tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930615241751334452024-03-02T09:30:34.882-08:00Felt ImagesMy writing is rooted in images. Words and images, to me, are always intertwined. I write about very brief, but emotionally charged, moments in time. With each word that I use to describe an emotion comes a distinct image. My writing is something like a lens, through it I see how I feel.Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-72625301957110050632012-01-11T09:54:00.000-08:002012-01-11T10:39:53.548-08:00Knock, Knock: The House and Who's There: Introduction<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpFxP1hVJo_zz60m83PmWVGsBhMlcyft78cKnzbePoijMk2Stw42sXRZ7bQaY67nWNmMBUebxqKmVcAXfcov-zQzRmPBuBDyLXo4CifU_z96wlA24p_8m8xDOcNs9crvwU_R2SbhqeVsQz/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-11+at+7.39.02+PM.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 161px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpFxP1hVJo_zz60m83PmWVGsBhMlcyft78cKnzbePoijMk2Stw42sXRZ7bQaY67nWNmMBUebxqKmVcAXfcov-zQzRmPBuBDyLXo4CifU_z96wlA24p_8m8xDOcNs9crvwU_R2SbhqeVsQz/s320/Screen+shot+2012-01-11+at+7.39.02+PM.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696445940188532818" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIFoELYF_8g3vR82yOFT-LDINuBQ8Pqv01_EXF6Efc3BNRVvvwCQlFwo4EV61S27lrn_n_vYKndd1d6lJwR3e0tpfvhq8ZaywiVVwlpqpsaldOWVj7fzYC6a8aHUjAdClQmR5300x5WHuU/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-11+at+6.57.18+PM.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 311px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIFoELYF_8g3vR82yOFT-LDINuBQ8Pqv01_EXF6Efc3BNRVvvwCQlFwo4EV61S27lrn_n_vYKndd1d6lJwR3e0tpfvhq8ZaywiVVwlpqpsaldOWVj7fzYC6a8aHUjAdClQmR5300x5WHuU/s320/Screen+shot+2012-01-11+at+6.57.18+PM.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696435728917994594" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The following paper was written for a creative non-fiction course with Simon Schama<br /><br /></span><br /><style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSect</style><span style="line-height: 125%;font-size:100%;" >I’m discontented with homes that are rented so I have invented my own.</span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;"><span style="line-height: 125%;font-size:14pt;" ><span style=""> </span></span><span style="line-height: 125%;">--Blossom Dearie, in “Tea for Two”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;"><span style="line-height: 125%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;"><span style="line-height: 125%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;"><span style="line-height: 125%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">“There’s no place like home.” Home is where we like to end up at the end of the day: a space that is familiar and safe. We carry our ideals of “home” along with us, hopefully, in the end, to find a house to put them in. The hominess of a house comes from the presence of our bodies. We fill the spaces of our houses until they look less like architectural spaces and more like ourselves.<span style="color:blue;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">As a child, I compulsively drew interiors of homes filled with people: <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"><span style=""> </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqOeOV7-1jJhCmKBJpUr8BWGUJo4iZ_RXy4uZ-uviXRTacQRADyZc7scCvaXF5uh0y9ilbyoAN3PbMwkrE7Q9Oc9jl2fLNOeJohvtG7bnXGZyBx_61F-PTXkRTXBxfDOMd-J1ZUgYQBb1E/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-11+at+7.00.39+PM.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 231px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqOeOV7-1jJhCmKBJpUr8BWGUJo4iZ_RXy4uZ-uviXRTacQRADyZc7scCvaXF5uh0y9ilbyoAN3PbMwkrE7Q9Oc9jl2fLNOeJohvtG7bnXGZyBx_61F-PTXkRTXBxfDOMd-J1ZUgYQBb1E/s320/Screen+shot+2012-01-11+at+7.00.39+PM.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696436395995589506" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">From the time I was born to when I was eleven (roughly when these drawings ceased to be produced), I had lived in four different houses in four countries. Yet the drawings in this time span do not vary significantly. The interiors (bedrooms, sitting rooms, and dining rooms), always inspired from my own homes, kept the same furniture and objects. As long as our material possessions didn’t change, my concept of ‘home’ was portable. As I drew, I paid painstaking attention to the details of what went on the shelves, what people wore, and how the furniture was placed in the rooms. I’d make up the inhabitants’ life stories, imbuing the rooms with conversations and memories. The rooms with no stories were otherwise boring. As I look back on them now, they have served as records of my own memories.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">I hereby propose to return to my childhood compulsion by building a house out of paintings. The rooms already exist, but their houses do not. Frank Auerbach has lent us his <i style="">Sitting Room</i>; Jan Vermeer his kitchen, <i style="">The Milkmaid</i>; Pierre Bonnard his bathroom, <i style="">Nu dans le bain au petit chien</i>; and Maira Kalman her bedroom, <i style="">Dream in Venice</i>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">With painting, the body literally goes into the making of the room: it is a product of the human body. We will inhabit four different bodies, four different homes, but in one house. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">In putting together these four interiors, one must first build their structure, or their<span style="color:red;"> </span>house. It will be built of two stories, with the sitting room and kitchen downstairs, and the bathroom and bedroom upstairs—a basic<span style="color:red;"> </span>floor plan, similar to<span style="color:red;"> </span>your preschooler’s box-like depiction of a house. This seemingly simple structure to our house, however, will guide our movement as it divides the private (bedroom, bathroom) from the public (kitchen, sitting room). </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;"><span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">This breakdown of private and public spaces finds its origins in the ancient model of the Pompeian house. Along one vertical axis were the ‘public’ spaces—the <i style="">fauces </i>(a narrow, covered entrance), the <i style="">atrium </i>(the central court), and the <i style="">tablinum </i>(where guests were received). To the back of the house was the private setting, the <i style="">peristylium</i>, a gardened encased by rooms.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">In his text, <i style="">Idea of a House</i>, Richard Wesley claims that the Pompeian house established the house as a place to “dwell” in (122). Its floor plan consciously creates a journey for the visitor and the inhabitant, as rooms and vistas work together in logical progression in order to gradually ‘introduce’ the house. Wesley describes the Pompeian house as “a machine of sequential tableaux” (122). The use of ‘tableaux’ points to the composed properties of rooms: they are set up, aesthetically, with the intention to remain that way, almost as symbols. We dwell in rooms that are likened to paintings, as they hang in our lives like fixtures. In describing the house as a ‘machine,’ Wesley alludes to Le Corbusier’s description of the house as a “machine we live in,” where we rest and work in order to ‘function’ (120). Also like a machine, a house is made of parts, with logic and flow; if a major part, or room, were missing, it wouldn’t work. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">Le Corbusier’s design of the <i style="">maison dom-ino </i>creates a house that doesn’t have any walls, doors, or windows (123). Wesley claims that this design changes “the idea of the house as a ‘contrivance for the effect of dwelling’” as it “[incorporates] and [transforms] into a ‘machine for transcendence’” (123). As children of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, we imagine most houses to still have rooms that are separate, closed off, with walls and doors. For the most part, we have not quite reached this ideal of one shared space. In the end, we like our privacy, and it seems that it has remained this way for centuries. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">However, Le Corbusier’s <i style="">maison dom-ino</i> can still be applied in a more general sense to the way we feel about our homes. As Wesley points out, <i style="">dom-ino </i>relates to the term domus, “a household or home,” and <i style="">domi</i>, “to be at home.” To be at home is to move through the spaces freely, as if they were one’s own, knocking one vertical domino down after the next, as they collapse into one space—“transcending” boundaries. In our own houses, we do not feel like the doors and walls are barriers; we do not seek to detect the “contrivance” in our own “dwelling.” We like to think of the space as whole. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">What happens when you put four different people from various time periods and backgrounds into one house? Can the house remain “whole”? The illusion of wholeness, or lack of boundaries, comes from the homogeneous quality of a house: the traces are of the same people, leaving the house with an even look or mood. However, our painted house lacks this cohesive aesthetic; it is a place of differences. Our transitions from room to room are not smooth as we enter into four homes in a single house. Our definitions of ‘homely’ will be confused and contradicted, as our house becomes a place of discomfort rather than comfort. If we look at the house as Le Corbusier’s “machine,” it has all of its parts, but it doesn’t necessarily work: it has a logic (four rooms and a two story floor plan), but not a flow. We feel the contrivance in our dwelling. A common structure does not resolve the differences among various people and their objects.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"><br /></p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-67637702267000366872011-10-31T20:24:00.000-07:002011-10-31T20:37:02.640-07:00Luso-American Literature<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglEFFf7kZqpBSSPYvhtw1eQPjBXAnx4wvti5DeUWf3yF2g1FS0h6N1Geb_Q21JRAmaHv55yEtGaY-7PZxWQgRESQun5P3Ykpk8IWQQ-SObl229sCk3tSjsCu0j8Rd2TA1ETCoIlif6RHEY/s1600/luso-american-literature-writings-by-portuguese-speaking-authors-prof-robert-moser-paperback-cover-art.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglEFFf7kZqpBSSPYvhtw1eQPjBXAnx4wvti5DeUWf3yF2g1FS0h6N1Geb_Q21JRAmaHv55yEtGaY-7PZxWQgRESQun5P3Ykpk8IWQQ-SObl229sCk3tSjsCu0j8Rd2TA1ETCoIlif6RHEY/s320/luso-american-literature-writings-by-portuguese-speaking-authors-prof-robert-moser-paperback-cover-art.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5669864580404873970" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHlz_az7Jd0g4m3JETw4qF3aUKxa1IcoLbvbtHtRHzi1zR-PeOJ9OZ2vDTCCOGRcdljZmaqNmIxnuLdPTWM53JzVM8YxcB7hY9qyE2MCBid4HX80cNvFbxApoOAIQ-X7EeD_2pAdT7w62q/s1600/luso-american-literature-writings-by-portuguese-speaking-authors-prof-robert-moser-paperback-cover-art.jpg"><br /></a><br /><style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">“<i style="">Saudade</i>: More than longing. More than yearning.” So are the words of Katherine Vaz, one of the contributors to the recently released book, <i style="">Luso-American Literature: Writing by Portuguese-Speaking Authors in North America<b style=""> </b></i>(Rutgers Press). The comprehensive anthology of Portuguese, Brazilian and Cape Verdean literature is in itself an attempt to voice and explain the indefinable sentiment of “saudade” that is so particular to the Portuguese language. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">The anthology focuses on the authors’ experience (both famous and obscure) living abroad in the United States. Though the writers come from various countries, they have a common longing for the Portuguese language. Robert Henry Moser and Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta, the editors of the book, write in their highly engaging introduction that language is above all what ties the Luso-American community together, however undefined and scattered it may be. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">Several of the writers in the collection play with and question the very notion of language: is it language that shapes us? In Monteiro Lobato’s fictional memoir, “America,” we witness a discussion on language between an American, Mr. Slang, and a Brazilian, the narrator. The Brazilian is baffled by the American obsession with excess, expressed in the invention of the unit “million.” Mr. Slang mocks the unit of Brazilian money – “real” – for it is in fact “unreal, imponderable.” The Brazilian doesn’t care about measures, unlike the American who “must have unprecedented measures.” So the text continues along this line, where disagreements arise out of differences in diction. However, as the two try to defend their respective ways of life, they both conclude that in the end “it’s just tradition.” The language we use to think and explain ourselves has been inherited, and sometimes it simply loses any logic.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">In being thrown into a new language, these writers are faced with defining themselves within a new culture. Some of the writers never identify with Americans, accepting their estrangement and sometimes jokingly pointing out cultural differences. Other writers don’t address their displacement but insinuate “saudade” as they fixate on highly sensory and culturally specific memories. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">But does one necessarily acquire a new identity when one moves to a new country? And if so, is it a gain or a loss? Many writers insinuate that it is both, and that a change in one’s self comes with adaptation. The <span style="color:black;">riveting</span> poet, Jorge de Sena, describes in his poem, <i style="">Notions About Linguistics</i>, how the body adapts to a new nationality as the mouth and tongue is forced to learn new rhythms. The Portuguese poet Thomas J. Braga, though he writes in English, at times, he cannot completely let go of Portuguese. He holds on to certain words or phrases as his poems run through memories in sensory lists, as if he were desperately searching for the source from which he came from. