The scriptorium workshop this week, whilst no doubt illuminating (forgive the pun), was perhaps inauthentic in its portrayal of miniaturist art practices. I do not mean this in the sense that the class failed to recreate the environment of a sixteenth century monastery. This is of course impossible, as time machines are not yet sold. Rather, I found it confusing to have to embellish an initial without a greater text to guide my illustration.
Our text was simply a letter. In my case, my letter was ‘J’. And I would argue that a ‘J’ is already the perfect calligraphic embellishment of the letter ‘J’.
Yet we all engaged in elaborate illustrations without anything to illustrate.
I wonder then, which came first: the illumination or the text? Did anthropomorphic initials provide inspiration for a manuscript, or, did the manuscript guide an illustration?
Nevertheless, if I was to engage in ekphrasis, and so create text for my anthropomorphic initial, my ‘J’ would have reflected perhaps a rainy day as my ‘J’ was an umbrella. Under the umbrella, safe from the rain, hot air balloons flew; stick figures fished off clouds and flew kites; and a garden of roses grew below.
Indeed, just from this stimulus, I believe it is fascinating to consider just what text would accompany our initials, initials whose embellishments are undoubtedly subconscious and thus surrealistic.
Without a strict purpose for our illuminations have we then stumbled upon surrealist illuminations?
Have we stumbled upon a blending of modern and ancient art?
I also had a difficult time trying to figure out what text/images should accompany my initial. It seemed as though I had to cover a lot of ground and really capture the meaning of one letter, and there are definitely a lot of different ways I could’ve gone about that. To answer you last question, I think what we did on Wednesday was definitely a blend of modern and ancient art. We tried to recreate a scriptorium as best we could, but everyone brought in different elements from their life/experiences to their letter. Others tried to copy old letters exactly, but since we were using modern materials and not parchment, what we created was a mix of old and new.