Exhibition Overview

 

Curated by Donal Harris, Assistant Professor, English Department, University of Memphis and Julian Rome, Senior, University of Memphis

Painted Words: Poets and Painters in Print, 1869-1967 showcases three volumes that combine literary and visual art through printmaking. Since the late-nineteenth century, the tradition of peintre-graveur ("painter-engraver") in France imagined printmaking as a natural synthesis of the verbal, visual, and manual arts. The exhibited works, which range from Paris in the 1860s to New York in the 1960s, combine poetry and graphic work to test not only the bounds of each art form, but also the bounds of printmaking itself.

Donal Harris is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Memphis, where he specializes in U.S. literature from the Civil War until the present. His research has been supported in the past by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Marcus Orr Center for the Humanities.

Julian Rome is a senior at the University of Memphis. He is studying Ancient Greek philosophy, as well as English and French literature. In the Spring of 2018, he taught English as a Second Language and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Alexander Calder, American, 1898-1976
Illustration for an untitled poem from _Paroles Peintes III
_1967, Etching, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Gift of Isabel Ehrlich Goodman and Charles F. Goodman 90.18.38g