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">Some writers try to emerge into the American culture by changing their names (Carlo Pedro becomes Charles Peters) or by embracing the American dream. In the informative historical sections of <i style="">Luso-American Literature</i>, they explain that the Portuguese came to the States in the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> centuries in order to expand their horizons and to search for economic opportunity. Later, Brazilians escaped the dictatorship and the Cape Verdeans came on whaling ships as they searched for a better lifestyle. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"><i style="">Luso-American Literature </i>is a pleasure to read not only for its diverse and intelligent selection of literature but also for its educational component. The book wishes to inform, perhaps primarily an America audience, of the Luso-American community that has lived and created in America over two centuries. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">Though the Cape Verdean literature section was not as strongly represented as the Brazilian and Portuguese, it ended the book on a powerful note with <i style="">The Old Sailor</i> by Kurt José Ayau. A Cape Verdean man tells the story of how he lives a double life – one in Cape Verde and one in America. The chance to have two families and two ways of living, now <i style="">that</i> is the dream. But the sea is his true home – the mother, the place that does not lie anywhere in particular. Sometimes it is liberating to be in a place that you do not belong to or do not need to belong to: a place that mediates between spaces of belonging.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;">Click <a href="http://g1.globo.com/videos/globo-news/manhattan-connection/v/escritor-lanca-livro-sobre-literatura-luso-americana/1664774/#/todos%20os%20v%C3%ADdeos/page/1">here</a> to see a discussion on the book on <span style="font-style: italic;">Manhattan Connection </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 125%;"><br /></p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-29247741104212316172011-10-11T14:36:00.000-07:002011-10-11T14:40:45.332-07:00Elizabeth Bishop: A Morning<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLlHsk7wpGldgUGfZDc3yhmgMpSz7kQGzPCyuf9CQ3RLg8NIV4UOWQKdS4EDqnh0Rh4tTBGB-InuzFSN2VLD-uKxthAapbR-B2u1v7tvWmcdfmZhkpXp0uxzI6Bvj7MSGCM-U1nQLVMp1/s1600/P6100054.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLlHsk7wpGldgUGfZDc3yhmgMpSz7kQGzPCyuf9CQ3RLg8NIV4UOWQKdS4EDqnh0Rh4tTBGB-InuzFSN2VLD-uKxthAapbR-B2u1v7tvWmcdfmZhkpXp0uxzI6Bvj7MSGCM-U1nQLVMp1/s320/P6100054.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662351884960512098" border="0" /></a><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">It’s early, the sun couldn’t have been up for more than an hour, and Lota is already up. It is a relatively clear day; Elizabeth can see only a few clouds bobbing by her window. Sometimes, when it’s very cloudy, because the house is so far up in the mountains, the glass gets fogged with gray.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">“Good morning,” Lota lays herself on the bed, by Elizabeth, over the sheets. She wears her bathrobe and smells of perfume and toothpaste. Awaking together is part of their joint morning ritual.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Lota runs her palm down Elizabeth’s hair in a motherly gesture. Elizabeth bats her eyes, adjusting to the light and shapes around her (Petrópolis is still a novelty) and smiles at Lota with some wordless sweet thought. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">“Come down to breakfast when you’re ready. I’ll wait for you, but first I have to go check on Manuelzinho and the vegetables.” Manuelzinho has been helping with the gardening ever since the house was finished being built. Manuelzinho drives Lota crazy. He isn’t productive, and when he tries to be, something goes wrong. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Elizabeth likes to observe Manuelzinho, as she does now, while eating her breakfast. Elizabeth and Lota eat together outside in the garden. It is June and it is getting cooler. Elizabeth insists that Lota sit on the end of the table that looks to the house, and not to the garden (where she could obsessively oversee her workers). She knows that Lota wouldn’t eat her breakfast otherwise. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">They eat jaboticaba jam and homemade butter on bread. Elizabeth made the jam herself after becoming acquainted with the purplish round fruit that has been growing on nearby trees. Elizabeth loves to cook and she is looking forward to preparing the lunch menu, which she and Lota try to write out on a day-to-day basis. <span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">“What is he doing?” Lota asks nervously. She’s referring to Manuelzinho. She notices that Elizabeth has been watching him. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">“Oh, nothing,” Elizabeth replies, which isn’t entirely a lie. Manuelzinho has been seemingly admiring a banana tree for the past good many minutes. The bananas are green still and hang tightly packed together. Manuelzinho has been stroking them, one by one, as if the warmth of his hands would help them to ripe. He inspects the bunch from all sides, carefully analyzing how it is attached to its tree. Elizabeth appreciates Manuelzinho’s curiosity towards natural beauty, and she likes his straw hat that he himself painted green.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Lota loses patience and turns around. </span><span lang="PT-BR" style="color:black;">“Manuelzinho! <i style="">Você está fazendo exatamente o que</i>?” </span><span style="color:black;">Lota gets up from the table without finishing her breakfast. Manuelzinho isn’t as bad as the cook, Elizabeth thinks. Elizabeth does more cooking than she does, for the cook spends most of her time painting on the garden rocks. She is an artist (and talented enough, according to Elizabeth), and perhaps so is Manuelzinho, which explains why menial labor is unmanageably boring to them.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Elizabeth listens to Lota and Manuelzinho bicker. She understands Portuguese now but still struggles speaking. She is embarrassed by her accent and prefers Lota to do the talking. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Elizabeth’s hands are getting cold. Though none of the residents agree, Petrópolis can get quite cold, especially high up in the mountains. Lota had a fireplace built for the house. But when the fire was lit just last week the whole place was invaded with smoke. The builders didn’t understand the concept of a chimney and thought it better to cover the chimney hole to prevent rain from coming in. Lota was furious. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Elizabeth decides to go check for mail. She looks forward to this moment, of checking who has written her from home. Sometimes, when Elizabeth wants to distract her thoughts, she writes up imaginary letters in her head. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">The mail hasn’t arrived. Elizabeth makes her way to her studio but pauses along the way to grab some bananas from the kitchen to feed Sammy. Uncle Sam is Elizabeth’s pet toucan, given to her by a mountain neighbor for her birthday. Sammy eats up to ten bananas a day. Elizabeth and Sammy are very fond of one another. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Lota has designed Elizabeth’s studio facing a small waterfall. She built in a pond so that the waterfall cascades into it, making loud and fat droplets. There are many new sounds that Elizabeth is becoming accustomed to in Brazil – the birds, the Portuguese, the thicker rain. The music, too. She finds that she prefers samba, though, to bossa nova. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Elizabeth likes living here, at the Samambaia house. Here she finds that provincial kind of lifestyle that she feels comfortable in. She takes the <i style="">Selected Poems </i>by Marianne Moore and begins to rub the pages between her fingers. Elizabeth admires Marianne and the good advice she gives, even if it does border on the preachy side at times. They are good friends now (it has been a few years since Marianne gave Elizabeth the permission to call her by her first name). Elizabeth will read one of Marianne’s poems to Lota tonight, though she is unsure which. Every night they read to one another, and take turns depending on the language. Reading in Portuguese isn’t the easiest task for Elizabeth, but it is still much easier than speaking. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Writing, for Elizabeth, can be slow. She has to take her time. She walks outside and sits by a coffee plant, by the waterfall. Later this afternoon Lota will be having visitors. The Samambaia house has become a destination, an object of curiosity. Elizabeth is not in the mood for having visitors. Sometimes she struggles socializing with Lota’s friends. Many people assume that because Elizabeth is a writer she would like to talk about literature all the time. But really she’d rather talk about the details in one’s day, what one saw and ate and wore. She’d even choose to talk about art over literature. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">Elizabeth suggests, never dictates. She observes the world unassumingly. Lota has a louder personality. She makes the big statements. She commands over life.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">As Elizabeth sits in the biting-green foliage beneath a cold-blue sky, she appears quite plain, even solitary. She is of a different shade, of another language. She does not participate, but she sees. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">She looks around her, searching for inspiration. She talks to herself, as she sometimes does. She sees a <i style="">beija-flor</i>, a hummingbird, flickering above a flower, and asks: </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color:black;">“How do you put that creature into words? How do you put that head?”</span></p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-32141288944017604592011-10-08T09:50:00.000-07:002011-10-08T10:06:36.946-07:00Gambito Delivers in Hungry and Vivid Words<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMtNdOdh9ag7A2cA3SwoPWBCo-2K9ztx2zwBcMjYRdeWkmBgpl5YOwrK5V9fZScDyrVHBNRup11OKI3dhgmPRY-smBsrypdv8uaaiNOvxmTb-DLmRpeY6xDd2Ku8ks5m-pkNz1XltFmvH/s1600/31883-FkEJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMtNdOdh9ag7A2cA3SwoPWBCo-2K9ztx2zwBcMjYRdeWkmBgpl5YOwrK5V9fZScDyrVHBNRup11OKI3dhgmPRY-smBsrypdv8uaaiNOvxmTb-DLmRpeY6xDd2Ku8ks5m-pkNz1XltFmvH/s320/31883-FkEJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5661167926391201906" border="0" /></a><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color:black;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color:black;">Sarah Gambito’s compelling and energetic book of poems, <i style="">Delivered</i>, has the audacious tendency to – as articulated in her poem ‘The Tip of the Angel’ – “[ask] questions we don’t like” (50). These questions often vehemently confront relationships, immigration, religion and family dynamics. While her subject matter may vary, Gambito’s sharp and expressive voice is constant throughout. It is a tense voice, constantly shuffling between a struggling tone and an assertive one. This conflict, in turn, illuminates the paramount theme in her work of human vulnerability, of the desperate longing to overcome pain. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">Almost always, the “I” is the victim in the poems. Over time, the reader develops an attachment with and understanding towards this “I,” the main speaker. This relationship is made possible because of Gambito’s artfully communicative and persuasive writing. For example, in some poems thoughts are repeatedly interrupted by periods, such as in ‘A Borderless Ethos Would Please Everyone’: “Reserved and ever patient. I sprang to my defense. I was better than you. I wanted it more.” (30). By breaking up the phrase, and forcing the reader to pause, every segment is given value, which in turn heightens the emotion. It likewise gives rise to a quick rhythm, which complements the assertive tone and correlates to the way we speak. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Gambito masterfully translates how we speak into writing not only through<span style="color:black;"> punctuation but also through the use of contemporary and colloquial language. This is evidenced through cursing or through the incorporation of common expressions and slang. She likewise sometimes addresses the reader directly, reducing any distance between the reader and the words. The reader thus becomes, to some degree, a character in her poems, like the many “he’s,” “she’s,” and “you’s.” Like these entities, the reader is another person that she is desperately trying to communicate with. This is especially evidenced in the close of the poem, ‘Waiting,’ where the speaker pleads the “dear reader”: “Stay again. / Let me try again” (23). The despairing tone insinuates dissatisfaction with the articulation of her words. Indeed, the speaker is always trying to grasp something, whether it is her identity, her opinions on religion or her feelings towards a lover. This desire, though rarely resolved, is frequently expressed through hand and touch imagery. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">In ‘What I Saw,’ comfort is found through tangibility: “And I thought all the hunks of peaches of my/ life were coming together. To hold/ in my hand. And have.” (59). The use of “hunks” connotes fullness and weight, and complements the fruitfulness, juiciness and roundness in “peaches.” To have a life that “[comes] together” consists of holding, possessing something plentiful and whole that one would like to gorge. ‘A Borderless Ethos Would Please Everyone,’ on the other </span>hand<span style="color:black;">, shows the frustration of not being able to grasp and touch (36). Unlike the peach imagery in ‘What I Saw,’ here, we have fractured or disruptive images – “dead toys” and “war” – to resemble someone empty-handed, unfulfilled. Towards the poem’s end, the speaker writes: “I can’t touch your hands. / Let me. Give me.” This phrase highlights a failed attempt to reach, an ultimate absence and loneliness. The curt, juvenile language in “Let me. Give me,” disturbingly reveals the greed and persistence of a child.</span><span style="color:black;"> Gambito’s expressive language and vivid imagery often functions to communicate the two poles of absence and fulfillment. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">This pairing of abstract thoughts and emotions with concrete imagery is masterfully executed throughout much of Gambito’s book. Her frequently striking imagery prevents the poems from solely echoing vague emotional statements. