Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image
“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence”, Tennessee Williams wrote in 1951 in an essay devoted to The Rose Tattoo, entitled “The Timeless World of a Play” (61). What the statement reveals is the American playwright’s conception of art as a m...
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| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/polysemes, |
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| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Polysèmes
2017
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| Acceso en liña: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:polysemes_2292 |
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openedition |
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OpenEdition Journal |
| language |
Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
| building |
0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
texte/image peinture théâtre américain word/image painting American theatre |
| spellingShingle |
texte/image peinture théâtre américain word/image painting American theatre Maruéjouls-Koch, Sophie Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image |
| description |
“Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence”, Tennessee Williams wrote in 1951 in an essay devoted to The Rose Tattoo, entitled “The Timeless World of a Play” (61). What the statement reveals is the American playwright’s conception of art as a means of fighting against the passing of time, against the “awful sense of impermanence” (61) that never stopped haunting him. But the stage is not the only place where, as Williams wrote in the same essay, “time is arrested in the sense of being confined” (61). The sketches and paintings he made throughout his life reveal the same obsession with time, the same desire to freeze the intensity of the moment into the work of art. Two paintings, made in 1975 and 1977, shed new light on two of his late plays, Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear. Written at the end of his life, both plays are attempts at capturing the totality of experience. In them, Williams intertwines past and present, life and art, combining movement and stasis to achieve a synthesis his paintings echo, or mirror, though in a very different way. The examination of these unknown paintings in relation to the plays is meant to engage us in a dialogue between texts and images. What the dialogical perspective reveals is a temporality that is circular rather than linear, anachronistic rather than chronological. Williams the painter and Williams the playwright blur the limits of space and time to reach that region where the distinctions between text and image collapse as one becomes the mirror of the other, its “horizon,” as Jean-Luc Nancy writes in Au Fond des images. There, words fail and figures dissolve; there, silence and haziness confront the reader/spectator with the timelessness of art, not as something eternal or transcendent, but rather as a magic interval where the intensity of the vanishing moment can be captured. In the scripts of his plays as well as in his paintings, Williams faces us with the mystery of time, with an elusiveness that he considers as the only true essence of his art. Through a comparative analysis of two of his paintings with two of his late plays, I intend to show how the verbal and the visual interconnect in Williams’s art, how his texts as well as his paintings convey a sense of “intense immobility” that is the artist’s way of beating “the game of being against non-being” (Williams 2009, 61). |
| author |
Maruéjouls-Koch, Sophie |
| author_facet |
Maruéjouls-Koch, Sophie |
| author_sort |
Maruéjouls-Koch, Sophie |
| title |
Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image |
| title_short |
Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image |
| title_full |
Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image |
| title_fullStr |
Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image |
| title_sort |
tennessee williams, the playwright-painter: vieux carré and something cloudy, something clear at the crossroads between text and image |
| publisher |
Polysèmes |
| publishDate |
2017 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/polysemes |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/polysemes.2292 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/polysemes/2292 |
| _version_ |
1877242168463065088 |
| spelling |
