T. S. Eliot in the Art of R. B. Kitaj: Anatomy of an Influence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2019-41.2.06Abstract
R. B. Kitaj’s keen interest in literature, which he connected with his Jewish heritage and its reverence for the written word, shows through as an essential characteristic of his art. As a young artist, Kitaj’s cultural referents included Ezra Pound and, especially, T. S. Eliot. The external and imaginative structure of The Waste Land (1922) inspired the composition of Kitaj’s Tarot Variations (1958), while Eliot’s “Notes” to the poem were a model for Kitaj’s “prefaces,” short texts supplementing many of his paintings. If Not, Not (1975-1976) memorialises the Shoah, also drawing on The Waste Land—the definitive text as well as its drafts and critical reception. Like Eliot’s poetry, Kitaj’s art is highly allusive, in a way that conforms to Eliot’s views on tradition and creativity. This is one of the reasons to stress the continuities with modernism in Kitaj’s figurative art, which developed in the predominantly non-figurative context of postmodernism. In later years, Kitaj distanced himself from Eliot—prominently in The Killer-Critic (1997)—rejecting the poet’s early emphasis on impersonality and the anti-Semitism of his verse. Despite these differences, Eliot’s influence on Kitaj was intense, long-lasting and productive.
Keywords: R. B. Kitaj; T. S. Eliot; modernism; influence; tradition
Downloads
References
Ashbery, John. 1983. “Hunger and Love in Their Variations.” In Kitaj 1983, 10-16.
Aulich, James. 2000. “Kitaj, History and Tradition.” In Aulich and Lynch 2000, 153-68.
Aulich, James and John Lynch, eds. 2000. Critical Kitaj: Essays on the Work of R. B. Kitaj. Manchester: Manchester UP.
Bernstein, Michael André. 2000. Five Portraits: Modernity and the Imagination in Twentieth Century German Writing. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
Bloom, Harold. 1997. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP.
Chinitz, David E., ed. 2014. A Companion to T. S. Eliot. Oxford: Blackwell.
Conrad, Joseph. 2002. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. 2nd ed. Edited by Cedric Watts. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Cooper, John Xiros. 2011. “Anti-Semitism.” In Harding 2011, 285-94.
Cuda, Anthony. 2014. “The Poet and the Pressure Chamber: Eliot’s Life.” In Chinitz 2014, 3-14.
Deppner, Martin Roman. 2000. “The Trace of the Other in the Work of R. B. Kitaj.” In Aulich and Lynch 2000, 181-96.
Dickey, Frances and John D. Morgenstern, eds. 2016. The Edinburgh Companion to T. S. Eliot and the Visual Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
Eckett, Simon. 2011. “The Poet Lover: R. B. Kitaj and the Post-Pound Poets.” PN Review 197, 37 (3): 46-51.
Eliot, T. S. 1957. On Poetry and Poets. London: Faber.
—. (1922) 1971. The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts. Edited by Valerie Eliot. London: Faber.
—. 2007. The Waste Land, with Art by R. B. Kitaj. San Francisco, CA: Arion.
—. 2011. The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Vol. 1, 1898-1922. Edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton. Rev. ed. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
—. 2014. The Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot: The Critical Edition. Vol. 2, The Perfect Critic 1919-1926. Edited by Anthony Cuda and Ronald Schuchard. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP.
—. 2015. The Annotated Text: The Poems of T. S. Eliot. Vol. 1, Collected and Uncollected Poems. Edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. London: Faber.
Ellmann, Maud. 1987. The Poetics of Impersonality: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Brighton: Harvester.
Graham-Dixon, Andrew. 1994. “The Kitaj Myth: ‘The Man Who Would Leapfrog His Way into History on the Backs of Giants Stands Exposed.’ Andrew Graham-Dixon on Kitaj at the Tate.” Independent, June 27. [Accessed online on March 7, 2019].
Grosen, Aaron. 2007. Imagining Jewish Art: Encounters with the Masters in Chagall, Guston and Kitaj. London: Legenda.
Harding, Joseph, ed. 2011. T. S. Eliot in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Hargrove, Nancy Duvall. 2009. T. S. Eliot’s Parisian Year. Gainesville: U of Florida P.
Hughes, Robert. 1990. Nothing If Not Critical: Essays on Art and Artists. New York: Penguin.
Hyman, Timothy. 1977. “R. B. Kitaj: Avatar of Ezra.” London Magazine 17 (3): 53-61.
