Unpainted to the last: Moby-Dick and twentieth-century American art

Abstract

This text re-evaluates the literary symbol of Moby-Dick and provides a different way of reading one of the famous texts of American literature. Ranging from the realists to the abstract expressionists, from the famous to the obscure, Schultz reveals how these artists have tried to capture the essence of the meaning of Moby-Dick meanings and to use it as a springboard for their own imaginations. One of the most frequently and diversely illustrated of American novels, Moby-Dick has attracted book illustrators in Rockwell Kent, Boardman Robinson, Garrick Palmer, Barry Moser, Bill Sienkiewicz, among others. It has also inspired creations by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, Sam Francis, Benton Spruance, Leonard Baskin, Theodoros Stamos, Richard Ellis, Ralph Goings, Seymour Lipton, Walter Martin, Tony Rosenthal, Richard Serra and Theodore Roszak. The artists reflect in equal measure the novel's realistic (plot, character, natural history) and philosophical modes, its visual and visionary dimensions. Others view the novel as a touchstone for feminist, multicultural, and environmental themes, or mock its status as a cultural icon. The author demonstrates how these and many other diverse talents enlarge the reader's appreciation of Moby-Dick and how literature and art can amplify each other's meanings and achievements. Yet ultimately, she, like Melville, concludes that the great white whale remains unpainted and unread in any absolute or final sense.

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