Escritura e Imagen (ISSN 1885-5687, ISSN-e 1988-2416) is an annual scientific journal linked to the Complutense Research Group: La Europa de la Escritura. The publication offers a space for creation and discussion, and takes an in-depth look at how image and writing relate from an interdisciplinary, open perspective. Its field of study lies in the area of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts and, since its foundation in 2005, it has become one of the most prestigious journals in this domain.
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Escritura e Imagen is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.
Mono no Aware, Morriña, and Saudade: A Connection Between the Aesthetic Values Drawn from Buddhist Philosophy and the Galician Philosophy of Saudade Expressed Through Playful Writing
The Buddhist philosophy-religion has generated a series of aesthetic values that have spread across various arts and forms of expression, among which one of the most representative is mono no aware. Due to its intrinsic interactive nature, the video game medium allows these principles to be experienced through avatarization and playful writing. This article does not only examine this phenomenon through the analysis of Dark Souls –a work that embodies mono no aware and is used here as an example not because it is unique, but due to its popularity and influence in this regard. The aim of the article is to understand how this Japanese work draws on its national philosophical principles in order to learn how to extrapolate its method to the Galician philosophies of saudade and morriña. From philosophy to playful, meaningful, and interactive writing.
Literature and the invention of the cinematograph: from the debate of the expressionists to Kafka’s fascination
Cinema, heralded as a testament to modernity and inventive spirit, became a challenge to literary expressionism as it went from being considered literature without words to an artistic modality competing with drama. Authors, although fascinated by the new medium, struggled between aversion to what they deemed trivial and an optical seduction from which was impossible to escape from. However, as early as 1910, Alfred Döblin recommended novelists adopt a cinematic style. These were the years when a young Kafka attended the cinema in search of inspiration and contrast to his everyday life, as can be seen in texts such as The Man Who Disappeared. Examples of this include the dynamic succession of images of the metropolis or the incorporation of cinematic perspectives. However, the seventh art left only a slight imprint on Kafka, a fact explained by his unique relationship with the image. This article deals with the problematic relationship that expressionist writers had with cinema in its early days, as well as Kafka’s fascination with all media of visual transmission.
Erratic and Sentimental Geography: the Images of Modern Italian Cinema and its Themes in the Narrative of Isaac Rosa and Agustín Fernández Mallo
This article analyses the novel Feliz final (Isaac Rosa, 2018) and the story «Un recorrido por los monumentos de La aventura» (Agustín Fernández Mallo, 2011), since both are in a singular dialogue, both thematically and structurally, respectively, with two outstanding films of cinematographic modernity: Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1954) and L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960). Thus, we study the way in which the images and signs of identity of this cinematographic period are recovered and updated in their narratives by the two writers, and we study in depth the formal structure of the two literary works and how the motif of the journey and that of the ghost are presented in them. The works by Rosa and Fernández Mallo thus constitute a tribute to the history of the seventh art while at the same time offering a new layer of meaning, thus confirming the synergy of comparative studies of film and literature in the Spanish-speaking world.
The Regenerationist artists in the Europa magazine
Europe. Magazine of popular culture was an interesting magazine published in 1910 with an important artistic section, currently in oblivion. The aim of this article is to unravel the aesthetic and the historical artistic content of the gazettes dedicated to different artists of the Spanish Regenerationist environment, exposing the peculiar and profound relationship that existed between literature, philosophy and the plastic arts of the time.
Images and ideology. A symptomatic relationship
Ideology is not only a discourse that separates us from the world, but also alludes to the imaginary representation we make of our real conditions of existence. With this, images become a fertile field for the study of the mechanisms and devices of subjectivation and social control. This text recovers Althusser’s theory of ideology and delves into the role of images in the construction of subjects and subjectivities, while exploring their operational specificity. This proposal considers art history a privileged area for critical knowledge
Intrigue and Darkness: Contrasting Treatments of a Constellation. Schiller’s The Visionary and Hoffmann’s The Sandman
This article compares two stories Der Geisterseher (The Ghost Seer) by Schiller (1787-1798) and Der Sandmann (The Sandman) by E.T.A. Hoffmann from 1871. Both texts have in common the presence of the dark and the conspiratorial. However, the approach to that feeling and this intrigue are very different in both cases. Schiller strives to make us see that the magical and the unknown are nothing more than elements that conspirators use to manipulate their victim. Hoffmann, for his part, leaves in suspense the question of whether the protagonist is the object of persecution by his attackers or if everything is the result of his feverish and pathological imagination. Schiller, claiming the lights of reason against the darkness, indirectly alludes to the religious-political struggle that was ongoing in his time in the Duchy of Württemberg. In contrast to Schiller's denigration of the mysterious, Hoffmann attributes to this dimension an effective impact on the human spirit and the possibility of opening a door to that of which we are not aware. In fact, Sigmund Freud's essay Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny), dating from 1919, takes Hoffmann's story as its central reference.
