IMAGE-TEXT RELATIONSHIPS (Part 7)

Grant Jenkins, in the comments field of Tuesday’s post, writes: "I know this is a work-in-progress, but I'd like to see more analysis of the relation between text and image and what you think Brainard and Creeley are up to with the mix."

I'll take up Grant’s challenge, and spend this morning looking at the variety of ways that Brainard approaches text-image relationships. As we’ll soon see, there is no one specific way to do that.

Illustration


The most frequent—indeed, obvious—kind of image-text relationship in storyless or poetic comics is what I would call “illustration.” This relationship is most often seen in what many commonly refer to as “poetry comics.” Typically, a comics artist will take a poem already written—by him or herself or most often by someone else—and “set” the poem to comics, much like the way in which poems are sometimes set to music.

You can see four recent examples of this on the Poetry Foundation’s Web site, here. Brainard himself takes this approach in “People of the World … Relax!” (above), a comic he included in the first issue of C Comics (1964).

Here, the relationship between text and image is what I would call “illustrative.” Three of the poetry comics on the Poetry Foundation’s site are purely illustrative: those of Ron Rege, Jr., Gabrielle Bell, and David Heatley.

These and Brainard example above function somewhat similarly to illustrations used in newspapers and magazines. They are basically literal renderings of the text. Bell’s is a bit more evocative than the others, but is essentially an illustration.

This kind of approach, while pleasing, is ultimately the least interesting—or for that matter, “poetic”—of any possible approach. Somewhat lacking as stories, these comics are equally lacking as poetry.

Interpretation


In the example above, from the second issue of Brainard’s C Comics (1965), Brainard takes several steps beyond a literal rendering of Ashbery’s text. In fact, it’s important here to note that the images likely came first. Neither the images nor the text appear to literally “illustrate” each other, but rather play off each other in fairly oblique ways, complicating the text-image relationship to allow for various reader interpretations.

Detournement

Click on the image above to see a readable copy.

Another popular approach, especially among agit-prop artists, in detournement, a new text is applied to set of ready-made images, often those from someone else’s comics. The new text reinterprets the images, typically commenting on them, with satirical intent. This is clearly the case in Brainard and Frank O’Hara’s “Red Rydler,” above, which “detours” images from the once-popular “Red Ryder” series.

Usually, the “charge” of meaning (think electricity) flows in one direction: from text to image. In “Red Rydler,” for instance, the images do not likewise comment on, or further inform, the text.

Enactment

Click on the image to see a larger version.

The text-image relationship in Brainard and Kenward Elmslie’s “Babs’ First Smile,” above, is fully integrated, and fairly complex. The images in particular, rather than literalizing or interpreting the text, fully enact an aspect of the text. In this case, the absurd but nonetheless profound questions and assertions brought up in the text: “Who am I? Where am I? There is no me.”

These questions, asked by the “Babs” character in the text, become, in the finished comic, larger philosophical questions about not just the artistic process, but about anyone using readymade material (e.g., language) for expressive purposes.

Stringing




In Brainard and Ron Padgett’s “Sufferin’ Succotash,” images are strung along together, in Christmas light fashion, allowing for oblique but often fairly resonant connections between text and image. The meaning flow is largely directed from the text outward into the images, although there is some flow back into the text. These images do not so much interpret or clarify the text as they elaborate on and complicate it.

The images, perhaps somewhat dull individually, “light up” with numerous associative resonances, less from image to image than from image to text and through text to other image. Text and image here are fully and complexly integrated, and allow for a great deal of reader play and interpretation.

Overlay


Finally, Brainard and Robert Creeley’s “Class of ’47” is an example of image overlaid onto text. Not literally, mind you—but thinking in terms of the relationship between text and image, it is as though the images produce a film or lens, which “recolors” the text itself.

This is similar to detournement, but in detournement, the meaning of the original is completely changed; in overlay, meaning is nuanced or colored. Creeley’s text, lifted from Harvard’s alumni magazine, is not changed by the visual overlay of comics and advertising imagery. Rather, aspects of the original text—its pathos, its pretentiousness, and so on—are highlighted.

Comments, questions, and suggestions are all welcome in the comments field below, or by e-mail: gpsullivan AT hotmail DOT com.