The Catalonian Garden by Georges Badin and Michel Butor, Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès, Paris, 2000
Interpictoriality
In literature
The idea of interiority, studied above, is explicit:
“By painting myself for someone else, I have painted myself in myself with clearer colours than were mine at first.” (II, 18)
[“Me peignant pour autruy je me suis peint en moy de couleurs plus nettes que n’estoyent les mienne premieres.” (II, 18, p.452)]
The empty space around the painting, which is mentioned, along with the painting upon which the painter has not settled, lead to the indeterminacy of the portrait. It remains at the stage of a sketch which changes like Montaigne’s own being (the succession of sketches is endless).
The Interartistic Phenomenon through Montaigne’s Essays, Peter Lang, Bern, 2018, p. 152
In painting
In the context of the paragon of the arts in the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci had this to say:
The painter must take into account ten considerations to bring his work to a successful conclusion, namely: light, darkness, colours, volume, figure, location, distance, proximity, movement and rest.
The sculptor must consider only volume, figure, location, movement and rest. He doesn’t have to worry about darkness and light, because nature itself produces them in his sculptures. Nor does he have to worry about colour. Distance and proximity are of little concern to him. He uses linear perspective, not colour perspective, despite the variations in the colours and sharpness of the outlines of the figures as the eye moves away.
Sculpture is simpler and requires less effort from the mind than painting.
Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, Codex Urbinas, 1495-1499
Leonardo da Vinci, Saint Anne, the Virgin and Child Jesus Playing with a
Lamb, 168.4 × 130 cm, 1503-1519, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Dans Les Mots dans la peinture de 1969 Michel Butor plaide en faveur des mots dans la peinture tout en parsemant son texte d’une riche constellation d’exemples représentant d’innombrables configurations de sens que reproduisent les deux arts en connivence. Il ouvre le chemin, en enlevant la barrière qui sépare la peinture et la littérature.
In Les Mots dans la peinture (Words in Painting), published in 1969, Michel Butor argues in favour of words in painting, interspersing his text with a rich constellation of examples representing the countless configurations of meaning reproduced by the two arts in collusion. He opens the way by removing the barrier that separates painting and literature.
L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019
ISBN: 978-8825521108, p.88
The Catalonian Garden by Georges Badin and Michel Butor, Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès, Paris, 2000
The inscription of text in the picture makes it semiotically pictorial, the words themselves become pictorial signs. The greatest creation in art rests on the creative spark of the Holy Spirit, His grace is poured out in works of an interartistic nature where there is an interplay between the arts, and it is these works that express the Divine essence. In her painting with a biblical subject, Pastor Maria Balova-Petrova writes verses from the Holy Scriptures, making it both interartistic and interpictorial.
Maria Balova-Petrova, Prayer, acrylic paint on canvas, Sofia, 2023
Claude MONET, The Poppies, 1873, oil on canvas, 50X65, Paris, Musée d’Orsay.
In painting, literature, music, cinema
In fact, it’s another image that emerges and is expressed through the music inspired by the smell of hawthorns. As there are two superimposed images, we are talking here of interpictoriality. Under the influence of the music – the effect becomes intermusical and ultimately interartistic, because there is a triple interaction – that of literature through Proust’s text, that of the music he hears and therefore makes heard, and that of the painting superimposed on these two images.
L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019
ISBN: 978-8825521108, p. 23
In literature
The text ends on a cusp, as in a painting, a final, stronger line, an accent that the painter puts on to better define his painting. We can also think of the conductor’s baton rising to a crescendo, which is expressed by the verb cries out. And the narrator utters The Sea! It’s as if he’s making us discover a revelation through this final note.
L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019
ISBN: 978-8825521108, p. 25
In music
The Sea, Claude Debussy
L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019
ISBN: 978-8825521108, p. 22-23
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Rocks of Beautiful Island, the wild coast
1886, Oil on canvas, 1.059 × 867, Orsay Museum
In painting
The painting completely changes subject, colour and tonality. The interpretation becomes oblique, the reverse side of the painting – the sign that becomes the signifier changes meaning. This is the case when he contemplates the poppy floating in the wind, his black buoy transformed into a sea painting.
L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019
ISBN: 978-8825521108, p. 20
In literature
The wheat field in the Proustian text also echoes Monet’s Poppies, another painting. You get the impression of being on a film strip, thanks to the strips of text that make the changing frames evolve. It’s intercinematographic, if you think of the changing impressions of Impressionist paintings over the course of a day, as in Monet’s Cathedrals of Rouen.
Thanks to light, reality changes colour (Laneyrie-Dagen Nadeije, Lire la peinture dans l’intimité des œuvres, Larousse, Paris, 2015, pp 239-241) many times a day. In Proust’s work, we can note any buzzing of the smell of hawthorns. From the very first sentence, we see a triple sensation that emerges from the interpretation – buzzing (music) smell (perfume) hawthorn (painting / literature). The religious image that emerges is in line with the biblical analysis on a higher level, as we shall see later with the presentation of the interartistic phenomenon.
L’interpicturalité dans la sémiotique de l’art, Aracne editrice, Rome, 2019
ISBN: 978-8825521108, p. 20