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">The importance of Gambito’s imagery is evidenced in those poems that lack such descriptions and rest on abstract or non-visual wording. ‘Two Times’ reads as a menial narrative on a dream the speaker had where “everyone” forgot her birthday (25). The reader follows an uninteresting dialogue between a mother and daughter on having a birthday party. Although other poems similarly describe personal moments that may be familiar to the reader, there is an imaginative twist to them through metaphorical imagery. Here, however, once Gambito rests on the spine of her thoughts with no concrete images to enrich them, they fall rather flat. The same </span>can be said of ‘A Borderless Ethos Would Please Everyone,’ which, like many of her other poems<span style="color:black;">, takes a critical stance on the American way of living (27). Although I may sympathize with the statements made in regard to the consuming, controlling and predictable lifestyle, that is as far as engagement gets here. The poem’s ending – “It continues like this.” – only reiterates the bored, observational tone of the language and the repetitive nature of the ideas. However, this factual wording and tone, when balanced with a fuller and more dynamic language, has its merits. Because much of her subject matter is overtly emotional, this colder and curt voice can prevent the writing from becoming too sentimental. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">The layout of <i style="">Delivered</i> is divided into three parts, where each section is introduced with a quote from a different source. </span>In using these quotes, Ga<span style="color:black;">mbito pulls her writing out of the bounded book into a wider dialogue. However, she does not resist to subtly and tellingly manipulate the quotes, which she does through bolding certain words. The writer, Gómez-Peña’s quoted passage expresses the discomfort in being an immigrant, and likens crying to a “<b style="">baby coyote</b>” (45). This bolded image carries all at once vulnerable, childish and animalistic connotations – all of which are prominent in Gambito’s poems, where the speaker has the appetite of a child and the aggressiveness of an animal, often “biting” at things. The quote, like the other two, does not entirely remove us from the poems; rather, it takes us out just enough to make us reflect outside of the book’s personal and specific realm. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;">Gambito’s poetry is dense with imagery and tense with emotion, which can powerfully overwhelm the reader with its painful pangs and vivid moments. Though Gambito can repeat themes and specific images, they do not feel overused. Rather, Gambito is endowed with the ability to make her language appear fresh every time. Indeed, <i style="">Delivered</i> convinces us that only through this elasticity and complexity of language can such a vigorous and distinct world be felt. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-70462250075493814482011-10-03T20:01:00.000-07:002011-10-03T20:06:52.262-07:00The life and death of an object<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4noDRfWN833B5thco2dFX34-VZTaRLM09XmsL8nOjWJnhEBatLytoLsuiD8w1A7xYSG2li7ri1EQuOL0Qm7ITcJQaM2qrMSbjdmjg1M8KegwOdvLrKL-rWvxGJOoIfCWszQmIJA8wsC0J/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-10-03+at+11.04.37+PM.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 309px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4noDRfWN833B5thco2dFX34-VZTaRLM09XmsL8nOjWJnhEBatLytoLsuiD8w1A7xYSG2li7ri1EQuOL0Qm7ITcJQaM2qrMSbjdmjg1M8KegwOdvLrKL-rWvxGJOoIfCWszQmIJA8wsC0J/s320/Screen+shot+2011-10-03+at+11.04.37+PM.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659467690275515346" border="0" /></a><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Behind a glass box in the Arms and Armory wing of the Metropolitan Museum dangles a <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i>, or a signaling baton, from the Edo period. The baton’s handle is a long and thin lacquered wood. From it hang golden paper strips that are about as thick and as long as fettuccine pasta. Together the strips mouth a discrete pedestal that holds the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> up. However, the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> rather gives the illusion that it floats. Perhaps this is because the handle is propped up, as if an invisible hand were still grasping onto it. Or perhaps it is because of the weightless quality of its golden body.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> The <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> could be mistaken for a flower, blooming off a suspended branch. The cascading strips of gold deflate as they descend like an upside down tulip. Even the shadow it casts is reminiscent of nature – the strips dabble light and dark patches below them like scattered leaves. One imagines a dark opening beneath its petals, where it guards its seeds. The handle is engraved with peony blossoms, a flower remarkable for its large opening that only continues to swell over days. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style=""> </span><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> There is also a musical quality about the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i>. One imagines the strips as a ballerina’s skirt, propped on a pedestal. Perhaps she turns and sways as the black flute-like instrument above her plays soft music. Indeed there is a single hole pierced within the handle that could struggle out weak notes of song. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style=""> <br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style=""> </span>But the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> is also a quiet place. We do not know what lies beneath this lady’s skirt, this golden curtain. A few strips are curled up at their ends, as a tease. But in the end, the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> conceals. Its full signs of life make us wonder what it was once like when it moved, but we cannot know. We watch it float, mutely, as a place of secrets.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It is in this moment of silence that we realize that the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> no longer lives. It is as a dead thing that one venerates, from a distance, for its impressive life. The signs along its body remind us that it is now a fixed and frozen object. The strips’ creases have stiffened and bent permanently. Parts of the gold have now turned black. A divine light bathes the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i>’s head, anointing it as if it has already parted for death.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> is an object full of contradictions: it tells us of all its signs of life, though silently; it appears weightless and flexible yet hard and static. To try to imagine a fierce military commander agitating these strips about for a signal of attack is difficult. We have met our object in its immaculate stage; it seems that it has not been touched for centuries. Anything that would alter its frozen form would come as a disturbance, as a violation of its perfection. As we come to associate it with its function of attack we realize that our flower, lady, and musical instrument in the end stand for blood. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A flash of lightening strikes the glass and for a moment the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> disappears behind the white light. It is the flash from one of the one thousand cameras snapping photographs in the Metropolitan Museum. We are reminded of the glass and the people that reflect on it. The dark, enclosed room makes not only the objects more prominent but also the spectators themselves. People swim across the glass as ghosts passing through. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As one watches oneself through the glass, one is reminded of the relationship of viewer and object. The glass, too, is an object to behold as it tells us that what we see is precious. At death, the <i style=""><span style="font-style: italic;">Saihai</span></i> left its function as a weapon to become an ancient jewel. </span></span></p> <br /><style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style><style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-74149506326645129902011-09-28T09:39:00.000-07:002011-09-28T09:45:31.268-07:00A bit like a mango<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0XnLiPdmQyKf1H9KhK9BinCPflMhpYdw9QH-MmHg7Q7Jy1SYgtD66qK_lPrxo01riaacYmDzEkyn75fSmKX0dOxWmhMcEyTUQXfjD6hDStJ5DzDOjQZB6XuioHRREgtM5uEEcYyHb56Ai/s1600/P1020919.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0XnLiPdmQyKf1H9KhK9BinCPflMhpYdw9QH-MmHg7Q7Jy1SYgtD66qK_lPrxo01riaacYmDzEkyn75fSmKX0dOxWmhMcEyTUQXfjD6hDStJ5DzDOjQZB6XuioHRREgtM5uEEcYyHb56Ai/s320/P1020919.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657452343714422770" border="0" /></a><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><i style=""><br /></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Papai</i> cuts the mango into little squares</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Like teeth and bricks and turtles’ backs. He’d like to </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Suck the juice off his fingers but doesn’t. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Water moves the yellow fibers off his hands, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The fibers that he’d rather have sucked like noodles.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">My sister naps on the couch, she is </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Soft, white, a little blushed. Puffy at the cheeks </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And mouth. A white peach, curled and settled </p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a bowl for a still life.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Mamãe </i>and I eat the mango squares at the kitchen counter. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Mamãe</i> says the mango’s too ripe. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s always too ripe. She says something </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And laughs up some sugar, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Her big front teeth like the bricks and turtles’ backs</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We eat.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Papai</i> eats standing. My sister’s eyes flutter, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Her waking lips butter</p> <p class="MsoNormal">With a lick followed by </p> <p class="MsoNormal">An unraveling of arms, of roots.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">She’s sweet and awoken and always ready </p> <p class="MsoNormal">To eat.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">My skin has a bit of green, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And now, in the summer, a flush of red. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The louder voice, the eyes that curl</p> <p class="MsoNormal">With a smile, the words –<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That are bright and unclear, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">That are difficult to see but easy to taste –<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">All suggest I’m blown with yellow. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">A bit like mango, a bite like me. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-51065580373288512722011-09-20T06:57:00.000-07:002011-09-20T07:07:11.817-07:00Elizabeth Bishop, Squatter's Children<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9WWI1Znke2ev7j3b52dz_Pmkon1JltRUao6zf1emdQ9wIP17Cwf-QXpzr0CoJarbvhvgmvlhr80IuLEEm7csaM5jLRHnUwfUzbODER9oBujKC1EZE_Ab8HRjUZkh2OZAhM_wsLazxm9X1/s1600/DSC02900.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9WWI1Znke2ev7j3b52dz_Pmkon1JltRUao6zf1emdQ9wIP17Cwf-QXpzr0CoJarbvhvgmvlhr80IuLEEm7csaM5jLRHnUwfUzbODER9oBujKC1EZE_Ab8HRjUZkh2OZAhM_wsLazxm9X1/s320/DSC02900.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5654442976237854210" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPZmz9ehKkzDkzyuAgVFVblrDYAXRFOCjKXnrIjm8E_aF6gGYnAbeTYUosgD3Zctr5TFUULRjqZ3S4hFP8vrknUlJ3FJRVgcRu1bKxZoT9HzCUnBZ6VvYJMIylfBYQosgIjdR5nrSizP8T/s1600/DSC02933.JPG"><br /></a><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 100.46%; margin-left: -2pt;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td colspan="2" style="width: 99.54%; padding: 0in;" valign="top" width="99%"> <p style="font-style: italic;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Squatter's Children</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">by Elizabeth Bishop </span><b><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /> </span></b><span style=""> </span></p> </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(241, 242, 242); padding: 2pt;"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p><br /></td> <td style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;" width="73%"><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="display: none;"> </span></p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 100%;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr style=""><td style="width: 30pt; padding: 0in;" valign="top" width="30"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p><br /></td> <td style="width: 100%; padding: 0in;" valign="top" width="100%"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">On the unbreathing sides of hills<br />they play, a specklike girl and boy,<br />alone, but near a specklike house.<br />The sun's suspended eye<br />blinks casually, and then they wade<br />gigantic waves of light and shade.<br />A dancing yellow spot, a pup,<br />attends them. Clouds are piling up;<br /><br />a storm piles up behind the house.<br />The children play at digging holes.<br />The ground is hard; they try to use<br />one of their father's tools,<br />a mattock with a broken haft<br />the two of them can scarcely lift.<br />It drops and clangs. Their laughter spreads<br />effulgence in the thunderheads,<br /><br />weak flashes of inquiry<br />direct as is the puppy's bark.<br />But to their little, soluble,<br />unwarrantable ark,<br />apparently the rain's reply<br />consists of echolalia,<br />and Mother's voice, ugly as sin,<br />keeps calling to them to come in.<br /><br />Children, the threshold of the storm<br />has slid beneath your muddy shoes;<br />wet and beguiled, you stand among<br />the mansions you may choose<br />out of a bigger house than yours,<br />whose lawfulness endures.