Looking Together: Writers on Art

Edited by Rebecca Brown, writer, and Mary Jane Knecht, Frye manager of adult programs and publications
96 pages, 8.75 x 10.5 inches, 23 full color illustrations, 2009
$18.95 paperback
Available in the Museum Store

The relationship between writers and artists has long been a collaborative one. Plato used the word ekphrasis to describe what happens when a writer writes creatively—as opposed to in the voice of a critic—about art. Gertrude Stein claimed that her innovative writing style was inspired by the paintings of Cezanne—and then went on to tell Hemingway to study Cezanne if he wanted to learn to write.

In Looking Together: Writers on Art, published by the Frye and University of Washington Press, a dozen Pacific Northwest writers working in a range of styles respond to works of art either held in the Frye Founding Collection or to contemporary work exhibited at the Museum. Romantic and arch, meticulously researched and fanciful, these poems, stories, monologues and tales are invitations to any curious reader or lover of art to re-look at what we see.

Read excerpts from this publication on the Excerpts from Looking Together: Writers on Art page.

“Sometimes what artists want to explore is something created by another artist. Making art about something created by another human being is a way to engage intimately with how another human being believes or sees or feels or thinks or wants. It can also be really fun.”
—Rebecca Brown, from the Introduction

Participating writers and artists include:
Ryan Boudinot / Tim Eitel
Rebecca Brown / Robyn O’Neil
Christine Deavel / Dario Robleto
Adrianne Harun / Henry Darger
Lesley Hazleton / Gabriel von Max
Richard Hugo / John Henry Twachtman
Stacey Levine / Patricia Piccinini
Frances McCue / Franz von Stuck
Melinda Mueller / Sigrid Sandström
Jack Nisbet / Pieter van Veen
Peter Pereira / Willie Cole
Jonathan Raban / Albert Bierstadt

Image Credits (top to bottom):
Sigrid Sandström. Ginnungagap. 2004. 48 x 72 inches. Acrylic on polycarbonate. Courtesy of the artist and Inman Gallery, Houston.
Pieter van Veen. First Snow, 1914 . Oil on linen. 15 x 21 3/16. Charles and Emma Frye Collection.
Robyn O’Neil. As my heart quiets and my body dies, take me gently through your troubled sky, 2005. Graphite on paper (5 framed panels). Overall: 165 x 59 inches. Collection of Nancy and Tim Hanley and fractional gift of Mr. and Mrs. Hanley to the Dallas Museum of Art.