Images With(In) Books

The forthcoming ‘scriptorium workshop’ sparked me this week to reflect upon the creative atmosphere of the miniaturist. A scriptorium, or simply “place for writing”, was situated, as we’ve discussed, in European monasteries. However, in the same way a contemporary artist or author might listen to music to gain inspiration, it is important to consider the miniaturist not in a vacuum but as privy to Gregorian chants carrying through the monastery walls.

As Orhan Pamuk so eloquent puts it: “painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.” But was such ‘sight music’ influenced by music itself? Indeed, one need only consider both Baroque art and Baroque music or postmodern art and minimalist music to realize that art and music have traditionally evolved together, influencing one another. And perhaps the same can be said for illuminated manuscripts.

The Gregorian chant, or plainchant, was a monophonic (meaning there was no harmony) vocal performance and most certainly a staple of Western religious tradition, not eastern. Thus, it could be argued that Western monophonic performance prompted the singular representation of peoples rather than the traditionally Eastern lack of representation and multiplicity of peoples which may have occurred if the Gregorian chant was characterized instead by disorientating harmonies, or the representation of single harmonies lost amongst many!

Now what if we were to consider music a language? Interestingly, the sheet music of Gregorian chants is one of the few representations of an ‘art form’, besides literature, that were ‘illuminated’.

And these illuminated pieces of sheet music are so beautiful and there are so many!

I simply wonder why, as a class, we are yet to treat music as a language, however indecipherable, and truly see the cross-modal relationship of art and music?

Why not let the illuminated manuscript sing?

 

The ekphrasis exercise we did in class on Wednesday was pretty simple: describe one of two illuminated pages from the book of hours so that someone who has never seen it could have an idea of what it looks like. However, I found myself sitting there not knowing how to begin. Initially I blamed it on the 8:30 class time and the coffee depravation. I tried to scribble down a few sentences about the general layout of the page, and soon realized it was a failed attempt. When other people in the class read their sentences aloud, I was impressed and thought they did a pretty good job considering the short amount of time we had to do the exercise. I continued thinking about that exercise throughout the day, and realized that completely explaining an image or picture in words is impossible.

People have written many books and essays on different works of art, but I don’t think any written representation is able to entirely capture what a piece of art does. There are infinitely many things to say about any one piece; infinitely many descriptions, comparisons, conclusions. Imagine trying to write down everything that happens in any movie in complete detail. Or, if you’ve ever seen a really famous painting in person, remember how seeing the physical object in front of you was so different than reading about it in art history books.

I think the same can be said for trying to make an image out of text. People always complain about movies that are based on books, saying that “they missed the whole part about _”, or “that character looks nothing like their description in the book!” Trying to make a movie out of My Name is Red that is accurate down to the very last detail would be a real pain in the butt, as we all can imagine after reading the book.

Though I believe all ekphrasis (and its opposite) is just paraphrasing, I do think it is valuable. The in-class exercise made us all realize how difficult the process really is, and how much information can get lost in the transition from image to text, or vice versa.

One of the interesting details of My Name is Red is how the author incorporates other works into this book.  I researched a list of the literary references embedded within this text, which resulted in about 13 different well-known sources.  The love story of Husrev and Shirin that influences the romantic aspects of this novel is possibly the most blatant reference.  The unfinished Book of Festivities is also referred to very early in the novel.  However, there are a few less obvious textal refereces to be found.   For exmple, horses and equine imagery plays a role at certain instances in the story, which is tied back to the Book of Equines and The Illustrations of Horses.  Overall, the references and the fact that a modern, Western reader would need to research them adds to the interactive nature of this story.  I treated it almost like a treasure hunt when it came to piecing together outside stories with their in-text counterparts.  I felt that this level of engagement and interesting variety of references helped make the story even more intruiging because of the investment the reader has, along with a deeper understandig of the culture and illumination at that time.

During our previous classes I began to notice certain similarities between art composition between the illuminated Book of Festivities and the Japanese Heiji: Monogatari Emaki (Sanjo) Scroll. While one may be part of a book and the other a scroll, they both tell a narrative.The Book of Festivities depicts a large crowd clustered together and based on the title of the book one can suggest that they celebrating something. On the other hand the Sanjo Scroll tells a the tale of the attack on the Sanjo palace during the Heiji period. The night of the event is narrated as the scroll unfolds form right to left. The most prominent similarity between these two works of art was the composition. Why did the artist decided to cluster people together in these pieces? 

