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Role of Illustration

Maurice English, A savaging of roots (Stratford, Ont.: Pasdeloup Press, 1974)

 

The illustrator, like the designer for the stage, or for that matter like the actor or director, is an interpretive artist. His work necessarily begins with a text, and if the illustrations are to succeed, that text must be honoured. It may be construed or deconstructed, clarified or mystified, abstracted or embellished, translated or transmogrified, but it can never be ignored.
                    – Virgil Burnett, “A Note and Nine Illustrations”

 

What is illustration? In the simplest terms, an illustration is an image that represents a section of text. Yet this understanding of illustration fails to acknowledge the intricate dialogue between text and image inherent in illustrated texts. Burnett interprets his texts through relationships that “construe or deconstruct,” “clarify or mystify,” “abstract or embellish,” or “translate or transmogrify.” These relationships reflect the categories of illustration codified by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra in the Artist as Critic as “quotation,” “impression,” “parody,” “answering,” and “cross-dressing.” [1]

Quotation transcribes the textual narrative faithfully and directly, as a reflection into the visual medium.

Impression expands upon the text by decoration and further interpretation. It “abstracts or embellishes” the text.

Parody competes for dominant representation through drawing attention to the rift between image and text. It “deconstructs” and “mystifies” the text.

Answering involves a partnership between text and image, in which the illustration represents the texts and engages with it through impressionistic decoration or interpretation. Answering is associated with the Arts and Crafts movement in the way it chooses to revive age-old oral traditions to represent art as an expression of social activity. It “translates” and “transmogrifies” the text.

Cross-dressing interrogates the traditional imbalance of power between text and image; the subject is equally represented in the text and the image. It integrates the “masculine” word with the “feminine” image. Cross-dressing “embellishes” the text; it creates a new medium for interpretation, a hybrid language of text and illustration.

Burnett employs to some degree all of these types of dialogic relationships. For example, his use of reoccurring, grotesque symbols such as hawk-human hybrids and grasshopper-human hybrids parody the poems they accompany. These motifs illuminate the distance the reader has from the meaning the poet intended; they equate the poem’s meaning to entering a fantasy world where our pre-conceptions are turned on its head. Burnett’s choice of medieval subject matter, such as his illustrations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, speaks to the dialogic relationship identified as "answering." These tales have endured and morphed over the years. His images add to the endless accrual of meaning and show the connection of mankind through history and the endurance of myth, through art and reinterpretation.

 


[1] Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, The Artist As Critic: Bitextuality in Fin-De-Siècle Illustrated Books. (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1995), 15