What can literature do that visual arts can't?

you don't think that reading literature is reading the product of another's imagination?

Literally Ulysses

no. those are ideas

The film is the product of one reader's imagination.

A reader relies on their own imagination.

Literally poetry

Literally boring erotica.

I can insert my own imagination and settings and characters into something I read and interpret things going on inside the characters heads the way I want to. Also insert people I know or the way they look as I want them

I can also imagine the author's mind what they wanted to create and communicate to the reader as a concept, through the written form.

Please, most literature conjures images and generates ideas. You didn't develop a mental image of Gregor crawling around the ceiling in Metamorphosis or Queequeg diving over the side of the Pequod to rescue Tashtego from drowning in the head of a spermwhale?

Why can't a film viewer use their imagination in interpreting a film?

>Why can't someone use their imagination to interpret anything? etc., etc.

Yea so how is to what extent a medium allows you to use your imagination a meaningful difference?

>implying a linear measurement to imagination

literally say something

Scott Fitzgerald, Nabakov, etc

Please refer to literature is a process that can be applied to the visual arts

...

Abstract art can still be narrativised in the way we appreciate/interpret/critique it

If a rock can be "read" as a text a Pollock sure as hell can be, art exists in context and the way we frame that context constitutes a narrative

Calligraphy is a visual art so I guess nothing.

Tell me what the painting reads.

There is a wealth of criticism on Pollock, do you want me to find it for you?

The fact that we're discussing whether or not anything can be read into the painting is the creation of a narrative. Stating "there is no narrative to x" is kind of like saying "there are no absolutes." Once you establish that there's something to be said about it then it becomes textual and narrativised.

If I were to go about "reading" this painting I would start with colour and form, the value of randomness for Pollock's work, and it's place and importance within a grander art historical narrative.

Can't do it yourself, eh.

Come up with one sentence. Come on. You can do it.

>Can't do it yourself, eh.
not him but it's not anybody's fault but your own that you have fallen so far behind art history that you don't know the basic ideas floating around one of the most famous artists of the 20th century.

Abstraction up until Pollock had been more or less concerned with the exploration of forms, forms of shape and line that is, but as this painting of his demonstrates there is also an art to be found in formlessness; what are seemingly random splashes of paint are nonetheless intentionally made, the desired product meaning to evoke rather than exemplify randomness.

Fuck me for engaging with you.

We're talking about making literature, not questioning ideas.

You and he knows the concepts. Make one sentence.

You can't. Hence, no correlation to literature.

Two different mediums. Each cannot be substituted for the other one.

Oh hey look at this sentence I made (shitty as it is) Also, literature may be a medium but it is also the process of creating narrative. Literature isn't one atomized thing but the plurality of things which are narrative.

You made no literary work there.

I'm sorry that engaging with me proved your theory wrong.

I really wanted you to be proven right. I really did. I'm tired of shooting holes through user's theories. It gets tiresome, old and quite sad really. I need someone with some mental balls to stand up for their ideas.

Analysis isn't literature.

What is literary work then, user? Since I've clearly been BTFO'd without you engaging with my point about literature as-process. You claim to have destroyed my theory, but offered none in return.

While you're at it, also explain to me what is meant by phrases like "scientific literature"

Everyone knows what literature is. Don't demean yourself this way.

Why do you say that? If you read and engaged with what is said here you might at least have a shot at explaining yourself

Ohohohohoho, why don't you just write one sentence on what literature is?

What is analysis?

If you were take what you read there, distill it down to your through your own ideas and elucidate it here, I might respect and engage with you more.

It's hard to respect somebody who follows authority. If you had said knowledge you should be more powerful here, right?

I wrote the original thread

That was somewhat vague. More specifically, criticism.

>taking someone who uses spoilers incorrectly in a discussion on art seriously

And I mean, even if I weren't the OP of that thread, which I am, why are you going to such lengths to avoid answering my questions when I did my best to address your concerns? Seems mighty uncharitable of you.

Get inside another person's brain

Seeing as we're in full damage control here, I'm going to stop responding to you now

OP did not suggest a position on a yes/no to the question. However, we have proven the difference already. It is abundantly clear.

Once a question has been answered, why keep answering it? Take your newfound knowledge, apply it to your participation in the arts and maybe you will come back here with a new, more insightful take on the literary arts which would benefit us all.