From the loss of experience to the fragmentation of the subject: radical mutation and continuity of capitalism based on Fredric Jameson and Walter Benjamin
This paper explores Fredric Jameson’s stance on postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism, examining the intersections between the subjective experiences that his analysis identifies as foundational to postmodern artistic-cultural productions and Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the replacement of Erfahrung by Erlebnis that the implementation of industrial capitalism entails. After exploring the nature and consequences of this replacement, linked to the form of ideology that Benjamin assigns to capitalist society, Jameson’s assimilation of late capitalism with the “society of the spectacle” is studied, as well as the new social role that culture acquires in it. Furthermore, it supports Jameson’s perspective on postmodernism by arguing that the originality of his creations stems from a radical mutation of the realm of experience that does not contradict the historical continuity of capitalism.
A Topography of the Void in the Performing Arts: Beckett, Adorno and Cage
The present article can be read as the second part of “A topography of the void in the visual arts”, where it was already argued that the “void” can be considered as the central concept of “conflictual aesthetics” in general, through two examples in particular: the paintings of Yves Klein, and the sculpture of Oteiza and Chillida (especially in his dialogue with Heidegger). This article aims to carry on with this reflection by applying it now to the world of the performing arts, adding two further case studies: on the one hand, the Adornian reading of Beckett's Endgame; and on the other, the question of “silence” in Cage's 4' 33''. “Conflictual aesthetics”, as defined so far by Oliver Marchart, places “conflicto” at the centre of the application of the postfoundational political thought framework to contemporary art. However, the present article attempts to demonstrate that it is not so much the “conflicto”, but the “void”, as a prior and preceding moment that opens up such a conflict, that defines post-foundational art. With this objective in mind, we will attempt to further clarify and specify “conflictual aesthetics” as democratic aesthetics.
Speaking through the Body, Narrating through the Image: Parrhesiastic and Dialogical Practices in Paula Bonet’s Los diarios de la anguila
In Los diarios de la anguila (Anagrama, 2022), Paula Bonet integrates image and text in a hybrid work situated between the intimate diary, travel journal and artist’s book. Through the theoretical frameworks of parrhesia (Foucault) and dialogism (Bakhtin), this article examines how Bonet’s work constructs a testimonial and political aesthetics. The materiality of the book, combined with epistles, notes, intertexts, plastic techniques, and fragmentary writing, creates a polyphonic structure that transcends confessionality, thereby expanding the conceptual and formal possibilities of the artist’s book as a site for critical dialogue and social transformation.
Between Phasmas and Fales: description, figurability and editing in Georges Didi-Huberman’s essays
Beyond their entomological origin, phasmids and moths are figures of instability that bring writing into dialogue with images. Between description, figurability, and montage, this essay proposes a reading of two works by Georges Didi-Huberman: Phasmes (1998) and Phalènes (2013). The texts in these two books deal with apparitions, with a kind of writing that, without necessarily describing, carries a vivarium of images.
The Sister Arts: Ekphrasis and Enargeia as Metaphorical Processes of an Unfinished Art-Historical Discourse
This paper examines how, throughout art history, images and language have maintained constant relationships with each other, from Antiquity to the interartistic phenomena that characterise much of contemporary artistic production. This relationship between image and language can be understood through the concept of metaphoricity: the ability of images to operate metaphorically within verbal discourse. From this perspective, we will study ekphrasis and enargeia, resources that demonstrate how different arts influence each other, in line with the ancient notion of the “sister arts”. Likewise, this study revisits Lessing’s famous distinction between the spatial arts and the temporal arts, a classification that was challenged by numerous artists and poets who transgressed these boundaries. Finally, we highlight how contemporary visual studies and visual rhetoric have promoted a comparative approach that identifies common rhetorical figures between verbal language and image.