<br />Its soggy documents retain<br />your rights in rooms of falling rain. </span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, <i style="">Squatter’s Children</i>, is one in a series of poems that Bishop wrote whilst living in Brazil. Bishop often looked at her world closely and in small parts at a time. In Bishop’s collection of poems devoted to Brazil (compiled in <i style="">Questions of Travel</i>), she is consistently aware that her eyes are that of a foreigner, yet she is never afraid to see. At times, Bishop shows that it is through looking at the world closely that we understand it. Other times, she shows the strikingly opposite: even if we attempt to see it all, we can still remain estranged and confused. In the case of some of the Brazil poems, this unsettling truth is a commentary on harsh social realities related to poverty. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">In <i style="">Squatter’s Children</i>, Bishop takes a scene and elegantly breaks it apart, showing that it is only after you see each part dissected that you realize that all parts are inseparable. Bishop starts off the poem by taking us “On the unbreathing sides of hills,” the hills of the favelas in Rio. We are somewhere “unbreathing” – without life, suffocated, and still. A sun gazes onto a girl and boy with a “suspended eye.” The setting speaks to the unbreathing quality of the hill: the suspension of the sun connotes a sense of fixedness, and the children, who are in turn “alone,” are trapped in the sun’s motionless gaze. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This set triangle, however, is soon to be broken. The sun seems to take in large breaths as it sheds “gigantic waves of light and shade.” Other elements begin to quickly appear, reappear and disappear, also like the very rhythm of breath. But is this movement relieving? Clouds pile up into a storm: they move closer together, a movement that altogether blocks and caves in closer to the boy and girl. The children, too, begin to move as they “play at digging holes.” But the openings they attempt to make in the ground are impeded – the ground is too “hard.” A similar sense of restraint is felt when they can “scarcely lift” the tools they use. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Up until the end of the second stanza, there is no mention of sound. We move from quiet stillness to quiet movement. We watch in silence. Bishop introduces sound as she did with movement: it happens like a cascading effect, one movement or sound bumping into and intensifying the next. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Sounds fire off with the “drops and clangs” of the children’s tools that cause the children to laugh, in unison with the “thunderheads” of the storm. The laughter becomes the storm as it “spreads effulgence” and strikes “weak flashes of inquiry,” which are in turn described as “direct as is the puppy’s bark.” The laughter, the storm and the pup together harmonize in a direct but weak sound. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The laughter carries light up into the clouds asking a wordless question. It shoots up and descends like an “unwarrantable ark” – as clear and visible as the rise and fall of an ark, however fleeting and weak. It dives back down with no answer, disappearing into the depths of the ground. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Bishop’s description of this cacophony of sounds is paradoxical: it is strong and clear yet weak and momentary. It is through capturing the precise qualities and strong impact of weakness that makes us understand what it is to be weak. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The rain pours out what the storm has swallowed and incorporated – the children, the bark, and the sun – and answers the “flashes of inquiry” with an echo, or rather an “echolalia” (a word choice that beautifully mimics the loopy sounds of rain).<span style=""> </span>There is in fact no reply. There are only the sounds of what is already there, and we are left with the voice of the Mother, which is in turn as “ugly as sin.” But is it the children’s mother calling them back inside? Or is it the grander Mother Nature? This voice nonetheless serves as a sort of rupture: it breaks through this cycle that has taken place between the sun, the children, the clouds and the rain. The Mother separates them and draws the children back to where they belong.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But there is no dry haven for the children to escape to. The storm has already seeped into them and “slid beneath [their] muddy shoes.” Their homes are seemingly falling apart, as they only have “rights in rooms of falling rain.” The alliteration in this last line lends the sense of something tumbling and constant, like the fall of the rain and the unchanging reality of these children. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">We begin the poem in a dry and still place and end in one that is wet and falling apart. The children are absorbed into their surroundings: their movements, sounds and very existence are constrained to the lifeless sides of the unbreathing hill. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"></span><span style=""></span><table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 100%;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr style=""><td style="width: 30pt; padding: 0in;" valign="top" width="30"><br /></td><td style="width: 100%; padding: 0in;" valign="top" width="100%"><br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-52472934466305760752011-09-17T09:22:00.000-07:002011-09-17T09:28:20.606-07:00Talk to Me (with words?)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDF-ymYNh2ycga4lF0FtnsmETTq1HScsWK8YAz_KOQcm_KEDNayDLgKOPCYrdsvmYZIMIZ_zyj-CYAwAqvtYKkYW6XnmlLfHwPWq7XjdqdP0AZlG0DiqVaqmKEaLEM0fp1DL0x75tvQfm1/s1600/smslingshot-wall.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDF-ymYNh2ycga4lF0FtnsmETTq1HScsWK8YAz_KOQcm_KEDNayDLgKOPCYrdsvmYZIMIZ_zyj-CYAwAqvtYKkYW6XnmlLfHwPWq7XjdqdP0AZlG0DiqVaqmKEaLEM0fp1DL0x75tvQfm1/s320/smslingshot-wall.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5653365741118945698" border="0" /></a><br /> SMSlinghot, 2009<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbWxTaeeVC_vVkxYqpbXd5A7lkx4DMy8JtgJiG2z9rWxWUvRvG4m6QN44jl9rDKCyzPFZS-XlG0Mey3629BPUhECFk5hILr9rHFYx8AiWukkKqp3uM7_jO-6xSwZBJDLGSpJDRfttJjeCn/s1600/graffiti-taxonomy.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbWxTaeeVC_vVkxYqpbXd5A7lkx4DMy8JtgJiG2z9rWxWUvRvG4m6QN44jl9rDKCyzPFZS-XlG0Mey3629BPUhECFk5hILr9rHFYx8AiWukkKqp3uM7_jO-6xSwZBJDLGSpJDRfttJjeCn/s320/graffiti-taxonomy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5653365695434235634" border="0" /></a> Graffiti Taxonomy<br /><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }@font-face { font-family: "Helvetica Neue Light"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I recently paid a visit to MOMA’s current exhibition, <i style="">Talk To Me: Design and Communication between People and Objects</i>, which is a showing of new (and wacky) object design. This exhibit will prove to you that your personal possessions are not only boring, but also even more lifeless than you may have previously thought.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >Several of the artists imbue life in their objects with words, where sometimes the objects speak for themselves (a talking chair, for instance) and where other times the objects give voice to us.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >There were two pieces in particular where words were such a force that they themselves became the “objects.” <i style="">SMSlingshot</i>, a collaborative piece among four German artists, is a wooden slingshot that shoots giant laser beam messages onto buildings. The user types a message into its keypad and then slingshots his/her message into a neon splash on the wall.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >The <i style="">SMSlingshot </i>piece harkens to Evan Roth’s <i style="">Laser Beam </i>project, where users used a giant laser pen and could draw and write directly onto buildings on an overwhelming scale. Roth, the co-founder of Graffiti Research Lab, is also exhibited at the MOMA. The piece, <i style="">Graffiti Taxonomy New York/Paris</i>, re-creates the variations on the letter “S” used in graffiti in New York and Paris. The variations are so vast and drastic that the letter itself becomes an object that has been appropriated and altered according to each personality.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >Both pieces give voice to graffiti. <i style="">SMSlingshot</i> is a triumph in graffiti in that it allows people to get away with drawing on walls, because it isn’t permanent. Its main goal, however, is to empower people by giving them the chance to splatter a personal statement onto the public landscape. <i style="">Graffiti Taxonomy </i>looks at another aspect of graffiti – the art and personal trace of the human.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >A lot of social-oriented graffiti (which is what these MOMA artists support) takes after the belief of the British graffiti king, Banksy, that graffiti isn’t about the author, but about the statement s/he makes. However, both <i style="">SMSlingshot</i> and <i style="">Graffiti Taxonomy</i> speak to the contradiction that though graffiti uses an authorless language, the presence of the author – and the constraints s/he had to break through – is what gives this language meaning.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >In fact, Evan Roth and his team go to great measures to acknowledge and support the artists behind graffiti. In <i style="">The EyeWriter project</i>, software allows artists who are paralyzed to draw with their eyes. It no longer matters if the graffiti gets out there on the walls. Graffiti is important to them as artists, and they draw on screens from their homes.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >The way we think of graffiti is a relatively modern concept, which came about with the birth of spray cans and largely started off as subway art. But graffiti, as an idea, and not necessarily a movement, has existed for millennia.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >The artwork on the walls of the Chauvet caves comes to mind after having just recently watched Werner Herzdog’s documentary, <i style="">Cave of Forgotten Dreams</i>. There we are revealed an astonishing series of drawings of mostly animals. But I would like to bring our attention to a wall covered in reddish handprints. According to one of the archaeologists on the case, one can tell by the prints that the artist’s hand had a crooked pinky. Because of this quirky detail, we can identify the artist throughout the caves, where one finds more of his handprints. Though it is impossible to know the intentions behind these prints, it is nonetheless evidence of the desire to leave the trace of the self in a landscape.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >Another instance that comes to mind is in one of the chateaux in the Loire Valley, chateau Chenonceau, where I recently visited while studying abroad in France. On one of the walls of its chapel, one finds graffiti dating to around 1500 (which says something or other about God in old English). The graffiti is protected by a layer of glass, suggesting that it has now become a work of value to be preserved. Considering that graffiti is today illegal and is constantly sought out after to be erased, it is interesting that old graffiti is treated differently, almost reverently.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >I would argue that the illegal branding on graffiti today has helped to inspire and define it as an art form. Its language is prohibited and restrained, and because of that it often carries a bold sense of purpose, an underlying sentiment of angst. Moreover, the way it interacts with its “canvas” – the environment – is the effect of a rupture: it has to invade the space and call unusual attention to itself in order to be seen (arguably more so than the way a sculpture or painting inhabits a gallery space or museum).<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" >On the one hand, graffiti today isn’t so different from the past – we have displayed over a long stretch of time the desire to create art and express oneself into the environment, into public view. On the other hand, the language of graffiti has evolved with the language of our time. The words themselves have taken on new aesthetics – taking after technology (laser beams) and creating individualized alphabets in an effort to establish oneself in an anonymous artistic field. Graffiti today is a conscious art form, a counter-cultural movement, and in so doing it has created its own alphabet, dictionary and semiotic understanding of words.<span style=""> </span></span></p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-75593574709877230162011-08-30T13:12:00.000-07:002011-08-30T13:20:59.987-07:00To a kiss<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJgkdNRpqtgKLXbb1lP0nc0naXTvsyUW5NNwCSgj6DIt2TzOIkiBOV_xmJXJBvnwbiyTYE0kolLJdk24KE9NYCvXm8t8uF0SekKL0uShG6vf3KVaFBxRV1D0CRQkAsYrKRxGxkUxm8JVBv/s1600/IMG_1338.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 285px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJgkdNRpqtgKLXbb1lP0nc0naXTvsyUW5NNwCSgj6DIt2TzOIkiBOV_xmJXJBvnwbiyTYE0kolLJdk24KE9NYCvXm8t8uF0SekKL0uShG6vf3KVaFBxRV1D0CRQkAsYrKRxGxkUxm8JVBv/s320/IMG_1338.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646746319643162994" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><span style="font-size:100%;">There is this large tree outside my window. </span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Fat, with leaves, it breathes compulsively </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Like a beating lung. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The leaves they flap from light to dark,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">In the folds in my stomach and the ball of my eye.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The moon is tipped tonight, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">A little drunk, a shade too yellow. It appears especially </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Distant. My head knocked back, like a fallen thing to the ground, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Too far thrown that I couldn’t possible make it back up. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">A petal perhaps, no smaller or thinner or less perfumed.
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<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">It seems this tree comes closer; it’ll lean into the window, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Using its leafy hands against the white-chipped-frame</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">To pull itself in for a small shuffle of leaves, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">For a soft blow of wind just close enough to my face</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">For a kiss. </span></p> Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-87236668155124293492011-08-29T14:43:00.000-07:002011-08-29T14:59:19.753-07:00david hockney: inside his reality<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAYFIv5zxcQYg3SUq3x7czEhiDNnK8dd0BWgv57nrD2QG70ocFDR5M4eFyIwOmYo4tR-DZJhBT2kO5JqpUVzopZAXOG5Eddd8zdbydDgozim-Q8LKvFLob7CHpHko2YdZbh4ttMxUPlWjM/s1600/David-Hockney1-350x245.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAYFIv5zxcQYg3SUq3x7czEhiDNnK8dd0BWgv57nrD2QG70ocFDR5M4eFyIwOmYo4tR-DZJhBT2kO5JqpUVzopZAXOG5Eddd8zdbydDgozim-Q8LKvFLob7CHpHko2YdZbh4ttMxUPlWjM/s320/David-Hockney1-350x245.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646399056084794322" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures</span></i>) (1972)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBOe71w_EbIljg7Ea7-cMzjQ1HTCTmF_4do2c2uiyMjc-q01fti0XB-MMl4VqZX8drRI-qDnY3UaNoI9Eg4aYBfxS49udX3FeUkk4TunBuxUG-zEDdnzKF0IWzQGZ-vmHi7_AJUmYPV-H/s1600/hockney.pearblossom-highway.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBOe71w_EbIljg7Ea7-cMzjQ1HTCTmF_4do2c2uiyMjc-q01fti0XB-MMl4VqZX8drRI-qDnY3UaNoI9Eg4aYBfxS49udX3FeUkk4TunBuxUG-zEDdnzKF0IWzQGZ-vmHi7_AJUmYPV-H/s320/hockney.pearblossom-highway.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646398866058317442" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pearblossom Highway</span></i> (1986)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjguiPToCkhyphenhyphenl-jbxb3jIMT3Y8BjC2N7Nphy1G2OgYCBz6pZcZdyfK7ix3au90ieeTf-hBV4xDPvul85nz4B5fZynKjBo_tqlkS0xki04uiMwjq-b1zreb64ZZYMWNyAEnk-QXFY1XtXCXU/s1600/M83_35.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 118px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjguiPToCkhyphenhyphenl-jbxb3jIMT3Y8BjC2N7Nphy1G2OgYCBz6pZcZdyfK7ix3au90ieeTf-hBV4xDPvul85nz4B5fZynKjBo_tqlkS0xki04uiMwjq-b1zreb64ZZYMWNyAEnk-QXFY1XtXCXU/s320/M83_35.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646398663547214162" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mulholland Drive: the Road to the Studio</span></i> (1980)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_9bKT-D-jKndpJ9FFzFmy4fYP0e3jdjgMHFKCs9T8NobOENT5eV9yvWLyEEYJiF2EOaCW1HisFvmhQYFwFJsDwgQly6LnhVeauqLhqE2HuFpifq8GS6IO1NNSbWG1nTdbWqMm-s4cqZCx/s1600/sprinkle.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 318px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_9bKT-D-jKndpJ9FFzFmy4fYP0e3jdjgMHFKCs9T8NobOENT5eV9yvWLyEEYJiF2EOaCW1HisFvmhQYFwFJsDwgQly6LnhVeauqLhqE2HuFpifq8GS6IO1NNSbWG1nTdbWqMm-s4cqZCx/s320/sprinkle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646398468587442322" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Lawn Being Sprinkled</span></i> (1967)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNelU9lYfcrcOgNc55ZNpcImcrI2-dmX30MDTexSS8FG1d8Jjxc-skyTXYHE5kIV-Ghq6DJbB5tZGVwCJxZzZhdF1EQZWU5_0wQNHg0pKUKeFE6AqeRgBCsYHEawloNKF69tDc_Of-EDpD/s1600/A_Bigger_Splash__Davi_8460t.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 294px; height: 287px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNelU9lYfcrcOgNc55ZNpcImcrI2-dmX30MDTexSS8FG1d8Jjxc-skyTXYHE5kIV-Ghq6DJbB5tZGVwCJxZzZhdF1EQZWU5_0wQNHg0pKUKeFE6AqeRgBCsYHEawloNKF69tDc_Of-EDpD/s320/A_Bigger_Splash__Davi_8460t.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646398129115677042" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Bigger Splash</span></i> (1967)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7qPn6iRIieZif3qrC_dSvK1NYotLHXnS5_l_PiqQV-WD_6u5sogzPqQLs7vBn9hUVd1j-AndzVZG2wZNN5gbfwQnzoDDggwPrpLUbiyO_pEZ-aJVeOmq5fqAa6XlfaIqr5NH1xIsCZY3m/s1600/tumblr_kt9lzdR3x41qz4jk6o1_400.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7qPn6iRIieZif3qrC_dSvK1NYotLHXnS5_l_PiqQV-WD_6u5sogzPqQLs7vBn9hUVd1j-AndzVZG2wZNN5gbfwQnzoDDggwPrpLUbiyO_pEZ-aJVeOmq5fqAa6XlfaIqr5NH1xIsCZY3m/s320/tumblr_kt9lzdR3x41qz4jk6o1_400.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646397779591096690" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">California Art Collector </span></i> (1964)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqz-eyhqNvVUmSJXkcJzSZJsPOdGbanD6_77qb_X5bGwVdB9l7zanO0T-vhJN7o_iBKhQTvxG_lutvSlsGrDDPI9ypIi2cC5lEmxuNmj4JzRM8-_6lzzsTqdMGhq-BF_xG7uvGpuc-cX0C/s1600/46343695.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqz-eyhqNvVUmSJXkcJzSZJsPOdGbanD6_77qb_X5bGwVdB9l7zanO0T-vhJN7o_iBKhQTvxG_lutvSlsGrDDPI9ypIi2cC5lEmxuNmj4JzRM8-_6lzzsTqdMGhq-BF_xG7uvGpuc-cX0C/s320/46343695.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646397506777589186" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Flight into Italy – Swiss Landscape</span></i> (1962)
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<br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoFootnoteText, li.MsoFootnoteText, div.MsoFootnoteText { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.MsoFootnoteReference { vertical-align: super; }span.FootnoteTextChar { }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">David Hockney has always been a hyperactive<span style="color: red;"> </span>artist, exploring the potentials of painting, drawing, and photography. However, within his seemingly ever-changing body of work, persists a desire to capture reality, and not in a necessarily naturalistic manner. Geldzahler has said that “he [Hockney] has become increasingly fascinated by exactly how things look.”<a style="" href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Hockney has also claimed, “People who look hardest in the end will be good artists.”<a style="" href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> I will discuss a few of the many ways in which Hockey has manifested this desire, with a particular emphasis on his paintings. Firstly, in a significant portion of his work, there is a tendency to extract and dissect as much visual information as he can from an image or scene. As has been noted by Clothier and acknowledged by Hockney himself, there is in his work a prevalent cubist approach to break up single images into multi-faceted ones. It is also important to observe that much of his work centers on human experiences. Hockney, in his frequent multi-perspective approach, presents challenging interpretations of reality; at the same time, the approachable subject matter and his clever use of space are user-friendly, inviting the viewer<span style="color: red;"> </span>into the picture plane, inspiring them to look at reality from a fresh outlook.<span style=""> </span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Hockney has frequently criticized photography, claiming<span style="color: red;"> </span>that<span style="color: red;"> </span>“it’s a view that’s too mechanical, too devoid of life.”<a style="" href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[3]</span></span></span></span></a> Indeed, Hockney’s intention is to convey a sense of life in movement. He wants us to be in the picture, to feel around and inside the space of his<span style="color: red;"> </span>work. In order to do so, there can be no firm edges or single perspectives. We do not live in narrow, boxed-up planes; we always have space to move in and are constantly observing the world from various angles. This is why Hockney claims to “break” or “alter” the edges of the picture plane and tends to employ multiple perspectives within a single image.<a style="" href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[4]</span></span></span></span></a>
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<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">These qualities are prevalent in one of his earlier paintings, from 1962, <i style="">Flight into Italy – Swiss Landscape</i>. It conveys a strong sense of movement that prevents the scene from becoming contained or restrained by edges. Streaks of pale blue brush past the bodies, suggesting speed while stretching off<span style="color: red;"> </span>their skin in the process. Our eye imagines a continuation to this journey, a destination beyond<span style="color: red;"> </span>the edges of the plane. The colorful waves that make up the mountains are cut off mid-wave, lending<span style="color: red;"> </span>the illusion of a continuous flow. The word ‘Paris’ with an arrow pointing outside to the left of the picture plane likewise signals that there is a path and a place that has already been left. The unusual use of perspective also expands the spectator’s viewpoint. The people depicted are at once outside and inside the car: their bodies are not fully covered by the car’s exterior. However, one of the figures handles a wheel that by contrast is clearly <i style="">inside</i> the car. The figure in the back also desperately grabs the figure in front of him, as if he was about to fly off<span style=""> </span>- but are they not inside the car? This ambiguity of location in space continues with the rendering of the house and trees. Though both are placed in close proximity to the human figures on the picture plane, their scales are completely nonsensical: the house is practically the same size as the human figures. Perhaps Hockney wants to indicate that the house is far from the figures; but, at the same time, the shadows that wrap around the house in a ghostly manner are the same transparent blacks and reds that cover the car. The foreground and background at once separate and merge. Finally, we observe the house from a bird’s eye perspective, while<span style="color: red;"> </span>we see the human figures and the car from the side. We are not confined to one view. Indeed, our perception expands the harder we look. The process of looking at this painting is like looking at something in real life: what we<span style="color: red;"> </span>see changes from one moment to the next.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">This close dialogue with reality is made further possible by the large scale of the works, which allows us to scan and relate to the images on a near-human scale, to enter and become part of it. The scale also requires us to spend time scanning the image and to sense the passage of time within the depicted moment. Hockney claims that the perception of time prevents a work from becoming static and lifeless. To him, time is always present in a painting “because a hand moving across it means time is involved.”<a style="" href="#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[5]</span></span></span></span></a> Thus the act of painting mimics a moment in real life: it is built in physical stages. There are various ways<span style="color: red;"> </span>to feel time within his work: the appreciation that each image within one plane was born at a different moment in time; the presence of movement; and finally, the connection of the depicted moment to life itself. Hockney has claimed that his work is autobiographical, that all of his images were extracted from human experiences.<a style="" href="#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[6]</span></span></span></span></a> Thereby, the images themselves have once existed in a specific<span style="color: red;"> </span>moment in time.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">On the other hand, quite often in his paintings, as in his Los Angeles series, life is completely still. However, their very stillness makes us look at them even harder, as they create their own reality. Just as in <i style="">Flight into Italy – Swiss Landscape</i>, where Hockney aimed to value motion and perspective, in several of his still images he places every object with equal importance on a frozen plane. Hockney offers alternative ways of seeing, playing with perpetual and simultaneous motion and utter stillness.<span style="">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>In <i style="">California Art Collector</i>, one imagines that Hockney was at first looking at a larger scene, then selected certain elements from it and compressed them all into an apparently still new plane. The female figure<span style="color: red;"> </span>seems to be under an awning outdoors; however, she sits on a living room chair that is placed on carpeting. Is she outside, or are we looking into an interior? A rainbow invades this space as a supportive architectural element. There is likewise a white form on the back wall that resembles a small cloud. This overlapping of scenes engenders a sense of displacement and simultaneity, and thus a degree of movement. Indeed, to Hockney, what lends the most movement and life to a picture is not necessarily what the subject is doing, but rather how the shapes and objects interact with the space. In his book <i style="">The Way I See It</i>, Hockney claims he does not like to excessively use horizontal shapes in his work for it engenders too much visual stillness (52). <i style="">California Art Collector </i>and other works from the same period (the early sixties) may appear entirely still at first glance, but they are not altogether static. They possess those essential elements previously discussed – large scale, a lack of confining edges, odd perspectives, and a profusion of<span style="color: red;"> </span>shapes – all of which prevent the images from becoming entirely tight and frozen, giving them room to breathe.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">The subject matter likewise grounds the work in reality since it consistently stresses the human experience. Even in those scenes with no human figures, the human presence is often implied through the setting or the work’s title. In <i style="">A Bigger Splash</i>, the solitary chair, the pool board, and the splash point to the event that a person has<span style="color: red;"> </span>just jumped into the pool. In <i style="">A Lawn Being Sprinkled</i>, somebody obviously turned the sprinkler on; it is a domestic task, emphasized by the depiction of a house in the background. Even in some of his landscapes, such as <i style="">Mulholland Drive: the Road to the Studio</i>, not only does the title refer to a destination, Hockney’s own ‘studio,’ but also the mountains themselves are punctured with roads and structures. In some areas of the painting there even appears to be some ambiguity as to what is a structure and what is nature: in the bottom left there is a level plane that resembles a flattened house with windows.<i style=""> </i>Thus, Hockney’s work is about interactions among people or about their interaction with the environment.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Importantly, the human perspective itself is a central theme. In Hockney’s photomontages, as spectators we are led<span style="color: red;"> </span>to question and merge three ways of seeing: what we see through our own eyes, the photographic perspective, and Hockney’s unusual composition. In <i style="">Pearblossom Highway</i>, Hockney has expanded the perception<span style="color: red;"> </span>of the highway by breaking the image up into squares that are in turn rotated, zoomed and overlapped. He thus breaks the flatness and one-point perspective of photography by creating a new reality that is much closer to the actual perception of the human eye – we are at once hovering from one place to another and absorbing the whole. As Clothier puts it, Hockney’s photomontages are “a truer layering of space and time.” <span style="color: red;"></span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">In Hockney’s works we are not merely spectators. We always interact with them, even when we feel, as Melia has stressed, like “voyeurs,” such as in his paintings of nude boys emerging from the pool, or in <i style="">Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)</i>, where one of the figures is immersed under water while the other stares with downcast eyes in an absorbed manner. Thus the figures instigate reactions from us as if we were situated in a real scene. Hockney has said, “we do not look at the world from a distance, we are in it.”<a style="" href="#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[7]</span></span></span></span></a> By pushing the limits of perspective and including us in his multiple points of view, Hockney ensures that, as spectators, we are there, in his images. </p> <div style="">