(to see the full scroll go to, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Heiji_Monogatari_Emaki_-_Sanjo_scroll_complete.jpg)

The Book of Celebrations was not the only thing that made me think of Japanese art but also the the portrait  shown in class “An Imperial Celebration by Surname-I Hümayun.” The portrait closely imitates the portrait Minamoto no Yoritomo. As it is common to create portraits of important people, I can assume that the person in “An Imperial Celebration by Surname-I Hümayun” is a Sultan of some sort. In the Hanging scroll of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the scroll depicts the first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate. Both figures appear to be sitting/kneeling in the portrait. The face the same way as well. The portraits vary in the color and angles used. What do think? Is this a coincidence or is there some influence? If so, where is it coming from?

In the past, historiated initials often contained biblical scenes, depictions of famous figures and self-portraits. Often, these images were meant to help a reader conceptualize the terms presented in a text and to invoke an emotional response which in turn would spur them to prayer. On occasion, historiated letters served as simple place-markers, helping readers to find a specific part of the text without having to read through it in its entirety.

Anyways, as you can probably guess from the title, I’m super duper excited to finally get to do some hands-on illumination! I’m really not sure what letter to do though, and I don’t know how much thought all of you are putting into it. I’ve consolidated my research on the historical historiated initial in the previous paragraph and I’m hoping to get some inspiration browsing through pictures, but I think it’s hard to come up with a good idea for a historiated letter without a supporting text, which is the case in our situation.

So, what letters are you guys going to do and why? I’d really like to hear your thoughts and ideas 🙂

At first, I felt kind of awkward doing the ekphrasis exercise because I didn’t know how to start. The challenge was that the illumination in front of me (left part of Plate 59) was a cohesive, compact image that I needed to unravel the story of. It occurred to me that if given the opportunity and enough knowledge about the iconography and story of Christ, it was very possible that this one tiny illumination could be represented in pages of text that, like we discussed in class, both describes and tells a story. In reflection, I’m discovering a new meaning to “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I used to think of this saying mostly in the context of photographs. I thought it meant that a photo was one of the best ways to capture or eternalize an experience, to preserve whatever feelings you referred to when you told people they “had to be there” to understand. Now, I see how this saying would be applied to illustrations as well. Unlike photographs which are often limited by the frame of the camera, illustrations can be sprawling, busy, empty, borderless, composed however the artist wants. To use the Hüsrev and Shirin illumination from class as an example, illustrations can reveal the subtleties of the relationships between people, of the relationship between people and nature, and of traditions from the time period. I think the artist has more choice with illustrations versus photographs, which makes what is excluded and included in the image, and how it is composed, all the more intriguing.

It’s a big responsibility to put words down on a page and say that that’s what an image says or that’s the story it tells, especially if you don’t know the original artist. This was my case during the ekphrasis exercise, and I imagine Pamuk’s case writing My Name is Red, with all his weavings of Islamic stories based on the illuminations he’s studied. It’s kind of funny (maybe meta?) how Pamuk writes about miniaturists debating how they should portray religious concepts and what kinds of implications these representations will have for the future, because Pamuk is probably having a similar debate with himself. He is probably thinking about how to describe new and old Islamic illuminations in such a way that it shows Western influences seeping into Eastern, how there’s less clear distinguishing between the two, and how to position these works of art as representations of the real-life tensions at the time. The miniaturists’ doubts about the meaning of how they proceed with their craft might be echos of Pamuk’s own?

For the record, here is Maraina’s and my attempt at ekphrasis: “Engulfed in darkness, faces are lit by flaming torches lifted high above the heads. Men all turn to stare at Jesus’s haloed presence in awe. Surrounding this scene, a dragonfly flitters down a myriad of multicolored flowers.”

I find the I Am Red chapter to be truly compelling. Mostly the sentence: “explain red to somebody who has never known red” (187). I have  never thought about the meaning of a color, rather I have thought about the sensation it evokes when seen and contemplated, how that differentiates it from other colors and how this sensation identifies smart juxtapositions with objects and other colors. But I agree with the man who thinks red can be described to somebody whose eyes have never fallen upon it. I am inclined to think this way because the way Red talked about himself before the argument between the two apprentices suggested that if red is to be defined then this definition encompasses premises a lot more essential than the description of a degree of intensity on a chromatic spectrum. Red can be felt in fury, passion and death, all emotionally-charged themes that are part of everybody’s life and that we usually think about or come across on a daily basis. Meaning that colors are a way through which we express ourselves, at times, we put on clothes of certain colors that reflect our temper and feelings.

Colors are a language not just at the service of the talented artists, but also one in favor of granting people a rich mode of expression, therefore, colors cannot be limited to people who can encounter them visually.

