Representing Absence: Contemporary Ekphrasis in “Apesh-t”

Agata Handley

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.10.07

Authors

Agata Handley University of Lodz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9315-9165

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.10.07

Keywords:

Beyoncé, Jay-Z, ekphrasis, music video

Abstract

Traditionally, ekphrasis has been defined as the description and analysis of works of art in poetry, and so it has been understood as the verbalization of visual images (Sager Eidt). The article examines the concept in the light of contemporary definitions that include non-verbal media as targets (Cariboni Killander, Lutas and Strukelj; Sager Eidt; Bruhn; Pethö) in order to analyze its applicability to music videos.

It concentrates in particular on “Apesh-t,” a video for a track by Beyoncé and Jay-Z from the album Everything Is Love (2018). The video is filmed in different interiors of the Louvre, where the singers appear, together with an ensemble of dancers, in front of selected artworks. The discussion focuses on an analysis of a single shot which presents an ekphrastic re-configuration of one particular work of European art, Jacques-Louis David’s Portrait of Madame Récamier (1800).

The author argues that the use of ekphrasis in the video—through elaboration (close-ups and editing) and repurposing of the source material (painting)—plays an important role in the construction of the theme of “absence”: invoking not only what is represented, but what is not represented in David’s painting. It also foregrounds the potential of ekphrasis as a tool of political and cultural resistance, in the way it intervenes in the representation of the “other” in art and in the museum space.

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Author Biography

Agata Handley, University of Lodz

Agata Handley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Canadian, Intermedial and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Lodz. Her main areas of academic interest are the culture of the English North, and contemporary British and Canadian literature, with a special focus on intermedial issues. Her book Constructing Identity: Continuity, Otherness and Revolt in the Poetry of Tony Harrison was published in 2016 by Peter Lang. She has also written numerous articles and taken part in several projects concerned with aspects of European literature and culture. She is currently a team member of the project Word, Sound and Image: Intertextuality in Music Videos no. 2019/33/B/HS2/00131 financed by National Science Centre in Poland.

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