<br /> <hr size="1" width="33%" align="left"> <div style="" id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> Hockney, David. <u>Hockney by Hockney</u> (p.9) </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn2"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> Hockney, David. <u>Hockney by Hockney</u> (p.130) </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn3"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> Clothier, Peter. <u>Hockney</u> (p.130)</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn4"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[4]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> Hockney, David. That’s the Way I see It (p.103)</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn5"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[5]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> Hockney, David. That’s the Way I see It (p.104)</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn6"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[6]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> Hockeny, David. Hockney by Hockney (p.9)</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn7"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[7]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> Hockney, David That’s the Way I See It (p.102)</span></p> </div> </div>
<br />Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-42079587621587412162011-08-28T09:43:00.000-07:002011-08-28T09:46:59.041-07:00Hirst Pulls a Trigger<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXRLMFl_hjZrLjUxwJpbSctoGQ7usQeDH8HihiQzR1y_DpvOtRkBo_-ZCGzOv9Gt7rrsSdZUQtVpZXeEQIHDueujx6RtJg0uDoK9OLIuFvJpPakT4F1qnZeetgh4Dh_tCXtf-2tnUPOLVl/s1600/07.06.13.hirst.190.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 190px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXRLMFl_hjZrLjUxwJpbSctoGQ7usQeDH8HihiQzR1y_DpvOtRkBo_-ZCGzOv9Gt7rrsSdZUQtVpZXeEQIHDueujx6RtJg0uDoK9OLIuFvJpPakT4F1qnZeetgh4Dh_tCXtf-2tnUPOLVl/s320/07.06.13.hirst.190.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645948578406200962" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoFootnoteText, li.MsoFootnoteText, div.MsoFootnoteText { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.MsoFootnoteReference { vertical-align: super; }span.FootnoteTextChar { }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">Damien Hirst’s diamond-covered skull, <i style="">For the Love of God</i>, is at once grotesque and beautiful, superficial and meaningful. However, before elaborating on these curious contradictions, it is paramount to stress Hirst’s ultimate goal with</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-size:100%;">this piece; as he puts it, “</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >I want people to see it and be astounded. I want them to gasp.” He relishes in the shock factor and aims to make a scene. Importantly, what astounds most of the viewers is the preposterous sum of money involved in the making and selling of the </span><span style="font-size:100%;">skull</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >. The monetary aspect of the work becomes its </span><span style="font-size:100%;">main “raison d’être”.</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > Thus, any meaningful interpretation of the piece is obscured amidst the commercial </span><span style="font-size:100%;">commotion, insinuating</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >that the artwork itself is, lamentably, less impressive than its cost.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >One could contend that the commercial aspect is significant and should rightly be the chief interest of the piece. It does, after all, explicitly illustrate the capitalist age we live in. Hirst spent an overwhelming sum on something seemingly trivial, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">as</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >many others do in private. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Only</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > he did it boldly, shamelessly, and loudly. The audience’s response, in itself, reveals a consumerist society. We look at a <i style="">skull</i>, covered in 8,601 <i style="">diamonds</i>, and what primarily resonates is the cost. Although the skull functions primarily as a symbol and embracement of the capitalist art market, it possesses mocking- though not necessarily condemning- undertones </span><span style="font-size:100%;">towards</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >consumerist society.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="">
<br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="">
<br /></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="">For the Love of God</i></span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > engages with superficial notions of beauty and their ironic relationship to death. To paraphrase a quote, before the making of the skull, in <i style="">I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now</i>, Hirst criticizes humans for excessively caring about their complexions since they are </span><span style="font-size:100%;">ultimately</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >destined to decompose into skulls. This futile preoccupation with </span><span style="font-size:100%;">appearance</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >can readily be applied to </span><span style="font-size:100%;">his </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >piece. The symbol of our death stares straight at us, yet due to the striking diamonds that adorn it, the violent image of death is instantly appeased. The diamonds function as a mask, a farce that embodies the shallowness that Hirst </span><span style="font-size:100%;">cites</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >earlier- we stride through life embellishing ourselves </span><span style="font-size:100%;">only to reach our doom.</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > Indeed, as one observes the skull and its unsettling smile, the diamonds shine in all their glory; they deepen into the crevices of the skull’s sockets as if </span><span style="font-size:100%;">in two</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > eternal chambers, mocking </span><span style="font-size:100%;">our death, for</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > we will perish, those polished teeth will eventually rot, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">and the </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >diamonds will live </span><span style="font-size:100%;">forever.</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >
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<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >However, it is important to note that skulls have become an icon in the fashion world and that diamonds are prominent symbols of conspicuous consumerism. Although Hirst claims that he was inspired by Aztec skulls, he evidently borrowed two popular </span><span style="font-size:100%;">items</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >from mass culture that in turn make the criticism detailed above uphold little effect upon the viewers. Considering that the skull image has </span><span style="font-size:100%;">been obsessively used in contemporary fashion, we have accordingly become indifferent to its inherent pathos.<i style="">
<br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="">
<br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style="">For the Love of God</i> manipulates the skull with diamonds like a fashion item,</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >so that it appears more as a </span><span style="font-size:100%;">commodity</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >and less as an actual human remnant. Ironically, for someone so invested in the theme of death, Hirst employs the one symbol that no longer strikes his audiences with the idea of death. In some of Hirst’s other works he </span><span style="font-size:100%;">conveys the subject of death</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > more </span><span style="font-size:100%;">effectively</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" >. In the past he has explained,<span style=""> </span>“you have to find that universal trigger. Everyone’s scared of glass, everyone’s scared of sharks. Everyone loves butterflies.”<a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1393061524175133445&postID=4207958762158741216&from=pencil#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[1]</span></span></span></span></a> If the skull is to function as a “universal trigger,” it triggers the face of consumerism. </span><span style="font-size:100%;">But maybe that was his intention, after all.</span><span style=";font-size:100%;" > </span></p> <div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span> <hr style="height: 3px;font-size:78%;" width="33%" align="left"> <div style="" id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1393061524175133445&postID=4207958762158741216&from=pencil#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[1]</span></span></span></span></a> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Hirst, Damien. <i style="">I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now</i></span></p> </div> </div>
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<br />Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-75228242127028062652011-08-27T15:06:00.000-07:002011-08-27T15:08:01.108-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_Nwx8474yPxfkvW4uItcEnqh2MEM26qSjFtNn8lmecySFUWzndFxDrtLNErQzKVDoNLxGa5d35O-dh66caybmkvD7Of7oeZfoIX2QD6GnBdGFT48fzB3JIQWFlE50gaOeV7rG4seTdr5/s1600/IMG_1331.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt_Nwx8474yPxfkvW4uItcEnqh2MEM26qSjFtNn8lmecySFUWzndFxDrtLNErQzKVDoNLxGa5d35O-dh66caybmkvD7Of7oeZfoIX2QD6GnBdGFT48fzB3JIQWFlE50gaOeV7rG4seTdr5/s320/IMG_1331.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645660917867981090" border="0" /></a>
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<br />Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-24476973936374081492011-08-23T17:58:00.000-07:002011-08-25T05:48:17.382-07:00watercolors<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjufFdJMblIiV1qVKATDlUFiBl6Ba4XwcTWR0ViykaQiFPFEY5UOXCZWkT5bhMWHqXrIB94E4-yBwXubNq6LyE8Rn6fWtGoF963oB7bLGkyPixs-DDjBJlFAowHi1wAP6VuCRqx__b9IRxB/s1600/IMG_1332.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 217px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjufFdJMblIiV1qVKATDlUFiBl6Ba4XwcTWR0ViykaQiFPFEY5UOXCZWkT5bhMWHqXrIB94E4-yBwXubNq6LyE8Rn6fWtGoF963oB7bLGkyPixs-DDjBJlFAowHi1wAP6VuCRqx__b9IRxB/s320/IMG_1332.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5644220856651246722" border="0" /></a>
<br />I've been doing watercolors based on photographs that I've taken of friends and of myself. This is one I did while still living in Paris.
<br />Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-43274789111433710872011-08-21T19:28:00.000-07:002011-08-21T19:34:36.440-07:00In August<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ25mRunP45DC3glryGsVCfxkqHuJMwomyZZIi6YSbDIpNHpNcBP-G6eyNBrK-r3u9O3EQK9aIOljcKJ6EI2_mXkO6I-OGf7kr8o0Ll6rNCLC5FMEXUESTeyPrQkWWNL9te9ca9UPDVirp/s1600/IMG_1328.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ25mRunP45DC3glryGsVCfxkqHuJMwomyZZIi6YSbDIpNHpNcBP-G6eyNBrK-r3u9O3EQK9aIOljcKJ6EI2_mXkO6I-OGf7kr8o0Ll6rNCLC5FMEXUESTeyPrQkWWNL9te9ca9UPDVirp/s320/IMG_1328.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643502833092551698" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Times"; }@font-face { font-family: "MS 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">It's the not-seeing through hot eyes.
<br />It's an August large cloud that dries bitter-white,
<br />Heavily, in the cheeks.
<br />
<br />If I look only to the sky
<br />I can clear my sight along with it.
<br />
<br />My dark woozy shadow scuttles beneath the skin</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">And splits, thick, from my sugary throat
<br />(The warmth, the silk, and ice-cream) </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">And lays still, holding onto swollen ankles. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Off I say, off. I enjoy being unforgiving</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Because I’m hungry for something </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Other.
<br />
<br />I'm all slippery skin, ballooning eyes,
<br />Murmuring mmmm yellow.
