Ekphrasis is the use of vivid language to describe or respond to a work of visual art.
History of Ekphrasis
Borrowed from the Greek term ékphrasis, or “description,” early ekphrasis was used as a vivid description of a thing. One of the earliest examples of ekphrasis was Homer’s description of the forging of the Shield of Achilles in the 18th chapter of The Iliad. The purpose of ekphrasis was to describe a thing with such detail that the reader could envision it as if it were present. Homer’s description of Achilles’ Shield brings the shield to life in the reader’s imagination.
Ekphrastic writing became important in the second half of the 18th century when a public demand for descriptions of art arose. There were no accurate reproductions of works of visual art to distribute to the public, so the art had to be shared through language. The goal for these ekphrastic writers was to impart a visual experience on their readers.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, ekphrasis continued to change, exchanging the tradition of elaborate description for interpretation or interrogation. The poet John Hollander wrote that poets’ new ways of writing about art included “addressing the image, making it speak, speaking of it interpretively, meditating upon the moment of viewing it, and so forth." An example of ekphrasis is Sasha Pimentel’s “The Kiss,” where the speaker embodies a figure of Gustav Klimt’s famous painting and uses descriptions like “You / crack my chin up” and “our halo liquid / as yolk” to reference specific visual elements of the artwork. Other poems that use ekphrasis include “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” by John Keats, “O’ Noblesse O’” by Nikky Finney, and “Replica of The Thinker” by Matthew Olzmann.
Read more ekphrastic poems here.