Art Council Lecture Series – Jeremy Melius

Entitled “Fugitive Tiepolo!” this talk ask the question, what are the relations between poetry, painting, and art-historical practice? And how might the connections between them be re-framed?

This lecture considers the work of Saint Lucian poet (and painter) Derek Walcott, concentrating on the pictorial imagination of his book-length poem Tiepolo’s Hound (2000). Tracing the strange intimacies Walcott explores between the visual world of Giambattista Tiepolo and his own – two prospects onto the ends of empire – it considers his engagement in relation to the eccentric scholarly literature this eighteenth-century painter continues to accrue.

In doing so, the lecture seeks to bring into focus the consequence of Walcott’s elliptical approach to the image for art history, arguing for a form of art writing that might come to turn on its own obliquity.

This lecture is open to the public and all are welcome to attend!