Graffiti und die ästhetische Kommunikation über die Mauer. Antoni Tàpies und Julio Cortázar im intermedialen Dialog

Abstract

Summary: An approach to the artistic work of Antoni Tàpies brings forth a rejection of the strict separation between pictorial and scriptural arts. Though famous for his paintings, Tàpies also published six volumes of essays and an autobiography. In several of his essays, he stressed the significance of the dialogue between literature and arts which he also promoted by cooperating with international writers in many projects. Furthermore, one has to consider that Tàpies himself often combined images and texts in his own paintings, as for example the graffiti elements in his famous “wall pictures”. This paper seeks to examine the intermedial dialogue between literature and arts by focusing on Julio Cortázar’s short story Grafitti which was originally published in the context of one of Antoni Tàpies’ expositions in Barcelona to whom he also dedicated the text. However, the intension is to show that the relations between Grafitti and the Catalan artist go far beyond mere dedication, pointing at the Argentine writer’s allusions to Tàpies’ works and his strategy to adapt the communicative power of Tàpies’ “wall pictures” to his own “textual wall picture”. [Keywords: Tàpies; Cortázar; intermediality; semiotics; graffiti art; mural painting]