Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

The relationship between the writer’s word and the artist’s eye can be explored as either parallel or contradictory. It could be said that the visual arts leave more room for interpretation, although literature allows its reader the freedom of visualisation. Generally, however, art captures only one moment in time and the time frame of literature is limitless. Australian Nobel Prize winner, Patrick White, was both a prolific writer and a passionate art collector. A self-confessed painter manqué, within his works he merges his appreciation for art with his narratives into a symbiotic web that infuses his novels with a detailed and vivid style that echoes the paintings that he was so passionate about. Utilising painterly techniques, such as the focus on light, texture, colour, and shape, his writing gives the characters, and the world that they live in, the visual complexity that a painter would allow his/her subjects while simultaneously allowing them to have actualised narratives in a feasible timeline. This becomes particularly evident when analysing several of his earlier novels, The Aunt’s Story, Riders in the Chariot, Voss and The Tree of Man, in which he experiments with different painterly techniques in his writing, from Cubism to Realism. Through the analysis of Patrick White’s novels, the intertextual nature of art and literature can be examined, opening the door to the exploration of other authors’ works using the same framework.