Abstract
A reading of art books, critical essays or interpretations of paintings reveals that various writers frequently approach figurative painting in narrative terms. For some writers narrativity is the main core of the interpretation of a painting, while for oth ers it is of lesser importance. However, even those critics for whom narrativity is a marginal aspect of interpretation consider it an inseparable part of understanding a painting as a whole.1 Looking at paintings from the viewpoint of the narrative interpretations given to them renders an equivocal feeling. On the one hand, seeing a picture as an evolving sit uation seems natural, yet, on the other, there remains a persistent gap between the pic ture and the narrative discourse it entails. Despite the apparent connection between the narrative discourse and the painting, it appears that from the moment the discourse is uttered and stands on its own feet, there is an inevitable disruption between this dis course and the painting which brought it about. Narrative interpretation, by definition, produces a coherent stable structure of meaning. Viewing a picture, however, is frag mentary by nature; its temporality is not necessarily successive and does not correlate with the strict criteria that narrative structure demands. It seems that juxtaposing a pic ture with its narrative interpretation always produces a visual surplus that cannot be ver balized, so that a kind of hiatus exists between the two as a result of their positioning. What is the relation between painting and narrativity? Does narrativity by defi nition contradict visuality, and if so, why is it so prevalent in the context of painting? Furthermore, how can one explain the complicated relationship of attraction and re jection that has always existed between painting and narrativity? 2 In the hundreds of years during which the term narrative was used solely as a characteristic of literary texts, thinking about narrativity in painting entailed a
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