Éloge des ressemblances. Description & sérialité médiévale (avec Louis Marin)
Este artículo explora el fenómeno retórico y heurístico de la descripción aplicado a las imágenes medievales. Si bien la descripción ha sido objeto de numerosos estudios sobre la pintura renacentista y moderna, esto es menos frecuente en la Edad Media, sin duda porque las imágenes medievales se debaten entre la serialidad y la inventiva. A partir de las reflexiones esenciales de Louis Marin sobre los efectos de la descripción, este artículo explora las similitudes y diferencias entre dos imágenes de la creación en Biblias moralizantes y examina cómo la descripción de dichas similitudes revela aspectos del proceso creativo y el estatus de la imagen en la Edad Media.
Lyrical ecphrasis and lyricography as a form of artistic knowledge in the face of the impossibility of a single interpretation of symbols: the case of Alberti-Miró in the poetry collection Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró
As a result of Antonio García Berrio's theories on Miró's language, who addressed the impossibility of a single interpretation of his symbols, and who published with Teresa Hernández the poetics of the visual arts Ut poesis pictura, the lyrical ekphrasis written by Rafael Alberti in his collection of poems Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas en el jardín de Miró is proposed here as a form of artistic knowledge of the Catalan artist's pictorial corpus, precisely because it is a text written by the poet-painter, who was a good knower of the work of the painter-poet. Just in the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of this collection of poems, illustrated with Miró's lithographic work, and the exhibition on the lyricographies and graphic poems of the Cadiz-born poet held at the Rafael Alberti Foundation in 2025, the second edition of this collection of poems is particularly noteworthy, as Miró's lithographs were replaced by illustrations by Rafael Alberti himself, complementing his own ekphrases and imitating the pictorial language of the artist being honoured in a text-image symbiosis in the style of the lyrical graphics that the poet had begun to create in 1945.
Touching with Words: On Description and its Images
In this article, we aim to approach description as a transformative activity operating on different levels. To do so, we will examine three examples. The first two can be associated with the rhetorical figure of hypotyposis, where the text produces images that extend beyond itself; the third can be linked to ekphrasis, where the text positions itself on this side of a perceived image that it describes. The first case is a theoretical text taken from La poesía, la música y el silencio (De Mallarmé a Wittgenstein) (1994) by Juan Carlos Rodríguez, in which the description of a scene —one that is, as such, nonexistent— renders a critical problem perceptible. The second is Borges’s poem «Historia de la noche» (1977), where the effect of literature on visual perception is thematized according to the model of dream —as he understood it. The third is Ángel González’s essay on Manet, «La pintura se complica» (2003), where description becomes the instrument that allows —as Daniel Arasse explicitly proposed— the transformation of some of the critical categories that had defined the narrative about modern art. There is also a connecting thread which connects the three examples: the porosity of a reality whose fissures are filled with images.
Didi-Huberman, Georges, Traverso, Enzo y Blanc-Marianne Guillaume, Images de la politique, politique des images. Un débat, Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2025
Martínez López, Teresa Clara, Londres primavera. A London suburban garden through time, Madrid, conarquitectura ediciones, 2024, 105 págs.
Simón Zabell: describir lo indescriptible
The Inclined Space, or the Diagonal Force
Rodríguez Fer, Claudio, Iconografía artística de José Ángel Valente, Santiago de Compostela, Andavia Editora, 2025, 110 pp.
Alfonso Bouhaben, Miguel. Imagomaquia/ La imagen-pensamiento, Buenos Aires, Prometeo, 2024
Imagomaquia/La imagen-pensamiento de Miguel Alfonso Bouhaben (Prometeo, 2024) realiza una propuesta crítica al cine-capital y a la racionalidad hegemónica que domina el imaginario visual contemporáneo. Inspirado por Deleuze y Godard, el autor presenta la “imagen-pensamiento” como un ejercicio de resistencia creativa frente a la uniformidad ideológica. A través de un discurso rizomático y performativo, Bouhaben aborda filmes y conceptos que reconfiguran el pensamiento audiovisual desde el cine-ensayo, explorando su poder ético, político y estético. El libro traza una “guerra de imágenes” entre los discursos visuales hegemónicos y los contestatarios y subversivos, ofreciendo herramientas críticas para pensar con las imágenes y desde ellas. Es un ensayo filosófico que invita a un pensamiento creativo y rebelde frente a la rigidez del pensamiento mecánico y capitalista.
