The tell-tale art: Poe's spirit haunts prints
Number #1 complaint I hear from artists: Writing about art is a futile endeavor. After all, how can words on a page ever convey the visual experience? The reverse, however, is never questioned-everyone from illustrators to filmmakers consider literature open game. As the old saw (bane of writers everywhere) goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words,"
But is it? Consider the words of Edgar Allen Poe, the University of Virginia's favorite son (overlooking that he was a debauched dropout). Countless illustrated editions and films versions of his stories exist, but the ominous darkness conjured by his words remains elusive. Nevertheless, artists from his era to the present have felt compelled to visually tackle the essence of Poe's psyche, as shown in the exhibition, "The Expanding Eye: Art Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe," currently on view at the University of Virginia Art Museum in celebration of Poe's 200th birthday.
Curated by Stephen Margulies, the show samples national and international work from the 19th and 20th century, focusing on prints-etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs-sometimes created as book art, other times as stand-alone pieces. Many of the images illustrate specific stories, such as Frederico's Castellon's 16 color lithographs for Poe's The Masque of the Red Death, created in 1969. The delicately colored page on show conflates the costumes worn at the tale's ball with the phantasmagoria of the mind. Three gruesome skeletal fish heads, teeth sharp and threatening, hover above a seated woman. Perhaps they are part of her elaborate headdress, or perhaps they are a manifestation of the omnipresence of death.
Other artists forego referring to specific literary works and instead attempt to express Poe's nature. F©lix Vallotton's 1894 woodcut, "A Edgar Poe," reworks the best-known photograph of Poe and is noteworthy for its minimalism. Vallotton alludes to the darkness of Poe's thoughts by eliding his hair with the black background at the top of the frame.
The show's most arresting images, however, belong to Nathan Oliviera, whose seven large black and white lithographs, dating to 1971, offer abstract parallels to the impact of Poe's words. Partly inspired by Poe's A Descent into the Maelstrom, Oliviera combines inky spaces with glimpses of vaguely recognizable terrain, seeming to offer hope just out of reach. The works simultaneously provoke an inward feeling, creating movement around a deep center, and the sensation of an expanding and frighteningly unknowable cosmos.
Clearly, Poe's words are worth a thousand pictures.
"The Expanding Eye: Art Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe" is on view through January 3, 2010, at the University of Virginia Art Museum. 155 Rugby Road. 924-3592.