a brigade of aesthetic police.

Must be my favourite quote about the shadowy nature of ekphrasis.

“Everywhere in ekphrastic studies we encounter the language of subterfuge, of conspiracy, there is something taboo about moving across media, even as there is something profoundly liberating. When we become ekphrastics we begin to act our what is forbidden and incestuous, ; we traverse borders with a strange hush, as if being pursued by a brigade of aesthetic police.”

Grant F. Scott

‘The Rhetoric of Dilation: Ekphrasis and Ideology’ Word and Image, 7:4, 301-10, (309).