John Hejduk and Literature: From Retreat Masque to Architectural Requiem
The architectural proposal developed by John Hejduk between 1980 and 2000 has ties to literature, influenced by his wife, Gloria Fiorentino. The quotes and references in his drawings and sketches to literary works by authors such as Hawthorne, Flaubert, Hardy, Melville, Blanchot, Gide, Proust, Rilke, and Mann confirm these connections, stemming from the pleasure in reading that the American architect expresses in his texts. This article aims to clarify these relationships between some of the New York architect’s works and literature. Although the connections with literary authors can be defined in various aspects of his work, the relationships are intense from an overall perspective, encompassing two of his works, Retreat Masque and Architectural Requiem. The research work develops an analysis of some pieces that unravel these relationships between the two disciplines in an artistic sense. The relationships between the two disciplines and the link in a process of complex correlations are demonstrated.
Seeing is not seeing: κένωσις of the image (A. Tarkovsky), blind-seer (C. Monet, J.-L. Godard) and the remains of sacred blue
«It is certainly not enough to see» (Jean-Luc Marion); «to see is to see nothing» (Michel de Certeau); «the blind can be a seer» (Jacques Derrida). The κένωσις (‘emptying’) of the image is very well expressed in the final sequence of the film Andrei Rubliov (1966, Andrei Tarkovsky), which records the passage from the image (the face of Christ the Redeemer), the visible, to the non-image (the empty white tablet) of the icon «disfigured» (Isaiah 52:14) by the rain, the invisible materialised in the remains of blue pigment. The blindness-clairvoyance contraposition is reflected in Marcel Proust’s expression, from Claude Monet, that Jean-Luc Godard introduces in his film Adieu au langage (2014): «to paint what is not seen … the insufficiency of the eye». The icon comes from the κένωσις of the image. The painter (Rubliov, Tarkovski) sees more than the visible, like the blind, painter and seer par excellence (Monet, Godard, Derek Jarman).
I will be the silence, I will be in the silence: the great murmur as enunciative subjectivity in Beckett’s The unnamable
In this work it will be analyzed the collective enunciation that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari formulate in Capitalism and schizophrenia. To do so, Samuel Beckett’s The unnamable will be taken as an example, given that not only Guattari directly refers to it in the preparative texts for The Anti-Oedipus, but also that the Beckettian essay is itself an enunciative formation that sheds light on the notions of the great murmur and being-language. Thus, as main hypothesis it is held that the language’s desterritorialization, process from which an enunciative formation that prescinds of the subject, would find support in the Beckettian writings. Also, as secondary hypothesis it is upheld that the assemblage of a deterritorialized language would sustain resemblances with the reflexive motion that suffers the grammatical subject that transverses the text and that peaks in its annihilation in favor of the silence, which would be the enunciative formation that refers to the great murmur that possibilities language.
Aesthetic Analysis of the Audiovisual Work of Alberto García-Alix at the Beginning of the 21st Century
The present study aims to demonstrate the existing correlation between the aesthetics of the audiovisual work of renowned photographer Alberto García-Alix, developed during the first decade of the current century, and the Aesthetic theories proposed by Eugenio Trías in his book Lo bello y lo siniestro (1982) and by Jose Luis Pardo in his book Estética de lo peor (2015). Throughout this research, the most significant characteristics of the audiovisual pieces that the author created during his stay in Paris between the years 2003 and 2006, collected in the trilogy "Tres vídeos tristes," which includes "Mi alma de cazador en juego" (2003), "Extranjero de mí mismo" (2004), and "Tres moscas negras" (2006), will be thoroughly examined. Alongside the analysis of this trilogy, the «audiovisual» work that is recognized as his greatest artistic maturity to date, "De donde no se vuelve" (2008), will also be analysed.
Anne Carson and the deconstruction of literary genre.
In this article we intend to show the presence of Jacques Derrida in Anne Carson's poetic work. Derrida is not only mentioned by Carson, which in itself demonstrates her interest in him, but it is also possible to establish notable formal similarities between some of Carson's and Derrida's works, as well as a certain closeness between the thought of the French philosopher and the presuppositions of Carson's poetics, both in the general perspective of Derridean deconstruction and, singularly, in the deconstruction of literary genres, which is characteristic of the Canadian poet's oeuvre and which Derrida theorizes in a certain way in The Law of Genre. Thus, we believe that Jacques Derrida's positions can be a privileged framework for understanding this dimension of Carson's work, which in fact is often considered his most characteristic feature.