Ekphrasis
art objects as windows into other worlds
PROMPT
Build a work of art or an artifact into your text. It could be high or low art, real or fictional. A velvet Elvis, a movie reference, or a painting of a bird. You could use it as a structural device, as Delmore Schwartz does in "In Dreams begin Responsibilities," where an imaginary silent movie becomes the vehicle for the narrator to move through the history of his parents' relationship, or a quest object and governing metaphor, as Henry James does in The Golden Bowl and Donna Tartt in The Gold Finch. It should be meaningful to the larger story, magnifying its themes or story. It should recur. Start by describing the art object in a way that illuminates an aspect of your story other than the work of art itself, as Tartt does here:
"This is just about the first painting I ever really loved," my mother was saying. "You'll never believe it, but it was in a book I used to take out of the library when I was a kid. I used to sit on the floor by my bed and stare at it for hours, completely fascinated—that little guy! And, I mean, actually it's incredible how much you can learn about a painting by spending a lot of time with a reproduction, even not a very good reproduction. I started off loving the bird, the way you'd love a pet or something, and ended up loving the way he was painted." She laughed. "The Anatomy Lesson was in the same book actually, but it scared the pants off me. I used to slam the book shut when I opened it to that page by mistake."
The girl and the old man had come up next to us. Self-consciously, I leaned forward and looked at the painting. It was a small picture, the smallest in the exhibition, and the simplest: a yellow finch, against a plain, pale ground, chained to a perch by its twig of an ankle.
Further Reading: