According to the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about the opposite? Could a word (or even a series of words) be worth a thousand pictures? It seems that a Seattle art critic is attempting the latter–or maybe a combination of the two. In covering a local art exhibit, the writer attempts to find a line of Shakespeare that evokes the main idea(s) of the piece of art. So, perhaps in this case, the picture and the words are equally worthy. For this critic, art provides the means to comment on and respond to other art.

If Shakespeare were used as commentary for artists, which one or ones would be most likely to meet The Bard halfway? And which plays/sonnets/etc. would match with these artists? Though it might seem capricious at first, it is a challenging undertaking. Could Dali’s melting clocks serve as a counterpoint to Hamlet or Macbeth’s fraying sanity? Do the distortions and exaggerations of Picasso suit Shakespeare’s more structurally ambiguous plays like Cymbeline or Measure for Measure? In a sense, this is the same question faced by directors and designers of high-concept Shakespearean productions: what environments, periods, historical figures, icons, and symbols create a dialogue with Will’s words? Is this dialogue balanced, offering equal enlightenment to both the play and the conceptual element, or is one favored over the other? Such comparisons are intriguing because the call into question the notion of a hierarchy among the arts themselves: which would be worth more, an image or a printed word?

Posted Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:16:53 and filed under Art, Cymbeline, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Macbeth. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.