Elizabeth Smart: The Shifting Boundary between Nature and Art

Elizabeth Smart 's writings--her theory and practice of art--

present patterns of change and constancy. Art, initially

constituted in an entwined and supportive inter-relation

of nature, love/passion, God, ir.spiration :and will, is in

its maturity generated from within a dissolution of the

supportive context. Art finds its power of expression in

opposition to nature and in the absence of God. By Grand

Centnl Station I Sat Down and Wept presents art in its

true creativity: creating unity from a central visionary

perspective. From this point onwards art falls away from

its metamorphic principle of transformation, in an enforced

exile, and in the later works becomes an expression of the

radical separation of nature (and love/passion) from the

visionary perception. Art without a supportive environment is

actualized in a self-referential creation, a "magic marriage

of words," that is still, however, a transformation (of tragedy

into comedy) and an expression of a potentially redemptive

God-like wrath and will.