New Essays 65). As noted by Berger, all the elements of a painting “are there to be seen simultaneously” (26); however, the viewer requires time to study its elements, and “whenever he reaches a conclusion, the simultaneity of the whole painting is there to reverse or qualify his conclusion” (26). Arnheim argues that the thinking process is the essence of visual perception. By thinking he means such cognitive operations as “active exploration, selection, grasping of essentials, simplification, abstraction, analysis and synthesis, completion, correction, comparison, problem solving, as well as combining, separating, putting in context” (Visual Thinking 13). These cognitive processes are activated not only while looking at a painting but also while reading a text, thus involving “the conceptualisation and interpretation of the external world, which require the viewer’s and the reader’s selective, vigilant attention, memory, and concentration” (Bilman 40). Bilman makes a direct comparison between the experience of looking at a painting or reading a text and the experience of gaining knowledge about “the physical objects of the exterior world, about man’s subjective states of mind, and his existential condition” (40).

Cognitive psychologists who examine the relationship between reading and looking try to prove that neither is the painting only perceived holistically, nor is the literary text solely perceived sequentially. In analysing eye movement, Kolers concludes that “in reading and looking, people use many different inspection strategies, have many different options available, to achieve approximately the same end – and interpretation or comprehension of the object being examined” (155). As Bilman notes: “The movement of the eye following the words depicts the process of moving from detail and down the page which conveys the kinetic impression of seeing” (101). Reading a painting and reading a text are quite similar insofar as the interpretation of both involves “seeing wholes, seeing parts, and reseeing wholes, even though the sequence of these acts and the amount of time elapsed between them differ in reading paintings and reading literary texts” (Torgovnick 34). According to Gilman, “both experiences consist of two phases that might be called ‘reading’ and ‘seeing’ – a processional and an integrative, or reflective, phase which together generate understanding” (10). Gilman explains the experience of reading a text in the following way:

The witness reads a literary text from page to page over time. But his understanding is ideally not complete until he “sees” the work as a whole, as if spatialized in his mind as a simultaneous pattern of significance. […] This pattern may be thematic, formal, psychological, or a combination of these or other elements; it may take shape before he has finished the book, or perhaps not before he has read it many times; it will certainly grow richer and more clearly defined through re-reading. (10)

The experience of a painting is further clarified:

The witness sees the painting as a pattern but he does not understand it fully until he “reads” it […] moving from one detail to another over time […] perceiving the interrelationships of light, color, form, gesture, surface, space, point of view, and so on. The order of experience in painting (seeing first, then “reading”) is superficially the reverse of the literary experience, except that the final painting which, having been seen and “read” is finally known, is no longer identical with the square of canvas we happened to notice when we first walked into the room. (11)

The main argument is that neither a narrative text nor a painting can be completely understood and further interpreted unless both are seen or read as a whole, perceived through their details and/or parts and, finally, re-seen/re-read and re-interpreted. Gilman’s point is of great value to this study as it is based on the idea of a perception of a whole that is acquired through the study of its parts, and thus becomes a springboard for analyses of the re-interpretation of paintings in contemporary art fiction. According to Arnheim, visual perception is in fact visual thinking (Visual Thinking 14); it is not only concerned with collecting information about specific objects, their qualities and the events happening, but also with the understanding of the general ideas expressed, which plays a significant role in concept formation:

The mind, reaching far beyond the stimuli received by the eyes directly and momentarily, operates with the vast range of imagery available through memory and organizes a total lifetime’s experience into a system of visual concepts. The thought mechanism by which the mind manipulates these concepts operate in direct perception, but also in the interaction between direct perception and stored experience, as well as in the imagination of the artist, the scientist, and indeed any person handling problems “in his head”. (294)

What is suggested here is that visual perception is conditioned by the viewer’s stored personal experience. The aesthetic experience of looking at a painting does incite an emotional response from the viewer. However, this emotional reaction is not the result of what Tolstoy defines as the activity of art: “To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced and having evoked it in oneself then by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others experience the same feeling” (123). The works of art do not express or transmit emotions; emotions are not the “content of a work of art but only a secondary effect of the content” (Arnheim, Visual Thinking 21). The viewer is not influenced by the same feelings as the painter was while creating an artwork – the viewer’s emotional response to a work of art is based singularly on his/her own experience, cultural education and imagination. Panofsky defines a work of art as “a man-made object demanding to be experienced aesthetically” (14). He further claims that:

Anyone confronted with a work of art, whether aesthetically re-creating or rationally investigating it, is affected by its three constituents: materialized form, idea (that is, in the plastic arts, subject matter) and content. […] It is the unity of those three elements which is realized in the aesthetic experience, and all of them enter into what is called aesthetic enjoyment of art. (16)

