Literary brushes with visual art

Donald Friedman's fascinating new book explores why so many writers are happiest when expressing themselves visually

Presumably, on occasion, it can be hard to follow what exactly the muses have in mind. That's one of the implications that follows from the case histories outlined in Donald Friedman's eminently browse-worthy The Writer's Brush. His book is a surprisingly plump compendium profiling and illustrating work by writers who, to a greater or lesser extent, also expressed or express themselves in some branch of the visual arts.

It soon becomes clear that there are two kinds of subject that fit Friedman's bill. One is the writer-artist, someone such as William Blake, whose visionary outpourings depend equally on the written word and the graphic image. The other is the writer qua writer, someone whose visual endeavours can seem unexpected, even disconcerting, in the context of their primary occupation.

Enid Bagnold, whose novels include National Velvet, is a good example of someone trying to figure out the promptings of her muse. Despite the encouragement - and kisses - of Walter Sickert, she became increasingly disenchanted with her efforts at drawing and etching, even though, as she admitted, the work made her happy.

"I ought not to be happy," she concluded. She should instead be "straining, wearily and miserable, to write. I've heaps to say . . ." Bagnold isn't alone as a writer in looking on visual art as a happier pursuit. The consensus seems to be that painters have a nice time, while wordsmiths go through hell in their efforts to string a few words together.

Donald Justice, capable as both poet and painter, certainly felt that way. While drawing, painting or printmaking, he wrote, "I always seem to be happy". Writing tended to induce feelings of "raw anxiety and doubt". But he put his finger on why this was so for him, and perhaps for others as well. It might, he thought, be because "in painting I remain strictly an amateur". He was gratified by modest achievement whereas, when writing, he was much more demanding of himself.

That Vladimir Nabokov was a passionate lepidopterist is well-known. He made scientifically exact, aesthetically pleasing studies of numerous butterflies. Obsessive precision characterised his writing as well, and he attributed this at least partly to one of the artists his mother hired to teach him. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, he said, made him "depict from memory, in the greatest possible detail, objects I had certainly seen thousands of times without visualising them properly", thus helping to shape his literary style. Which is not to imply, of course, that he was by any means unique in applying observational and visual memory skills to the tasks of literature. "The tools are allied, the impulse is one," as John Updike puts it in a brief essay included in the book.

Some commentators think the borders between the arts should be rigorously policed. Friedman cites Goethe, who, oddly enough given that he was one of the greatest polymaths ever to have lived, saw any blurring of the distinctions as a sign of decaying values, and Eugène Ionesco, himself a painter as well as a writer, who thought writing and painting so separate that "the title of a picture should be another picture". Friedman doesn't advocate such draconian measures, but neither does he make the argument that creativity is promiscuous and indifferent to the form it takes, though in many cases one feels that the individuals he highlights have a need to get their ideas across in one form or another. He does explore the idea that art, in whatever form, emerges from damage, "emotional wounding", but, pushed too far, that surely becomes a rash generalisation.

The discovery that someone whose writing you've come to know and love has another creative side to them can be disturbing. But then that's our problem, not theirs. Sometimes the transition can be seamless. Mervyn Peake's gothicism is a defining characteristic of his graphic as well as his literary style. RM Ballantyne's intricate illustrations accurately reflect the tenor of his adventure tales.

SHEER TECHNICAL SKILL is inevitably a factor. It might seem unfair that a prodigiously gifted writer turns out to be equally talented in another area of endeavour altogether, but such equality of talent is rare. Lewis Carroll's illustrations are perfectly allied to the tone of his fiction. Aware of his shortcomings, though, he makes a virtue of his evident technical limitations. John Ruskin told him the results didn't justify the effort and he turned to John Tenniel to illustrate Alice. We can blame Ruskin (who, as a fine descriptive painter, is also included in the book) for depriving us of what would have been a fascinating body of work, probably all the better for its imperfections.

If you read Günter Grass, chances are you will come to realise that his graphic work is integral to his overall vision. Temperamentally, he seems to move restlessly, perhaps garrulously, from one form to another, from prose to poetry to image, with a consistent sense of purpose.

Janwillem van de Wetering, the Dutch writer of engagingly zany, Zen-inflected thrillers, makes predictably zany, anarchic sculptures. The patient descriptiveness of Thomas Hardy's drawings matches his writing, but even with his architectural training and evident ability, he had mixed feelings about his visual work, sensing, for example, that the enjoyable task of making illustrations for his Wessex Poems had distracted him from obvious defects in the poems themselves.

Elizabeth Bishop's paintings, mostly watercolours, are notably different from her writing, though there is also common ground. Both pictures and poems depend on meticulous observation and the accumulation of factual detail, but her poetry is accomplished to a degree that leaves her painting at the starting blocks. She was well aware of this and made no claims for herself as a visual artist. "They are Not Art," as she put it when talking about her paintings. But they are, and they have an incisive clarity of line and form that is tremendously appealing.

The visual efforts of many writers are well-known: August Strindberg, Hans Christian Andersen, Max Beerbohm, DH Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, JP Donleavy and Kate Greenaway come to mind. Among those who straddle the literary and visual sides of the divide are Bruno Schulz, James Thurber, John Berger and Beatrix Potter. Other examples sought out by Friedman may surprise, though. Novelist Colleen McCullough, for example, who wrote The Thorn Birds, is revealed as a technically adept graphic artist in an art-nouveau idiom. William Trevor is a wood-carver. Both Susana Minot and Derek Walcott are landscape watercolourists.

The Arthurian novelist, TH White, who noted that "if I had the courage to switch over, I would stop writing books and try to earn a living as a painter", brings more than a whiff of sword and sorcery to his vision of a sexy Eve entwined with the serpent. Evan Hunter, better known as Ed McBain, began as a visual artist and turned almost by chance to writing. Maxine Hong Kingston, who turns out to be a fine and productive draughtswoman, owns up to basing each new literary project on images rather than words.

AMONG THE IRISH exemplars included are George Russell (Æ), George Moore, Sean O'Casey, Oscar Wilde, Lafcadio Hearn and WB Yeats, but not Jack, who, while primarily a painter was also a productive if ultimately disappointed writer.

There is some inconsistency in relation to how Friedman makes the distinction between writers making visual art and vice-versa, but that is inevitable because the distinction is not clear-cut. When it comes to stating his aims and abilities, he is admirably modest, and the book is a formidable, fascinating achievement.

The Writer's Brush, by Donald Friedman, is published by Mid-List Press, £25, with more than 400 reproductions