Why? You've been so useful.

lmao I thought this was in reaction to the shitflinging but now I realize it's a dumb response to OP

>What can literature do that visual arts can't?

It can keep your place, especially if you use a bookmark, if you fall asleep during it.

Kind of ruined your erection there, didn't it.

Literature is derivative of music and the visual arts. Theres far more information in a painting than a book, but that information is harder to sculpt w nuance. Literature is better/simpler for going into detail about almost anything, plus it has easier access to rhythm and melody, making its effects more visceral than that of painting (less of course than music)

Honestly how can there be more info in a painting

This thread reads like it is incompatible with literature. Delete.

You can pretend it's there.

Take a child's fingerpaint, for example. You can make up whatever you want about it. See?

rhythm is for poetry

melody is for hallmark cards

How is it dumb? Texts can quite easily depict the quirks and complexities of thought whereas visual mediums require much more work to present a version of even the simplest thought. What painting can come close to depicting what samuel beckett can depict in 100 pages?

But you can do the same thing with a book's printed letters. And theres more letters and they mean stuff. So a book's infinity is larger than a paintings infinity

You're right.

I didn't make my sarcasm quite blatant enough.

You're not considering cinema.

Oh woopsydaisies. My B

no problem *high five*

>cinema
Even if they are screening movies it's still called a theater.

There is new technology whereby movies can be viewed outside of a cinema.

I am actually. You still can't get the camera inside someone's head, and when it tries direct stream-of-conciousness it comes out as a hacky gimmick nine times out of ten. Small passing observations in a novel have to be telegraphed with a blimp in film.

Where does it go then?

can't make a painting out of the genealogy of morality or something like that innit

yes.

not necessarily "better" though, just "different" -- a different quality of form of mass communication of creative ideas

Literature includes information decided on the whim of the author

The visual arts, by necessity, have to include information that is extraneous/irrelevant to the whim of artist, simply because it part of the object. Thats what I'm referring by "more information" - literature is given freedom at the cost of truth

sage

"Whim" isn't the best word to use there.

also,

This applies only to representational art obviously

I think you will find useful te read about category theory.

Thanks for explaining why.

>implying the abstract doesn't include information

ffs sake why do none of you get this

I get that you're on edge but I'm not the user that's trying to annoy you. I just think you could relate to it because you posit an hypothetical Genealogy of moral in painting form, that's all. I'm learning about it myself.

I meant Nietzsche's Genealogy of morals, obviously.

Well, a random suggestion from an anonymous source without much reason given is sound advice to me.

From the looks of this thread, it seems there's no good answer to your question -- go figure.

What are you even doing on Veeky Forums?

There's a good answer, but you won't find it among sad NEETs and analytical phil autists.

That's already been discussed here.Can you please pay better attention.

Please dump it in this thread. Some user, somewhere, will appreciate it.

Communicating with language, not posting grunts.

Thanks for admitting that you shitpost, though.

Presumptuous.

I believe pomo hermeneutics would regard any differences between text and art superficial and therefore without meaning. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Be explicit.

Literature moreso lets you directly in to how an author thinks--it allows the most direct access to their mind. So, it has that kind of intimacy.

Visual arts focus on what and how the author SEES. Photography, drawings, motion pictures, etc. Experiencing visual arts lets you see their visions through their eyes.

nothing. it took what literature had to offer and became its own beast

pleb painting by the way

Who is this pomo hermeneutics guy and where can I meet him?

This guy has a point though I'd phrase it differently. Basically you need to have language in order to understand literature

Visual arts have somewhat of a universal language.

Take for example this Rembrandt self portrait. Show it to anyone and they can understand that it is a man. There is of course deeper meanings, but the immediacy of visual imagery is what separates it from literature which takes language and time to comprehend.

*Which could account for the fluidity (no concrete, impassable definition) of the distinctions thus far illustrated.

You'd have to have eyeballs to understand the visual arts.

Pretty much every sense the body has can be used to transmit language.

So, I don't understand the "universal" point.

Also, some people don't get impressions from certain visual works at all.

I don't think the difference is found here.

and yet the aspects of a painting the average person doesn't think about like composition, color, technique, and so forth are analogous to the aspects of literature beyond pure storytelling like prose and theming. They both have obvious and less accessible elements each.

The REAL question is, which one is superior?

>the "everything is essentially the same" argument

laughable in its idiocy.