An artwork is re-created in accordance with the painter’s supposedly original intention and the viewer’s set of aesthetic values as well as his/her “natural sensitivity”, “visual training” and “cultural equipment” (Panofsky 16). Therefore, the perception of an artwork is never as objective as while investigating it and re-creating its meaning, which already embodies one way of seeing: the perceiver, depending on his/her way of seeing, inevitably adds his/her own interpretation and extends its meaning according to his/her subjectivity. As our attention is selective, we choose which details to notice, which to pay less attention to, and which to ignore altogether. The perceiver of the painting is unlikely to embrace the visual image as a whole immediately. The totality of the meaning conveyed by the painting has to be fragmented into scenes, elements and/or details. Barthes points out that every image is polysemic (39) and that the basis of its signifiers is a “floating chain” (39) of signifieds. In order to interpret the painting the perceiver selects and concentrates on just a few of its signifieds. The choice of pictorial elements is individual, inevitably differing from the choice made by other perceivers of the same painting. Therefore, there is no one interpretation of a painting, but rather many – each of them depends on the observer’s choice of pictorial elements and his/her understanding of them. According to Arnheim, a verbal description of a painting

traces linear connections across the state of affairs and presents each of these partial relations as a one-dimensional sequence of events. More importantly, it presents these sequences in a meaningful order, starting perhaps with a particularly significant or evocative detail and making the facets of the situation to follow each other as though they were the steps of an argument. The description of the scene becomes an interpretation. The writer uses the idiosyncrasies of his medium to guide the reader through a scene, just as a film can move the viewer from detail to detail and thereby reveal a situation by a controlled sequence. (Visual Thinking 248)

The effect of guiding or directing the reader through the maze of details in the painting – and their possible meanings – corresponds to a function of the text which Barthes calls anchorage (39). Anchorage occurs when “the text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image, causing him to avoid some and receive others; by means of an often dispatching, it remote-controls him towards a meaning chosen in advance” (40, emphasis in original). According to Barthes, the text is “the creator’s […] right of inspection over the image; anchorage is a control, bearing responsibility […] for the use of the message” (40). However, Barthes distinguishes another function of the text, which he calls relay (41). Relay text creates new meanings that are not originally present in the image itself. Text and image have a “complementary relationship” and work towards conveying the intended meaning. This differentiation can be applied to the word-image relationship in ekphrastic texts. On the one hand, the writer directs the reader through the painting, focusing on pictorial elements chosen in advance, thus controlling the reader’s understanding and interpretation of the painting. On the other, the writer assigns new meanings to the painting by fictionalising the process of its creation. Regarding the practice of ekphrasis, it is safe to assume that the writer is the perceiver who, in order to create a verbal interpretation of a painting, takes on the role of an art historian, and re-constructs the work of art through a synthesis of signifieds of selected pictorial elements of a painting, through the available knowledge of an artwork – its historical, cultural and critical analysis – and his/her own perception, subjective evaluation and interpretation of the work of art, which in due turn, depend upon the writer-perceiver’s personal experience, cultural education, learnt assumptions about art and imagination. The most common feature of contemporary art fiction, therefore, is the fact that written works function as both anchorage and relay texts that create new meanings inside and outside an artwork. Ekphrastic re-presentation is tested on the reader-perceiver, who is encouraged not only to envision the work of art based on the writer’s markers and allusions to the visual source, but also to translate the re-interpretation of it according to his/her emotional response to the painting and the ekphrastic text itself through his/her cognitive reactions to the fictitious story narrated around the work of art. Therefore, when analysing an intermedial artefact, the following questions are bound to arise: What knowledge of an artwork is applied, extended or denied? Can an artwork be re-represented in a meaningful way? Can aesthetic appreciation of an artwork be offered? Can the narrative reveal the painting? What happens if a reproduction of a painting is included in the text? How will the viewer’s and reader’s reaction to a work of art differ? Can the narrative be considered a valid guide to a painting? Can an intermedial artefact be regarded as a fictional art manual? In order to answer any of the above questions or to find a way to justify verbal re-presentation of visual representation, it is necessary to analyse how something intrinsically visual is embedded into a verbal form. A writer is entirely free when it comes to choosing the type of relationship that exists between the verbal and the visual, yet the way in which an art object is translated narratively is directly connected to the message it seeks to convey in a new medium, and to the effect it has on the reader. This study offers a classification for intermedial interaction, which can be applied to the analysis of contemporary intermedial products. It focuses on how an artwork is incorporated, re-presented and re-interpreted in contemporary Anglophone art fiction.