Julius, Anthony. (1995) 1996. T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
—. 1998. “Reflections on T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 11 (4): 43-59.
Kitaj, R. B. 1983. Paintings, Drawings, Pastels. London: Thames and Hudson.
—. 1998. “Interview with R. B. Kitaj.” By Werner Hanak. In Livingstone 1998a, 131-34.
—. 2007. Second Diasporist Manifesto: A New Kind of Long Poem in 615 Free Verses. New Haven, CT: Yale UP.
—. 2010. “Prefaces.” In Livingstone 2010a, 229-54.
Krempel, Ulrich. 1998. “Germania.” In Livingstone 1998a, 135-40.
Kugelmann, Cilly, Eckhart Gillen and Hubertus Gassner, eds. 2012. Obsessions: R. B. Kitaj 1932-2007. Bielefeld: Kerber.
Lambirth, Andrew. 2004. Kitaj. London: Philip Wilson.
Livingstone, Marco, ed. 1998a. Un americano en Europa. Madrid: Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía.
—. 1998b. “Codes and Confessions.” In Livingstone 1998a, 113-25.
—, ed. 2010a. Kitaj. London: Phaidon.
—. 2010b. “A Secret Life: The Art of R. B. Kitaj.” In Livingstone 2010a, 9-60.
Longenbach, James. 1994. “‘Mature Poets Steal’: Eliot’s Allusive Practice.” In Moody 1994, 176-88.
Madsen, Deborah L. and Mario Klarer, eds. 2011. The Visual Culture of Modernism. Tübingen: Narr.
McGee, Daniel T. 2001. “Dada Da Da: Sounding the Jew in Modernism.” ELH 68 (2): 501-27.
Moody, A. David, ed. 1994. The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Olney, James. 2014. Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.
Patea, Viorica. 2011. “The Poetics of the Avant-Garde: Modernist Poetry and Visual Arts.” In Madsen and Klarer 2011, 137-52.
Peter, John. 1969. “A New Interpretation of The Waste Land (1952) with Postscript (1969).” Essays in Criticism 19 (2): 140-75.
Peters Corbett, David. 2000. “Authority and Visual Experience: Word and Image in R. B. Kitaj.” In Aulich and Lynch 2000, 44-57.
Ricks, Christopher. 1988. T. S. Eliot and Prejudice. London: Faber.
Ríos, Julián. 1997. Kitaj: Pictures and Conversations. Wakefield, RI: Mayer Bell.
San Martín, Francisco Javier. 1998. “R. B. Kitaj, Homage to Catalonia.” In Livingstone 1998a, 135-40.
Schwartz, Sanford. 2014. “Eliot’s Ghosts: Tradition and Its Transformations.” In Chinitz 2014, 15-26.
Shusterman, Richard. 1994. “Eliot as Philosopher.” In Moody 1994, 31-47.
Wilson, Simon and Jessica Lack. 2008. The Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms. London: Tate.
Woolf, Virginia. 2008. Selected Essays. Edited by David Bradshaw. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Downloads
Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The authors retain copyright of articles. They authorise AEDEAN to publish them in its journal Atlantis and to include them in the indexing and abstracting services, academic databases and repositories the journal participates in.
Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), for non-commercial (i.e., personal or academic) purposes only, users are free to share (i.e., copy and redistribute in any medium or format) and adapt (i.e., remix, transform and build upon) articles published in Atlantis, free of charge and without obtaining prior permission from the publisher or the author(s), as long as they give appropriate credit to the author, the journal (Atlantis) and the publisher (AEDEAN), provide the relevant URL link to the original publication and indicate if changes were made. Such attribution may be done in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the journal endorses the user or their use of the material published therein. Users who adapt (i.e., remix, transform or build upon the material) must distribute their contributions under the same licence as the original.
Self-archiving is also permitted, so that authors are allowed to deposit the published PDF version of their articles in academic and/or institutional repositories, without fee or embargo. Authors may also post their individual articles on their personal websites, again on condition that the original link to the online edition is provided.
Authors are expected to know and heed basic ground rules that preclude simultaneous submission and/or duplicate publication. Prospective contributors to Atlantis commit themselves to the following when they submit a manuscript:
- That no concurrent consideration of the same, or almost identical, work by any other journal and/or publisher is taking place.
- That the potential contribution has not appeared previously, in any form whatsoever, in another journal, electronic format or as a chapter/section of a book.
Seeking permission for the use of copyright material is the responsibility of the author.
