Craquelure

: Ekphrastic inquiry as engagement with art

Abstract

‘Craquelure: Ekphrastic Inquiry as Engagement with Art’ is a PhD thesis divided into two parts: a creative component and a critical component that together investigate how ekphrastic activities can complicate and enrich our engagement with art in museums, using a mix of theoretical analysis, close reading, poetic inquiry and empirical research methods. My introduction explains how Ekphrastic Inquiry can offer alternative forms of engagement with art for a broad range of museum visitors, through an ongoing process of dialogue and interaction. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a contextual framework for the research, examining recent developments in museum theory and practice, and analysing the different forms of ekphrastic activity that currently take place in museums. Chapter 3 situates this research in the context of existing literary and cultural analysis, focusing on links between ekphrastic writing and the art museum, and drawing on the original definition and practical significance of ekphrasis in Greek rhetoric to examine ekphrasis as a process of engagement. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the application of these theories, examining the experiences of survey participants, interviewees and writing workshop participants to assess how the process of reading (or writing) ekphrasis might critically or creatively affect our engagement with art, or with the historical figures that such artwork may evoke, depict or represent. Chapter 6 then draws on this analysis to investigate what happens when visitors are invited to engage in the dialogic process of Ekphrastic Inquiry in an art museum setting, evaluating visitor response to an in-person display that took place at Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd – National Museum Cardiff in 2022, and comparing this to an online version that took place on Instagram in 2021. My creative component is divided into two collections that each extend the ekphrastic/meta-ekphrastic dialogue into a form of ongoing creative practice, inviting further interaction from the reader/viewer. Craquelure is a text-based poetry collection, and What Are You Looking For? is a collection of poetry-objects. These collections reflect on, interrogate, embody and explore the concept and practical outcomes of Ekphrastic Inquiry and my role as researcher/poet. Finally, Chapter 7 examines and reflects on this process of opening up the ekphrastic dialogue with an analysis of my own creative work.

Date of Award	2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Prifysgol Caerdydd | Cardiff University
Supervisor	Richard Marggraf Turley (Supervisor) & Damian Walford Davies (Supervisor)