<p>"This is a modest treasure of a book. Where else could you find Adrian Harun taking on Henry Darger's untitled Battle scene during lightning storm. Naked Children with Rifles?"</p> (City Living) <p>"Though they have a shared origin on the same long-lost cave wall, pictures and words have always had a combative relationship . . . . <i>Looking Together</i> plays with that essential conflict in interesting ways . . . . It's hard to imagine a more profitable truce between words and pictures."</p> (The Stranger) <p>"Two longtime figures on the Seattle lit scene produce an intriguing collection of essays on art."</p> (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
The relationship between writers and artists has long been a collaborative one. Plato used the word ekphrasis to describe what happens when a writer writes creatively, as opposed to critically, about art. Gertrude Stein claimed that her innovative writing style was inspired by the paintings of Cézanne -- and then went on to tell Hemingway to study Cézanne if he wanted to learn to write.
In Looking Together, a dozen writers working in a range of styles and forms respond to works of art held in the permanent collection of Seattle's Frye Art Museum or exhibited there. Romantic and ironic, meticulously researched and fanciful, these poems, stories, monologues, and tales are invitations to any curious reader or lover of art to look again at what we see.
"Sometimes what artists want to explore is something created by another artist. Making art about something created by another human being is a way to engage intimately with how another human being believes or sees or feels or thinks or wants. It can also be really fun." -- From the Introduction by Rebecca Brown
Foreword by Robin Held
Introduction by Rebecca Brown
JONATHAN RABAN / ALBERT BIERSTADT
MELINDA MUELLER / SIGRID SANDSTROM
JACK NISBET / PIETER VAN VEEN
CHRISTINE DEAVEL / DARIO ROBLETO
STACEY LEVINE / PATRICIA PICCININI
LESLEY HAZLETON / GABRIEL VON MAX
REBECCA BROWN / ROBYN O'NEIL
FRANCES MCCUE / FRANZ VON STUCK
ADRIANNE HARUN / HENRY DARGER
RICHARD HUGO / JOHN HENRY TWACHTMAN
PETER PEREIRA / WILLIE COLE
RYAN BOUDINOT / TIM EITEL
Works of Art
Biographies of Artists, Writers, and Editors
Acknowledgments