From Medieval Manuscripts to Postmodern Hypertexts in the Art of David Jones

Abstract

For the first time, this investigation claims that the visual and literary arts of the poet-painter David Jones (1895-1974), are forerunners of computer-aided hypertexts, while simultaneously recalling the form and content of illuminated manuscripts and illustrated incunablia. This analysis examines Jones’s entire oeuvre whereby the past impinges on the present and future, as well as his belief in the interrelationship between all things. history of the illustrated book contextualises questions of theology, literature, and place that are extended by complementary images, which compound the interrelationship between Jones’s painting and poetry. Jones’s multi-disciplinary inventiveness demonstrates an alternative means of deploying synergy between different art forms so that he pre-empts computer-aided technology, thus contributing ‘a new art form’ to Walter Benjamin’s proposition: The history of every art form shows critical epochs … [where an] … art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard … a new art form … arise[ing] from the nucleus of its richest historical energies, in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Cape, 1970), p.239. In the context of selected past and present artists and writers, comparisons are made between Jones’s visual and literary arts, and the evolution and consolidation of his techniques in both art forms.