Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

contemporary art historians. By foregrounding its dual status as artwork in its own
right as well as art historical criticism, this film no longer uses ekphrasis in order
to find its place among the arts, but to be recognized as valid critical discourse
about another art.
But why has ekphrasis so far not been applied to film? To what is this gap
due, and why is it important to be filled? I believe the absence of ekphrasis from
discussions of films about art has to do with the critical divide between high
culture and its focus on literary and aesthetic phenomena on the one hand, and
popular culture and its focus on political and ideological interpretations on the
other. In other words, on the one hand, for critics of ekphrasis, film’s status as low
art or pop culture disqualifies it from being ekphrastic. On the other hand, for
critics of film and pop culture, ekphrasis is too aesthetic a phenomenon to be of
use to their critical inquiry. However, as the analyses in the previous chapters
have shown, ekphrasis is a useful tool for exploring both aesthetic concerns and
ideological issues in film. Moreover, reading film in the context of ekphrasis also
gives us direct access to film’s ongoing struggle to stand on its own and to be
accepted not only as art form alongside, but independent of, painting and the
novel, but perhaps also as art historical criticism.
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