Publisher Description

Creative Writing and Art History considers the ways in which the writing of art history intersects with creative writing. Essays range from the analysis of historical examples of art historical writing that have a creative element to examinations of contemporary modes of creative writing about art. Considers the ways in which the writing of art history intersects with creative writingCovers a diverse subject matter, from late Neolithic stone circles to the writing of a sentence by FlaubertThe collection both contains essays that survey the topic as well as more specialist articlesBrings together specialist contributors from both sides of the Atlantic

Back Cover

This collection of articles considers the ways in which the writing of art history intersects with creative writing, from the creative writing of art history to dialogues between styles of creative and art-historical writing. The subject matter covered is diverse, from late Neolithic stone circles to the writing of a sentence by Flaubert. Yet a number of questions circulate - in particular, the stakes involved in various forms of art-historical writing, and the claims made for the art historian's interpretation. Some authors analyse historical examples of art-historical writing that have a creative element, others explore conversations between literature and art history, whilst others attempt their own modes of creative writing about art. The topics covered within this varied collection include Paul Gauguin's collages of quotations, Sophie Calle's collaboration with Paul Auster, Henry James' portraiture, Bernard Berenson's fictional artist 'Amico di Sandro', Virginia Woolf's 'visual' writing, Pablo Picasso's solar mythology as re-written by Georges Bataille , and creative writing in the 'middle voice'.

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This collection of articles considers the ways in which the writing of art history intersects with creative writing, from the creative writing of art history to dialogues between styles of creative and art-historical writing. The subject matter covered is diverse, from late Neolithic stone circles to the writing of a sentence by Flaubert. Yet a number of questions circulate - in particular, the stakes involved in various forms of art-historical writing, and the claims made for the art historian's interpretation. Some authors analyse historical examples of art-historical writing that have a creative element, others explore conversations between literature and art history, whilst others attempt their own modes of creative writing about art. The topics covered within this varied collection include Paul Gauguin's collages of quotations, Sophie Calle's collaboration with Paul Auster, Henry James' portraiture, Bernard Berenson's fictional artist 'Amico di Sandro', Virginia Woolf's 'visual' writing, Pablo Picasso's solar mythology as re-written by Georges Bataille , and creative writing in the 'middle voice'.

Author Biography

Catherine Grant is Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. She co-ordinated the Writing Art History project at the Courtauld Institute of Art with Patricia Rubin and is the co-editor (with Lori Waxman) of Girls! Girls! Girls! in Contemporary Art (2011).  Patricia Rubin is Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She is a member of the International Advisory Board of Art History and the author of Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (1995),Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s (1999), and Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (2007), and co-author of  Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s (1999).

Table of Contents

6 Notes on Contributors 8 Chapter 1 'A narrative of what wishes what it wishes it to be': An Introduction to 'Creative Writing and Art History'
Catherine Grant 22 Chapter 2 Writing Perceptions: The Matter of Words and the Rollright Stones
Nicholas Chare 46 Chapter 3 (Blind Summit) Art Writing, Narrative, Middle Voice
Gavin Parkinson 66 Chapter 4 Connoisseurship, Painting, and Personhood
Jeremy Melius 88 Chapter 5 Under the Hat of the Art Historian: Panofsky, Berenson, Warburg
Francesco Ventrella 110 Chapter 6 'The Liar': Fictions of the Person
Patricia Rubin 130 Chapter 7 'Scattered notes': Authorship and Originality in Paul Gauguin's Diverses choses
Linda Goddard 148 Chapter 8 'Sudden gleams of (f)light': 'Intuition as Method'?
Charlotte de Mille 166 Chapter 9 Rotten Sun
C. F. B. Miller 190 Chapter 10 Notes on Writing as Vertigo
Satish Padiyar 201 Index

Long Description

This collection of articles considers the ways in which the writing of art history intersects with creative writing, from the creative writing of art history to dialogues

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