Authors and Art Movements of the Twentieth Century: Painterly Poetics

Description

This book explores the great influence of twentieth-century artists and art movements on many major writers of the twentieth century. It focuses in particular on four seminal writers who were strongly influenced by very different movements: they are Gertrude Stein and Cubism, William S. Burroughs and Dada, J. G. Ballard and Surrealism, and Douglas Coupland and Pop Art. For these authors the presence and influence of these art movements is not limited to a small cluster of texts, but can be felt much more expansively across their work, infiltrating all manner of multifarious and complex dimensions. These authors are all keen to explore new methods of shifting the signature styles and forms of visual art into the literary world. Alongside these more overt methods of artistic transposition, the authors also often demonstrate a deep philosophical affinity with their chosen movements. This book uproots and examines these kinds of artistic engagements, and also explores the authors’ own personal connections with the world of art. For these are all authors not only interested in visual art, but also intimately connected to the art world. Indeed, some went on to become renowned artists in their own right, while others were closely associated with major historical art figures. Above all however, they are unified by a kindred interest in exploring how the methods and philosophies of art can be transposed into, and even challenge the constraints of traditional forms of literature. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Notes Bibliography 1 Gertrude Stein, Cubism and the Intricacies of Interiority Cézanne and the Primitivist Turn Portraits in Poetry Stein and Picasso ‘Sacred Emily’ and the Continuous Present Floristry and Psychology The Dance Poems ‘To Live in Looking’: Tender Buttons Inhabiting the Child’s Reality Notes Bibliography 2 William S. Burroughs, Dada and the Cut-Up Compulsion Motley Mosaics: Cutting Up Control The Visual Vicissitudes of Naked Lunch ‘If Only I Could Paint’ Gysin the Prophet: Rituals, Permutations and Calligraphies Minutes to Go: The Virus Craft Symbolist Affinities and Metaphoric Infinities Artistic Transcendence Notes Bibliography 3 J. G. Ballard, Surrealism and the Curation of Catastrophe ‘All Power to the Imagination!’ The Billboard and the Canvas: Project for a New Novel Usurping ‘The Logic of the Freudian Age’ Who Is ‘Mr. F Is Mr. F’? The Kissing Tides and ‘The Persistence of Memory’ Image Vs. Text Preludes and Epilogues to Atrocity Entering the Exhibition: Ballard as Curator Notes Bibliography 4 Douglas Coupland, Pop Art and the Aesthetes of Apocalypse Generation X: Comic Strips and Artful Storytelling ‘That’s So Warhol’: Dancing With Death and Disaster ‘Serfing’ the Web in Microserfs Rendering the Unconscious: Word Clouds and Subconscious Files Lego, Canning Lines and Polaroids Apocalypse POW! Visions of Life After God Warhol the Redeemer: The Spiritual Return Notes Bibliography Conclusion Notes Bibliography Bibliography Index