Instilling The Texture Of Texts Into Illustrations

Literary illustration has existed in certain forms since the advent of the written word,and has continued to develop into various forms throughout the years.With the flourishing of digital technology,however,literary works gradually gave way to digital images and videos,and the ever-decreasing status of literature is reducing literary illustrations into mere decorations to the text.The deteriorating quality of literary illustrations,together with the lack of reflection of illustrators,speak for the need of reviving this time-honored form of art.The key to reviving literary illustrations lies in the proper transmission of the“texture” in literary text into illustrations,or,in other words,how the artist mediates between text and image.Having resorted to the established model of text-image relationship,the paper came up with four elements central to this relationship,namely,subordination independency,individuality,and coherence.By using this adapted model as the theoretical framework,the paper aims to explore how the texture of text could be properly instilled into literary illustrations through the artist’s manipulation of artistical synesthesia and the four elements of text-image relationship.The applicability of the framework will be proved in the graduation project where I will try to instill the texture of Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion into illustrations.