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It succeeds, too, in rising beyond a specific ekphrasis to a wider meditation on the exchange between a work of art and its context.

Most of Schwartz’s protagonists are artists — poets, painters, novelists, actresses — and, fittingly then, many of the novel’s most elegant moments consist of ekphrasis, the representation of a work of art within another artwork.

The Reger was a marvelous example of musical ekphrasis — i.e., poetry about art.

We must do what is sometimes called “ekphrasis,” a thorough elaboration of both what we are seeing and what we imagine must have taken place, filling in details, adding meaning, making connections.

The performance was a kind of call and response, or ekphrasis, with lyrics and chords inspired by Lethem's prose.