My Project

All art conveys a message and in turn evokes feelings. Different types of art, however, perform this function differently. The everyday experience can be captured in text, where feelings are spelled out and explained. The experience can also be captured in an image, allowing one to literally “see” an experience.

e.e. cummings, seizes the everyday in two forms: poetry and painting. While most artists allow us to understand their message in one form, e.e. cummings provides more. A different medium can reinvent and transform the message of the artist.

For this project, I would like to see how the two mediums represent the artist similarly or differently. I will look at a piece of art and a poem produced around the same period. Perhaps the piece of art will complicate something he has written in the poem. I will put the two works in dialogue with each other, much like in the evolving thesis. One medium may convey something that the other cannot. What are the benefits of colors versus the benefits of actual text? What elements are lost in each? Which seem to more accurately convey the poet’s emotions?

I am examining these pieces of art not as an expert but rather as an interested individual. I know almost nothing about poetry, art history, or art technique. I am analyzing the messages of these works as someone in the everyday might perceive them. 

I will first observe the paintings and drawings, recording my thoughts in a "stream of consciousness" format, without paying attention to the year in which they were produced. I will then analyze the poem from that year more coherently. Finally, I will compare and contrast the messages of the two. The combination of the two mediums will give me a fuller understanding of the artist and the aim of his work as a whole.