openedition-oai:revues.org:polysemes_2292 https://doi.org/10.4000/polysemes.2292 urn:doi:10.4000/polysemes.2292 en https://journals.openedition.org/polysemes/2292 2017-11-30T01:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/j67t All rights reserved Tennessee Williams, the Playwright-Painter: Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear at the Crossroads between Text and Image Polysèmes SAIT info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2496-4212 info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/0999-4203 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/polysemes Maruéjouls-Koch, Sophie texte/image peinture théâtre américain word/image painting American theatre “Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence”, Tennessee Williams wrote in 1951 in an essay devoted to The Rose Tattoo, entitled “The Timeless World of a Play” (61). What the statement reveals is the American playwright’s conception of art as a means of fighting against the passing of time, against the “awful sense of impermanence” (61) that never stopped haunting him. But the stage is not the only place where, as Williams wrote in the same essay, “time is arrested in the sense of being confined” (61). The sketches and paintings he made throughout his life reveal the same obsession with time, the same desire to freeze the intensity of the moment into the work of art. Two paintings, made in 1975 and 1977, shed new light on two of his late plays, Vieux Carré and Something Cloudy, Something Clear. Written at the end of his life, both plays are attempts at capturing the totality of experience. In them, Williams intertwines past and present, life and art, combining movement and stasis to achieve a synthesis his paintings echo, or mirror, though in a very different way. The examination of these unknown paintings in relation to the plays is meant to engage us in a dialogue between texts and images. What the dialogical perspective reveals is a temporality that is circular rather than linear, anachronistic rather than chronological. Williams the painter and Williams the playwright blur the limits of space and time to reach that region where the distinctions between text and image collapse as one becomes the mirror of the other, its “horizon,” as Jean-Luc Nancy writes in Au Fond des images. There, words fail and figures dissolve; there, silence and haziness confront the reader/spectator with the timelessness of art, not as something eternal or transcendent, but rather as a magic interval where the intensity of the vanishing moment can be captured. In the scripts of his plays as well as in his paintings, Williams faces us with the mystery of time, with an elusiveness that he considers as the only true essence of his art. Through a comparative analysis of two of his paintings with two of his late plays, I intend to show how the verbal and the visual interconnect in Williams’s art, how his texts as well as his paintings convey a sense of “intense immobility” that is the artist’s way of beating “the game of being against non-being” (Williams 2009, 61). « Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence » : Tennessee Williams écrivit cette phrase en 1951 dans un essai intitulé « The Timeless World of a Play » (61). L’affirmation met au jour une conception de l’art comme moyen de lutter contre le passage du temps, contre une « affreuse sensation d’impermanence » (61) qui n’a jamais quitté le dramaturge. Or, la scène n’est pas le seul endroit où, selon Williams, « le temps, soudain pris au piège, s’arrête » (61). Les dessins et tableaux qu’il réalisa tout au long de sa vie trahissent la même hantise du temps qui passe, le même désir de fixer l’intensité du moment dans l’œuvre d’art. Deux tableaux, peints en 1975 et 1977, permettent ainsi de porter un regard nouveau sur deux pièces écrites à la fin de sa carrière. Intitulées Vieux Carré et Something Cloudy, Something Clear, elles ont ceci de commun qu’elles apparaissent comme des tentatives de capturer la totalité d’une existence, d’enfermer la petite éternité d’une vie dans les limites de la représentation. Dans chacune d’elles, Williams mêle le passé et le présent, la vie et l’art, combinant les notions de mouvement et de stase pour opérer une synthèse dont ses images peintes sont l’écho, ou, pourrait-on dire aussi, le miroir. L’analyse de ces deux pièces au prisme de deux peintures méconnues de Williams invite à un dialogue fructueux entre les textes et les images. De cette approche dialogique émerge une temporalité plus circulaire que linéaire, plus anachronique que chronologique. Williams le peintre et Williams le dramaturge brouillent les limites spatio-temporelles pour créer ce lieu intermédiaire où les distinctions entre texte et image s’annulent, l’un devenant le miroir de l’autre, son « horizon d’interprétation », pour reprendre l’expression de Jean-Luc Nancy. Là, les mots manquent et les formes s’évanouissent ; là encore, le silence et l’indistinction confrontent le spectateur à l’intemporalité de l’art, non pas comme quelque chose d’éternel ou de transcendant, mais plutôt comme un intervalle magique où l’intensité du moment fuyant se révèle, comme une évanescence capturée dans les mailles de la représentation. Dans les textes de ses pièces, comme dans ses tableaux, Williams met le spectateur/lecteur face au mystère du temps, de ce temps objet d’une quête artistique vitale dans une œuvre où les images n’ont jamais cessé d’accompagner les mots. |