Framing Lives as Paintings

This article builds on the most recent work done ekphrasis in contemporary fiction and explores its capacities to blur boundary between visual art life writing. Since can contest border of art, this also draws from Derrida's notion parergon (1987). Ekphrasis is commonly understood as ‘verbal representation a representation’ (Heffernan 1993), while captures ambiguous, ‘ornamental’ frame that separates artwork world beyond it. By focusing Amy Sackville's Painter King (2018) Laura Cumming's The Vanishing Man (2016), two books use Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas (1656) their narratives, shows how act discursive challenges borders life, fact fiction, literature painting, inside outside. These empathetic narratives—of Spanish painter Victorian bookseller respectively—emulate techniques implicate reader, who turned into quasi-eyewitness through ekphrasis, within meaning-making structures. In both instances, enchanting spell used push these narratives realm imagination.