Literature and Art

This week one of my professors sent my class on an exploration through the art museum. Our assignment was to find a work of art that we felt represented the work of Emily Dickinson in some way, write about it, and then gather together and discuss our chosen piece of artwork. Walking through the UMMA’s collections with such a specific goal in mind was a very different experience from my usual wanderings through the museum. It forced me to really look at the art and try to see more in it than just something pretty hanging on a wall.  The assignment also took me in directions I didn’t expect to go.  I had anticipated finding something that I felt represented a tone or scene in one of Dickinson’s poems, but instead found in Simon Dybbroe Møller’s “BRAIN I” a physical representation of the process of working through a Dickinson poem.

When reading a Dickinson poem, it’s easy to try and oversimplify what’s happening in the poem – to simply give it a passing glance, recognize the obvious, and move on. But, slowing down and really examining the poetry nearly always reveals possibilities that were previously unapparent in that initial cursory glance. You’ll discover obstacles and nuance in the poetry that didn’t seem to exist before, because they were transparent or un-seeable in a superficial reading. This is the experience that Møller’s exhibit brought to life for me. When I first walked in to the exhibit, I didn’t feel that there was anything to see, but as I spent more time in the exhibit and really examined it, I began to notice details that weren’t initially obvious, for example, two paintings in the exhibit are identical (one a miniature of the other), the modeled layout on the television is actually an exact replica of the exhibit, and there is a painting hiding under a pile of boxes. Each of these details were hidden to me until I took the time to pause and really look around me. Even the clear walls in the exhibit held meaning for me in relation to Dickinson, because they felt like those hidden obstacles that one can discover in Dickinson’s poetry – though it’s difficult to see the walls, they’re just as impossible to walk through as an unmissable, solid plaster wall.

This project was such a unique experience that I would love to try it again with a different writer, or perhaps someone or something completely different, in mind. If you get a chance, you should give it a try.  You might be surprised at what unexpected comparisons you can draw.