Visual intertextuality and gender in A. S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories

In her recent work ''The Matisse Stories'', A S Byatt continues to explore the relationship between creativity and everyday life. The three stories, although they are separate, make a collective statement about life and art. In this paper we examine the strategies used to create an intertextuality which is both of the order of the message and of the code,and to create an intertextuality which is multidisciplinary, in that it creates a site for a verbal and visual discussion of the relationship between the ''visible'' and the ''lisible''. Looking at visual and verbal statements to be found in the intertextuality relating to the message, we discern that insinuations are present concerning the art and sexuality interface. Male art continues to take precedence over female art, and new forms of subordination and dependence are emerging, for example, concerning the new-found importance of hairdressers and cleaning-ladies. In terms of the code or form, we see how Matisse's 1947 painting ''Le Silence Habite des Maisons'', paratextually reproduced on the front cover, informs the whole volume, with its powerful dichotomous articulations: sound vs silence, colour vs lack of colour, form vs chaos, art vs nature and virility vs femininity.