Reading & Looking

Join us for a Delve seminar in which we will explore a wide range of visual art alongside short essays and books by artists, novelists, philosophers, filmmakers, and poets. Together we will read a series of classic unconventional short texts, both old and new, that examine the complex roles color (culminating with a deep dive into the color blue) plays in literature, the fine arts, philosophy, music, and daily life. We are said to be a visual culture, but few people read images as critically as text. To sharpen our seeing in both forms is what this seminar hopes to achieve, as critical reading in one deepens the experience of the other. Together we will consider such questions as: how do we “read” an image as opposed to a text and vice versa? What are the similarities and differences between verbal and visual media?

Our gateway into the world of color will be two classic essays by art critic and Booker Prize winning novelist John Berger devoted to some of the earliest artistic visions extant: the Paleolithic drawings found in Chauvet cave and the mesmerizing Fayum portraits from Greco-Roman Egypt. We will follow these pieces with two sessions on Derek Jarman’s book Chroma: A Book of Color —a genre-bending memoir that examines the color spectrum and its effect on memory in a series of insightful, playful short chapters, written as he was losing his sight at the end of his life. Eventually Jarman was able to see only in shades of blue—circumstances that make his ruminations on color both powerful and poignant. Our next session will take us into Ludwig Wittgenstein’s mind-expanding thoughts on color perception via excerpts from his Remarks on Color, which we couple with painter and writer Amy Sillman’s insights into how artists approach color—both explore their struggle with words to convey the rich spectrum of experience. The seminar culminates with two sessions on Maggie Nelson’s Bluets , an equally genre-bending experiment in autobiography—an exploration of how we see (or what we miss) and a love letter to blue as color, mood (loss, joy), and its role in art and in life.

Alongside these readings, in each session, using the large screen in Literary Arts’ seminar room, we will look at works of art (both painting and photography ranging from the very oldest work to contemporary art) that are either referred to in the texts or that can be placed in fruitful conversation with the readings. Together we will take a chromophilic journey into the realms of vision, visual pleasure, language, and literature.

Texts:

Chroma: A Book of Color by Derak Jarman

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Excerpts from Wittgenstein and the essays by Berger and Sillman will be supplied by PDF. Participants will be sent files of the images we will be discussing prior to each session.

Access Program

We want our writing classes and seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles…