Exchanging Hats: Paintings

by Elizabeth Bishop, William Benton (Editor)

Thought not many people know it, Elizabeth Bishop painted throughout her life, as this handsome book, reproducing in full color forty of her watercolors, demonstrates. Benton gives the provenance, dimensions, and (where possible) the date of each painting; he also cites painterly passages from Bishop's writing.

Genres: Art, Poetry

128 pages, Hardcover

First published October 24, 1996

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and writer from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956. and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century.

Reviews

[Mir]

Poet Bishop was also an amateur painter. Most of her works were given to friends. They often depict places she lived or travelled.



In addition to the reproductions, the text is amusingly gossipy. The person who together the show had to track down most of the pieces, and you get a lot of remarks about who was friends with whom, etc. Apparently several were stolen at different times. In one case, the author takes a guess as to who stole a particular drawing, and the person confirms it, but he doesn't name either. I want to know!

There are also bits of her letters were she talks about her drawing or art she and her lover Lola bought. For some reason the names of the recipients are only in the endnotes, fyi.

[Ann]

Lovely watercolors.

[Yu-Hui Huang]

Before I found this book, I didn't know why Elizabeth Bishop's poems were so richly full of visual images. She might not be an excellent artist, but she has her own style.
The arrangement of the flowers in her vase tells the viewers how, comparatively, her poems are bent towards traditional composition.

[l]

lovely. disappointed by the lack of cats though.

[Mattea Gernentz]

"But (perhaps I've said this before) if after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for the next 24 hours or so, I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings" (Bishop, 97).

A delightful niche read on the intersection of literature and visual art! I loved this.

[Rhys]

Bishop's paintings are exceptional. I did not love Benton's editorializing wall labels.

[Kathleen]

"What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration."

[Linda]

While searching for "the complete poems" of Elizabeth Bishop, I found this magnificent book. Including an Introduction and Notes the book is only 106 pages. But, it is such a find. Although Elizabeth Bishop was one of the foremost poets of the 20th century she was also an artist. She didn't seem to know that she was, but other people's opinions and this book, prove otherwise. The flyleaf says that Bishop illustrated three or four of the dust jackets of her own books but that most of her work was never shown. This volume, edited by William Benton, who was a poet and art writer, arranged the first exhibit of Bishop's artwork in January 1993. Forty of her works are reproduced here and they were "tracked" down from her friends, Vassar classmates, Vassar College Library and photographs of some works that are "whereabouts unknown". In 1971 she said, "From time to time I paint a small gouache or watercolor and give them to friends ... They Are Not Art- NOT AT ALL." But everyone disagrees and this book substantiaes that disagreement. Bishop's poetry is fleshed-out by Benton and snippets of her poetry are used to illustrate some of the art. I will check this book out from the library again.

[Jenni]

Her paintings. Writing was definitely her first art but this book is a must for Bishop fans.

[Corinne Blackmer]

read

[H]

who woulda guessed.