This course explores the relationship between painting and writing. The course will begin by introducing students to traditions of ekphrastic writing (writing in response to the visual) with examples drawn from Homer to Conceptual Poetics. Students will then consider a cross-section of paintings, drawn from many art historical periods, alongside a series of short texts and individual poems by a number of writers that will include: W.H. Auden, Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest and John Ashbery. We will end the course by examining the relationship between conceptual art that uses text and the recent turn to a conceptual poetics (as anthologised by Craig Dworkin and Kenny Goldsmith, 2011) that borrows for poetics many of the traditions of conceptual art.

During the seminars we will discuss a number of individual paintings in detail and students will be encouraged to write both critically and creatively in response to them. Seminars will also provide a space for the discussion critical essays by art historians and theorists.