I find way Pamuk structured My Name is Red to be very artful and symbolic as a novel that essentially explores the meaning and nature of illuminations. Since My Name is Red is a murder mystery written in an unconventional style for its genre, it’s meaningful that multiple characters’ points of view are used to literally illuminate the truth behind the murder and the nature of other characters. Each character’s perspective provides insight into the actions of other characters and allows for a deeper understanding of the culture related to illustrations and illumination. At a more specific level of comparing and contrasting Western versus Eastern characteristics in Pamuk’s style/message, I feel that the lines are so blurred that it’s impossible to even say that My Name is Red is a novel written in purely Western structure with Eastern-centered content. Although the murder mystery is typically viewed as a Western genre, the narrative style and use of multiple narrators makes it atypical—even if this is an attribute of post-modernism rather than Eastern or non-Western style. The content, although the action takes place in Istanbul, addresses the question or fear of Westernizing Ottoman art and illumination. The entire nature of the novel teeters on a precariously balanced seesaw in a manner that reflects the tension of this potential—or already enacted—Westernization. The setting is also essential to this tension, as Turkey has always been a somewhat ambiguous nation straddling Asia and Europe. I’m still interested in the question of whether this fear or potential of Westernization is even being negotiated or questioned in the novel, or whether it’s already been decided upon by the fact that the murder has already been committed. If the murder symbolizes the death of or end to Ottoman art in the Eastern style, why create this sense of tension that pervades the novel?

I think there are a lot of aspects of My Name is Red that can be considered a supplement to the commentary on the tension between East and West aside from what is provided by the narrative itself. Naturally, I have had several thoughts about ways in which the structure of the book is related to Eastern and Western influences on illumination. Among these thoughts is the relationship between perspective in illuminations and perspective in the novel. I brought this up in class last week and wanted to elaborate a bit on what I think is an interesting subtlety in the novel.

We discussed the up-and-down style of Eastern illuminations versus the left-and-right style of Western illuminations. The Western style focuses on shadows, perspective, and depth. The Eastern style, on the other hand, typically lacks shadows, reflections in water, and depth. Interestingly, perspective in My Name is Red plays a key role in how the story is told to the reader. I’m not sure that Pamuk intentionally chose to make the perspective of the story a commentary on a major difference between Eastern and Western illuminations, but I think it is subtly present.

The novel is written from the perspective of a diverse range of characters, each with different opinions, a different set of knowledge, and a different range of experiences. This certainly adds to the complexity of the plot. If we compare the amalgam of these views from many characters to be a work of art itself, we see a striking similarity to Western illumination. The way the story simultaneously integrates the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of many characters provides added layers of depth. That being said, the plot obviously contains a variety of Eastern elements. Hence, I believe the plot itself plays on the tension between East and West, narrating an Eastern story in a way that seems very Western.

 

As we read more of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, the differences between eastern and western illuminated manuscripts become very important because they determine life and death in the novel. The techniques Enishte wishes to incorporate into the secret book he is organizing do not seem that significant to us, but they go against the culture that exists in Instanbul at the time.

An important difference between the east and the west is style. In western culture, some works are characterized by the style of the miniaturist who paints them. The Tres Riches Heures for example is defined by the distinguished techniques of the Limbourg brothers. The one page done by Jean Columbe, instead of the Limbourg brothers, stands out from the others because the attention to detail and scale is not as precise. The motions of the figure and and the pigs are very passive. In eastern texts, if a miniaturist were to be as unique as the Limbourg brothers, they are not a true master.

Another difference is the level of extravagance in the pages we have looked at. At the end of class, Professor Serrano mentioned that common manuscripts do not survive because they would be used as scrap paper, but with the ‘nicer’ western  and eastern manuscripts we have seen there is still a difference in the amount of color, gold leaf, and designs being used. In the Book of Hours, pages that use a lot of blue or red, and that have intricate scenes, suggested that whoever owned the book was wealthy. The Tres Riches Heures is also used to display the wealth of the Duke of Berry. Each month includes one of the Dukes chateaus, and displays all the land he owns being worked in some months. The Persian manuscripts that we have viewed in class are less busy. They depict one figure, or a single scene. There are not many objects in the pictures, and there seems to be less use of color and gold leaf. These features could have faded away over time, but there is still a lot less activity in the Persian illuminated manuscripts than western manuscripts. I think that this reflects the differences in culture, but it would be interesting to know the dates of the Persian manuscripts, and look at later ones to see if we see any interchanging of techniques between the east and the west, which is starting to happen in My Name is Red.