Author: Marie Steiner

Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red observes the relationship between the East and the West and notably, the effects of Western influences on art. Returning to Istanbul after 12 years, Black notices the many things that have changed since his departure, recognizing they originate from the growing influence of Western civilization on the East. One of the central themes of the novel revolves around the clash between Eastern and Western methods of painting, which merely express different ways of seeing the world. Islamic painters attempted to depict the world from Allah’s point of view, whereas the Europeans from a human perspective. I really enjoyed looking at the different eastern book covers in class on Monday and seeing which ones seemed to accurately represent what art should epitomize in eastern countries: no discernible faces and no sense of hierarchy. The various narrators often bring up the idea of “signature” and “style” – in the East, all painters were to imitate the work of their older masters, there was no room for personal/identifiable style or technique. However, in the west, painters ubiquitously would take credit for their work by signing their art pieces or making them recognizable with a personal style. Being a westerner, I never really gave much thought to the idea of showing belonging with a signature on religious artwork. I don’t believe this is as controversial nowadays; however, it makes me wonder if any art work that has a religious purpose should be taken credit for, as opposed to merely dedicated to the Divine. I believe that in the end, the debate between East and West regarding art is somewhat futile and only reflects different ideas of devotion to religion, which the East and West may simply not share.

Nowadays, books have become such a ubiquitous and almost obsolete object, that it is interesting to re-trace the evolution of books and the impact it has begotten upon societies throughout the centuries. Books, particularly before the invention of the internet, have played a major role in the transmission of information between generations and the spread of new ideas. Without books, history is silent, knowledge does not get passed down, and science never evolves. Like author Barbara W. Tuchman claimed, “Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. […] Books are humanity in print.”

I found Mr. Goodwillie’s explanations of how various civilizations invented their own idea of how a book should be created and what information it should contain fascinating. Although starting with the desire to spread the truths found in the Bible, written contents slowly deviated from religion and Christianity to share practical knowledge (seen, for instance, in Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie) and/or knowledge about the world (Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry). It’s interesting to think that without book innovation and the constant improvement civilizations added to it, our current society would know nothing about history. It makes me question if the digital age we now live in is going to play a similar role in protecting history, or destroy what books had been accomplishing for centuries.

I find the concept of ekphrasis rather ambiguous, in that Mitchell states that on a semantical level, there exists essentially no difference between images and language. The same amount of information and meaning can be articulated through speech and through an image. However, the relationship between the two and the degree to  which they correlate with one another becomes the obstacle. In certain cases, an illustration can serve to support a speech or verbal element, as a picture is worth a thousand words. In other cases, the opposite occurs: speech can help better understand an image.

Although this signifies that verbal and pictorial factors are correlated on some level, the exercise we did in class with Achille’s Shield proved that while images and language are able to support one another, they are not a replacement for each other. The exercise demonstrated just how limited the practice of ekphrasis can be. No matter how detailed and descriptive the passage was, there still remained infinite ways to depict the shield because while images are concrete and straight-forward, textual and verbal descriptions leave room for imagination. Hence, interpretation obstructs the practicability of ekphrasis.