Problems of painters and poets

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/wallace-stevens-problems-painters-and-poets

Extract

“Stevens first delivered “Relations Between Poetry and Painting” as a lecture at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1951. In this piece, Stevens explored the parallel attributes of poetry and painting, beginning with reference to adages that apply to both poets and painters and culminating with the emphatic conclusion that “it would be tragic not to realize the extent of man’s dependence on the arts.”

This crescendo in his argument is based on the notion that, in an age of disbelief, the arts in general are a “compensation for what has been lost. Men feel that the imagination is the next greatest power to faith: the reigning prince.” Stevens argues that, because poetry and painting operate at the juncture between imagination and reality, these arts assume a prophetic stature and become a “vital assertion of self in a world where nothing but the self remains, if that remains.””