Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning

This article gives a critical assessment of the relationship between the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and the Cubist painting and collage of Pablo Picasso. Taking in a range of critical sources that have insisted on Picasso’s ‘mallarmisme’, the article sets out to shift scholarly debate away from its...

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Main Author: Shingler, Katherine
Format: Article
Published: Sage 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33899/
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author Shingler, Katherine
author_facet Shingler, Katherine
author_sort Shingler, Katherine
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This article gives a critical assessment of the relationship between the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and the Cubist painting and collage of Pablo Picasso. Taking in a range of critical sources that have insisted on Picasso’s ‘mallarmisme’, the article sets out to shift scholarly debate away from its focus on Picasso’s punning reference to Un coup de dés in a 1912 collage, and its suggestion of a dialogue between poet and painter around high art and its relationship to popular, commercial forms of production. It proposes that we instead focus our attention on the punning structures shared by Mallarmé and Picasso’s work more generally – structures which give rise to a sense of simultaneity, or overlaps of meaning, and which ultimately suggest that in engaging with Mallarmé’s poetry Picasso was self-consciously reflecting on the notion of painting as a kind of language, with its own syntax.
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spelling nottingham-338992020-05-04T16:39:06Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33899/ Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning Shingler, Katherine This article gives a critical assessment of the relationship between the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and the Cubist painting and collage of Pablo Picasso. Taking in a range of critical sources that have insisted on Picasso’s ‘mallarmisme’, the article sets out to shift scholarly debate away from its focus on Picasso’s punning reference to Un coup de dés in a 1912 collage, and its suggestion of a dialogue between poet and painter around high art and its relationship to popular, commercial forms of production. It proposes that we instead focus our attention on the punning structures shared by Mallarmé and Picasso’s work more generally – structures which give rise to a sense of simultaneity, or overlaps of meaning, and which ultimately suggest that in engaging with Mallarmé’s poetry Picasso was self-consciously reflecting on the notion of painting as a kind of language, with its own syntax. Sage 2013-11-01 Article PeerReviewed Shingler, Katherine (2013) Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning. French Cultural Studies, 24 (4). pp. 346-358. ISSN 1740-2352 Cubism linguistic analogy Stéphane Mallarmé Pablo Picasso pictorial syntax simultaneity text−image relationships http://frc.sagepub.com/content/24/4/346.abstract doi:10.1177/0957155813501118 doi:10.1177/0957155813501118
spellingShingle Cubism
linguistic analogy
Stéphane Mallarmé
Pablo Picasso
pictorial syntax
simultaneity
text−image relationships
Shingler, Katherine
Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning
title Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning
title_full Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning
title_fullStr Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning
title_full_unstemmed Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning
title_short Poetry into painting: Mallarmé, Picasso, and punning
title_sort poetry into painting: mallarmé, picasso, and punning
topic Cubism
linguistic analogy
Stéphane Mallarmé
Pablo Picasso
pictorial syntax
simultaneity
text−image relationships
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33899/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33899/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33899/