Earthquakes and explorations : language and painting from cubism to concrete poetry / Stephen Scobie.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A study of the interactions between poetry and painting in the 20th century, particularly the Cubist painters and the writers who were associated with them, and the later movement of Concrete Poetry.

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CHOICE Review

Scobie (Univ. of Victoria, Canada) explores linguistic responses to painting, specifically the reciprocal exchange theorized in Derrida's "frame" and "supplement," in which language and painting fulfill each other--a position quite different from W.J.T. Mitchell's Iconology (CH, Apr'86), which focused on the ultimately ideological struggle between words and images. Scobie's starting point--and the subject of his fine conclusion--is his admiration for the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, the Scottish concrete poet who was inspired by the cubists. Scobie examines the "supplemental" relations between word and image found in cubism, beginning with the questionable placement of observers ("we") inside paintings. Subsequent chapters consider how cubism reluctantly got its name (from Apollinaire) and its aesthetic underpinning (from art dealer Kahnweiler); the semiotic wordplay found in cubist collages, particularly those of Braque; the analogical indebtedness of Gertrude Stein to her cubist friends; and the "collaborative" window frame devices of painter Delaunay and poet Apollinaire. Two final chapters carry the argument forward through the "sound poetry" of Hugo Ball to Finlay's concrete "models or order." Highly recommended as a superb addition to the literature of ut pictura poesis, such as Wendy Steiner's The Colors of Rhetoric (1982) Upper-division undergraduates through practitioners. J. J. Wydeven; Bellevue University