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<br />I turn to blank to white. A skeleton </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Presses up against me, bony and hard, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Questioning me for what I have done. <span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">It’s the spatter of rain, the old sick </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">Man outside. It’s the heat </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times;">That snakes into me and murmurs </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-29609479707316115602011-08-20T08:15:00.000-07:002011-08-20T08:26:08.306-07:00The British Word concluded : Banksy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguomuPFo4hoRW68SU7bv4butVMgj7OyyYLYpWEZ24QDOKM6ULRxQrwCxzy3B0-sB4gjKY1mksIcjQ9IGt1JwXb9HbzBL07vpv3qGJqaI1sZ_S3LN1aSmQdR1CKqKl-7_6AxtqLjRQXYgWr/s1600/ShoppingCart.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 239px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguomuPFo4hoRW68SU7bv4butVMgj7OyyYLYpWEZ24QDOKM6ULRxQrwCxzy3B0-sB4gjKY1mksIcjQ9IGt1JwXb9HbzBL07vpv3qGJqaI1sZ_S3LN1aSmQdR1CKqKl-7_6AxtqLjRQXYgWr/s320/ShoppingCart.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642959301092494722" border="0" /></a> British Museum, London
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOq5CaXxd_Chbtz-3DSmi4tkZF_5iKskgZ79pH6eOHwBhCWp6mXMF4OEJOGsJ3dg-d1UyoslPGRrgvciQiw0_b8-OPYs7DuZ2W9Mo8po1E7HUZvFDqu-vGBJCKCvNmI-mXbpbpYU3yyN6I/s1600/iftl.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 318px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOq5CaXxd_Chbtz-3DSmi4tkZF_5iKskgZ79pH6eOHwBhCWp6mXMF4OEJOGsJ3dg-d1UyoslPGRrgvciQiw0_b8-OPYs7DuZ2W9Mo8po1E7HUZvFDqu-vGBJCKCvNmI-mXbpbpYU3yyN6I/s320/iftl.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642959236633473698" border="0" /></a>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpdm2V9iF7DS74_JJCfoNr6UoiwcAP9KnwjsPhmKl3oq_-5HsIRUCNFmu4JDqXoVjWkrbyH-gpzxo2is4HUP72VlmKt_56a26mPbNAwc3fnYbMNXJFDuSUCzDbR8tz5TY8Vir1IvNAhaBa/s1600/41tyHh9VTbL._SL500_AA300_.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpdm2V9iF7DS74_JJCfoNr6UoiwcAP9KnwjsPhmKl3oq_-5HsIRUCNFmu4JDqXoVjWkrbyH-gpzxo2is4HUP72VlmKt_56a26mPbNAwc3fnYbMNXJFDuSUCzDbR8tz5TY8Vir1IvNAhaBa/s320/41tyHh9VTbL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642959175417882530" border="0" /></a> Tate Gallery, London
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiosFBbo23oJgnFX6H_I3h54D1WmXGmgerBpSC2yg1Nq4W_UdiGDHBEKGia-9xlCkJmRE226SHTDVSEX4kaoq28qBbAoNnVrgtJdpYjHZghb6AsBVq-rYyJ87zmc0Fes3W74Ndo_kFFANYf/s1600/04burger%252Bking.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 233px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiosFBbo23oJgnFX6H_I3h54D1WmXGmgerBpSC2yg1Nq4W_UdiGDHBEKGia-9xlCkJmRE226SHTDVSEX4kaoq28qBbAoNnVrgtJdpYjHZghb6AsBVq-rYyJ87zmc0Fes3W74Ndo_kFFANYf/s320/04burger%252Bking.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642959127572797346" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Of all the artists discussed, the graffiti artist Banksy is the least explicitly personal in his work. His language is not confessional. However, by publicly branding his own “name,” Banksy makes his own identity a monument. Thus there exists that tension seen in the previous artists’ work where the artist claims to be more anonymous and detached from his/her words than s/he actually is. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">However different, Banksy’s language is as violently blunt, accusatory and tortured as the other artists in its outcries against social oppression and corruption. In one piece he depicts a man being brutally attacked by police officers. Behind them one reads: “I fought the law and I w…” – the words drip like blood and are cut off right where it would spell ‘won,’ an aesthetic that heightens the suppression, the fight. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Banksy likewise often attacks publicity companies. One of his pieces consists of a starved, poor child surrounded by flies wearing a Burger King paper hat. As Wright puts it, “many of Banksy’s pieces…thumb their noses at authority and urge us not to swallow the usual lines fed us by politicians and big business” (51). Banksy’s work explicitly denounces public authorities that pierce the landscape with their messages, that manipulate our visual associations. Thus, he reveals a consciousness of our semiotic reading as he implies his belief that those “who control sign systems control the construction of reality” (Chandler). <span style="color:blue;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">With Banksy, we see again the importance of the aesthetics of the word, of its role as a visual element. His words often resemble that of billboards, public signs, subvertisers and political activists. Thus he draws on public signage, “taking something [that is] accessible to all” (Wright, 52). However, his images supply the viewer with contrary content, as with the Burger King image. Indeed, Banksy has compiled a witty semiotic body of work, where he lends a new “signified” to each “signifier.”<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">A lot of Banksy’s critique is done in a tongue-in-cheek and ironic language. An ideal example of this is his work targeted towards the pretensions of the art gallery and museum. In the past he has stenciled “Mind the Crap” on the entrance steps of the Tate Modern. He has likewise once put up on the walls of the British museum “a hoax cave painting of a stone age man” with an explication in the style of a museum label (Guardian). He critiques the exhibition culture when he ends his placard with: “The majority [of this art] is destroyed by zealous municipal officials who fail to recognise the artistic merit and historical value of daubing on walls.” Characteristically British in its satirical language, this piece, like Perry’s, calls into question the limits defined by the art establishment. Banky’s work thus exemplifies the British artistic desire to communicate in plain, direct language that breaks the boundaries defined by social authorities.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Banksy, Grayson Perry, R.B. Kitaj, Tracey Emin and David Hockney thereby all resemble Hogarth in their choice to deliver their personal views through words, which are in turn used to interpret or twist images. Both are in dialogue with one another, the words generally providing the content and the images providing the context. However, importantly, without the context (the images), the words would be largely drained of their meaning. Thus these artists’ work relies on a semiotic reading.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Beginning with Hogarth, there has been a trend in subject matter in British art– authority and social suppression, the self and society. Such subject matter not only endures, but is also intensified in artists’ work today. Over time, as British artists have gained more liberty in their expression, their language has become increasingly forthright and cheeky. </p> Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-5355330185138672452011-08-19T12:18:00.000-07:002011-08-19T12:35:08.441-07:00The British Word continued : Grayson Perry<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAimsC9L4WcuPozDiVUwEOlQxVAqtLUr3jXKLUR77pAEC-y6yi2QGZ1Yjyo74MhwcRqjbLoHe51I75xN0flRkQhlPTaUJbVupDevyaTrmkisRnquLlqg4CeEU50UrUc_P1MWtuqifIjmS8/s1600/260731b.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 244px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAimsC9L4WcuPozDiVUwEOlQxVAqtLUr3jXKLUR77pAEC-y6yi2QGZ1Yjyo74MhwcRqjbLoHe51I75xN0flRkQhlPTaUJbVupDevyaTrmkisRnquLlqg4CeEU50UrUc_P1MWtuqifIjmS8/s320/260731b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642651883001561058" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""> The Names of Flowers </i>(1994)</p>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJj8ZgdvQJl1Dn4Yjb3Oz15C3LhrZA_w6Ohg8QQZQG3lW_qg_HAl1sYKjbN6Xc6luNt0Pylif8MSqm9scJ1Y9AioU7QLkns2OB4M3z6MlNKRv25Fu1QXE5ZbCauMf4kc_e2oXck3bUsXQT/s1600/grayson-perry-saint-satin.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJj8ZgdvQJl1Dn4Yjb3Oz15C3LhrZA_w6Ohg8QQZQG3lW_qg_HAl1sYKjbN6Xc6luNt0Pylif8MSqm9scJ1Y9AioU7QLkns2OB4M3z6MlNKRv25Fu1QXE5ZbCauMf4kc_e2oXck3bUsXQT/s320/grayson-perry-saint-satin.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642651520916370690" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Saint, Satin, Satan </span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >(1999)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU0jZ96fKxLdPE4r8U4OtkI4-t0MrYY9bxU6YFt4dv0aCkeDoYCAojwsiKeAyL-gQo7iqfKCVAXu3R30xvpi38zt9141FV66xK8oa7vAG8Ywp0nm-D3ObADGvMvQEQ1b19Z2MySypzGYzh/s1600/260743b.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 244px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU0jZ96fKxLdPE4r8U4OtkI4-t0MrYY9bxU6YFt4dv0aCkeDoYCAojwsiKeAyL-gQo7iqfKCVAXu3R30xvpi38zt9141FV66xK8oa7vAG8Ywp0nm-D3ObADGvMvQEQ1b19Z2MySypzGYzh/s320/260743b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642650986797327698" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <span style="font-style: italic;">Childhood Trauma Manifesting Itself in Later Life </span>(1992)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2pz-L5w5-G1QODD-8_92UakGDB3V2SmB6sgACZKiJI6XQf4p2uq_3aBaNk6ZNhhlRPN4C1hh_3nmFoOlDuFcsqNU5Mt4T6D-ZWHemfNh1tmDcDM2lJw7RW0fUC9FJ8m8YiPQnXZnBYJsM/s1600/GP.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 278px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2pz-L5w5-G1QODD-8_92UakGDB3V2SmB6sgACZKiJI6XQf4p2uq_3aBaNk6ZNhhlRPN4C1hh_3nmFoOlDuFcsqNU5Mt4T6D-ZWHemfNh1tmDcDM2lJw7RW0fUC9FJ8m8YiPQnXZnBYJsM/s320/GP.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642650562247716626" border="0" /></a> <style>p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""> Mad Kid’s Bedroom Wall </i>(1996)</p>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjae3xx_aB0uXmg4U1i8EqtsfLkR_htXUplNxIQMw6V9TrivNDFyRWFhOHguU4fLG1Z_8QEtohY6Uj3f5R3eb6-THDNGcKCiplMx34Wd3jIc62OcJ7T9-NDkJ6jypT52O0Aa0obpV02MuPf/s1600/perry_2.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 246px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjae3xx_aB0uXmg4U1i8EqtsfLkR_htXUplNxIQMw6V9TrivNDFyRWFhOHguU4fLG1Z_8QEtohY6Uj3f5R3eb6-THDNGcKCiplMx34Wd3jIc62OcJ7T9-NDkJ6jypT52O0Aa0obpV02MuPf/s320/perry_2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642650177647360114" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >We’ve Found the Body of Your Child</span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" > (2000)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYx1XFetSb2GUwGZRqlwCz_BZAtLzEORXu1YO-BHit-wL-G8dIxBTXA9tukT7HEAw0g29Djnyh72oO9wPE8c83HCXj4YI5fK_ADqHk9tdKUz6zmVbf1PTsdPTR0AGj07nFDoJoFXdFqc2/s1600/grayson-perry-drivenman.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYx1XFetSb2GUwGZRqlwCz_BZAtLzEORXu1YO-BHit-wL-G8dIxBTXA9tukT7HEAw0g29Djnyh72oO9wPE8c83HCXj4YI5fK_ADqHk9tdKUz6zmVbf1PTsdPTR0AGj07nFDoJoFXdFqc2/s320/grayson-perry-drivenman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642649894821088242" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Driven Man</span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" > (2000</span>)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN1G8_TEyvzEE1OoEN_LM7P6OdgcNWXoMdVmwNt2RNsSNLqAllCJb5As4lEJ6Hbll87qLgj7H5tYPadLcZ2k53UNYXDS6SGEQkw_juCfotUCCp4uSVAcHLVmUQlNfsJQPDe1GOTKHHxl43/s1600/picture.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN1G8_TEyvzEE1OoEN_LM7P6OdgcNWXoMdVmwNt2RNsSNLqAllCJb5As4lEJ6Hbll87qLgj7H5tYPadLcZ2k53UNYXDS6SGEQkw_juCfotUCCp4uSVAcHLVmUQlNfsJQPDe1GOTKHHxl43/s320/picture.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642649033391193202" border="0" /></a>
<br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Sunset through Net Curtains </span></i>
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<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Like Kitaj, Grayson Perry belongs to that trend of English picturing that tells stories, that contains a narrative weave. He uses the word as a way to reveal social and personal truths; the word brutally strips down reality, revealing a world of violent and insecure human beings. In another common trend, Grayson Perry’s narratives involve a slow and changing reading. Their often-bright colors and gleaming glaze have the power to deceive. <i style="">Sunset through Net Curtains</i> has the very palette of a lovely sunset in all its rosy and yellow shades. One is drawn to the swelling flowers and the organic forms. However, as one looks closer, one begins to decode a plethora of disturbing references: the book that an old man reads is entitled ‘<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">slave owner</span>’; the words that a man types on the computer include ‘<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">torture me to death.</span>’ Though Perry’s figures can sometimes speak for themselves simply in their tortured demeanor, at other times, words are transformative in their labels.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style=""></span>Perry’s work is likewise deceiving in its choice of form; like Emin’s quilts, there is an explicit irony in his choice of pottery for disturbing subject matter. Pottery is generally viewed as something modest, delicate and “innocent” (Wilson, 75). Perry’s work partially arises from a desire to challenge the art establishment’s influence in such associations, and its essential “control” of artistic “sign systems” (Chandler).<span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189);"> </span>As Boot explains, “a strict distinction is drawn in England between ceramics – as one of the crafts – and the fine arts. The two fields are treated… very differently there, and the distinction is deeply rooted in English art education and the world of the galleries and museums” (71). Perry perceives such distinctions as pretentious, and mocks them. He manifests these views when he ironically writes on his pot, <i style="">Peasant Ware</i> (1990): ‘Seek not great wisdom for this is but simple peasant ware, there is no great art here.’ He likewise amusingly and satirically places “stamps on his pots in accordance with the artistic rules [that look] like the stamp of some old porcelain factory” but that really spell out ‘wanker.’” (Boot, 72). Indeed, Perry approaches the art establishment as another “accepted [hierarchy] [that he must call] into question” (Wilson, 85, 86). </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">This distinctly British, ironic, tongue-in-cheek character extends itself when Perry appropriates comical devices and pop culture imagery to make violent, accusatory commentary. He encourages a semiotic reading, for the viewer is forced to engender new associations among rather disparate elements. <i style="">Driven Man </i>(2000), as several other pots, gives voice to the female, showing how her image is put on display and is abused of. The woman appears to be trapped within the popular imagery (such as the large billboards of women) and the men and their cars that surround them. Thus what at first may appear as playful, colorful imagery of pop culture, cars and attractive lettering of magazines and newspapers is entirely transformed. The same clash in aesthetics is seen in <i style="">We’ve Found the Body of Your Child</i> (2000), which is scattered with bubbles of words – such as ‘you fucking little shit’ and ‘all men are bastards’ – which resemble comic book speech bubbles done in child-like handwriting. Here, the infantile aesthetics of the lettering adds another layer of meaning as it suggests a corruption of innocence. Interestingly, “his manner of drawing…has been described by Perry as that of an adolescent sixth former: both direct and illustrational” (Wilson, 85). We see again that old British desire to communicate “directly,” which is in turn accomplished through a bold outpour of words, illustrations and a carefully meditated style.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Importantly, Perry, as evidenced, draws on the signage of popular culture and familiar contexts, like other artists have, as subjects for his critique. His pots have a social conscience as they address male dominance, war, class distinctions, murder cases and the corruption in social values. Boot rightly articulates, “Perry holds up a mirror to his contemporaries as Hogarth had done to those of his time” (74). </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Much of Perry’s work, however, employs the personal and confessional language characteristic of British art today. <i style="">Mad Kid’s Bedroom Wall </i>(1996), for example, has phrases written in the first person, which appear to refer to Perry’s own life: “I was a mad kid and now I ain’t. I got out ’coz I could paint.” Relevantly, however, much of his work previously discussed, which addressed wider social concerns, are clearly affected by Perry’s personal topics of childhood trauma and transvestitism. Thus, in a way, Perry, as Emin, Kitaj and Hockney, transforms personal experience into a greater monument, as something applied to society at large. </p> Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-75544419526633206662011-08-16T14:54:00.000-07:002011-08-16T15:03:14.172-07:00The British Word continued : R.B. Kitaj<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiucMyu1q5Apk-9jJ6nh91I8reK_dJtQThFQ0gSOzHxuM_mcdF1NL0ztQisPUKTJIYy5h4XJw8ifTOA_BZdyEVRSL4oVAaj1BlWsyPbtfSvaYaCuRs4Mn2FHYLmdlkYskJzGtVJoZTnTnI/s1600/T06743_9.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 319px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiucMyu1q5Apk-9jJ6nh91I8reK_dJtQThFQ0gSOzHxuM_mcdF1NL0ztQisPUKTJIYy5h4XJw8ifTOA_BZdyEVRSL4oVAaj1BlWsyPbtfSvaYaCuRs4Mn2FHYLmdlkYskJzGtVJoZTnTnI/s320/T06743_9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641577321739937474" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" >The Wedding</span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" > (1989-93)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsYYqjQmRna99KK_Y1tdx9TH51wOpbzixJ1xiDNqG2caURjmxrhyphenhyphen4lEGyBormHvLRnrw71DP1KG0VuhziZu6Nu6N3OZtP7JoZX-xOca4i-fr5naStM57BkwKQr59428jrSNKW0w75trbMA/s1600/kitaj.if-not-not.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 317px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsYYqjQmRna99KK_Y1tdx9TH51wOpbzixJ1xiDNqG2caURjmxrhyphenhyphen4lEGyBormHvLRnrw71DP1KG0VuhziZu6Nu6N3OZtP7JoZX-xOca4i-fr5naStM57BkwKQr59428jrSNKW0w75trbMA/s320/kitaj.if-not-not.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641576894415588306" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >If Not, Not</span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" > (1975-76)
<br /></span> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">R.B. Kitaj’s work similarly exposes the artist as we look at the world through his tortured lens. Like Emin’s quilts and prints, it is an exposure done “in favour of vividness of feeling” (Morphet, 31). Kitaj is different from the other contemporary British artists discussed in that he does not always literally incorporate words into the visual compositions of his artwork. However, words, as with Turner, have such an influential effect on the way that he constructs his images that one cannot fail to acknowledge him in the British tradition of the word.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Kitaj paints vivid narratives through the tense, elaborate atmospheres that he creates. Indeed, his images not only show, but also <i style="">tell</i> a scene. Many a time Kitaj has accompanying texts to his work. His texts often function as narratives to the paintings, and are written in the style of a short story. He incorporated the word out of a “concern for clarity” and a “particularity about the content of a given work” (Morphet, 16). Indeed, Kitaj, as other artists, valued the word for its directness in articulating both his personal feelings and his commentary on social oppression. Such commentaries largely focus on the Holocaust, “references to texts written by victims of persecution” and sexual violence (Morphet, 13). Thus one sees the common pairing of the personal with the universal, which in turn often conflate. As Morphet articulates, he “respond[s] to the crisis of our century by means of works combining a sense of the tragic with unusual exposure of the self” (27). Indeed, Kitaj inevitably revealed his own torment in the often agitated forms and trembling paint that he used to depict his grim characters.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">His images are in themselves wordy. Once again, they are in dialogue with Turner’s in that they are largely about their “aura” (Ashbery, quoted by Morphet, 28). This is greatly accomplished through the excess or absence of movement. For example, in <i style="">Sighs from Hell</i> (1979), one captures the tense, dreadful atmosphere in the women’s static gazes that appear to freeze the space they inhabit. This affinity for narrative picturing is in part due to an “obsession with the book,” out of which Kitaj pulls both imagery and text for his work (Morphet, 13). His painting <i style="">If Not, Not</i>, for instance, was done as an illustration to T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland.’ Once again, we see that British eagerness to lend a vision to a poem. In 2007 a book was compiled using this image to accompany the poem. “Like the poem, the painting can be taken apart” (Hoyem). And so, just as the poem is divided from page to page, the painting is isolated into several parts, only to be entirely “reproduced at the end of the poem” (Hoyem). Indeed, Kitaj’s painting is as layered in narrative and image as the poem itself, placing importance on the reading of the work. He treated images as he treated his words; he expected the viewer to decode the images as signs, to find a message in their aesthetics.
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<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>Kitaj encouraged what can be interpreted as a semiotic reading of his work, which he in turn facilitated with the use of plain language – both visually and literally. His subject matter is accessible: portraits, nudes, landscapes, urban streets, sports and domestic scenes. However, like a semiotician, he often manipulated such subjects: “ he include[d] the creation of new contexts for motifs originally of specific origin, [he adapted] pre-existing images by often disturbing distortion and [he invented] faces and figures” (Morphet, 10). In <i style="">The Wedding</i>, for instance, one is drawn to the grotesque, ghostly and trembling faces of the people surrounding the much smaller, hidden bride. Absorbed in a chaos of grim color and movement, celebration does not come to mind.
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<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">His texts take on a similar atmosphere. Morphet describes them as “unusual among serious art-related writing in the degree to which they are pervaded by the idioms of the speech of street, bar, workshop and sport stadium, as well as by those of mid-century film” (18-19). Kitaj’s use of language, as with the other artists, breaks from the more formal readings found in art criticism and the museum; indeed, he uses the word for plain communication. </p> Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-21078385708110566272011-08-15T15:44:00.000-07:002011-08-15T15:54:51.578-07:00The British Word continued...Tracey Emin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh9G2asMPvt_wp6-yJ77vsO95C9ZTrMHHXxa2kLT2IEFjje0q7dQAWf6DSN5kswzzBg3EB_ndFIP1lh3CnOHa2RbuPU-pqAq1xqIEJo79e_nwpzlgychyphenhyphenHEsZfnNhDiLPD5TtW1UsTltF7/s1600/P11565_9.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 228px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh9G2asMPvt_wp6-yJ77vsO95C9ZTrMHHXxa2kLT2IEFjje0q7dQAWf6DSN5kswzzBg3EB_ndFIP1lh3CnOHa2RbuPU-pqAq1xqIEJo79e_nwpzlgychyphenhyphenHEsZfnNhDiLPD5TtW1UsTltF7/s320/P11565_9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641219474747315282" border="0" /></a> Terrebly wrong, 1997 (monoprint)
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvcBux7GPoxemUsrkH8OMCr9S2VoPaBtw0LiJ7FPb0cimm_Y7aaW_g7tiXdbpL6FlnZKAzPSCZX5IPoous-4K4y32Yx7NhsBHdUZl6se3wll4vzLtuW0zz7sA5nP5LORKvlL0aFbN5FAg/s1600/3098b.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 257px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvcBux7GPoxemUsrkH8OMCr9S2VoPaBtw0LiJ7FPb0cimm_Y7aaW_g7tiXdbpL6FlnZKAzPSCZX5IPoous-4K4y32Yx7NhsBHdUZl6se3wll4vzLtuW0zz7sA5nP5LORKvlL0aFbN5FAg/s320/3098b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641219167504976994" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""> Terminal 1</i> (2000)</p>
<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirYzb9SFJ6TnCJBS4o_KeOvqDrJUw1COzjRo_S4MhOXLFiIvIKzQXKeEIahJCqaqB9frgjgh02Oo7nCS2dKduHziztTGWrNHWoPc89_abRd-p_nzrRvvt0LwvNRp_-qz4pFV5yWqb8Qr05/s1600/emin_donotexpect.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirYzb9SFJ6TnCJBS4o_KeOvqDrJUw1COzjRo_S4MhOXLFiIvIKzQXKeEIahJCqaqB9frgjgh02Oo7nCS2dKduHziztTGWrNHWoPc89_abRd-p_nzrRvvt0LwvNRp_-qz4pFV5yWqb8Qr05/s320/emin_donotexpect.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641218821791774114" border="0" /></a> <style>p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><i style=""> I do not expect to be a mother</i> (2002)</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Tracey Emin, to a similar effect, ironically employs a medium – the quilt – that appears to contradict its content – feminist and fierce remarks. In <i style="">I do not expect to be a mother</i>, confessional phrases in shouting capitals such as ‘<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">i do not expect to be a mother but i expect to die alone</span>’ and ‘<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">it doesn’t have to be like this</span>’ pierce the quilt. The painstaking process of sewing conveys the purposefulness of thought put into the messages. Yet the angry and pessimistic undertones belie the gentle and domestic connotations of sewing. Indeed, in Emin’s quilts, the words are the center of attention; they are valued for their directness, for their ability to forcefully deliver messages. Importantly though, it is the pairing of the words with the quilt image – the semiotic link of content to context – that creates the feminist and provocative tone of her works.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">As with Hockney and other artists, Emin’s language is deeply personal, as she frequently draws on her own sexual experiences. However, in keep with another British trend, she includes a universal, socially critical aspect to her work: the commentary on male dominance and spectatorship. Her work gives a powerful voice to the female. Her use of the quilt alludes to the Suffragettes, who used “appliquéd texts and banners…in women’s…protests” (Betterton, 38). Thus even though Emin inscribes personal remarks, she appears to be making a larger gesture for her gender when she uses a form that is symbolically significant of both female subservience and defiance. This is made especially obvious in her piece, <i style="">Terminal 1</i>, which begins with several personal references to a relationship but ends on the firm note: ‘<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">i am international woman</span>.’</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Emin’s monoprints likewise gain their meaning from the combination of aesthetics, medium and language. In a contemporary tradition, a close reading of the words’ aesthetics heightens the words’ literal message. In the monoprints, unlike the quilts, the words and images have a sketch-like, nearly illegible quality. The spectator struggles to make out the inversed lettering and crossed out words, and in so doing inevitably feels the frustration and difficulty in communication. As in sewing, the trace on the monoprint is difficult to remove and thus requires a conscious construction of words. However, Emin exposes her mistakes to a greater extent in the monoprints, leaving the spectator to feel “the apparent immediacy” in her words (Townsend, 82). Indeed, she aims for “people to see what was there before”; thus not only is there a sense of self-exposure, but there is also that British desire to be honest, and the more recent desire to be blunt with the viewer (Emin quoted by Wainwright, 202). </p> Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-20766627127814881222011-08-13T20:42:00.000-07:002011-08-14T12:43:36.164-07:00The British Word continued : David Hockney<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI8gcwjIKB5zS_tFnPTAY89zSdHaTZGT6Zf3o4_7xGvl8TSxiMKbSRq7yoRZCzNUZSeiD8bY-cnMhIevuxku56ZJktRDn4OAAoPUA3B5FSJUG_spq4r94jCzwUctKtVnSQI5AbPrKPuix4/s1600/P61_63_M.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI8gcwjIKB5zS_tFnPTAY89zSdHaTZGT6Zf3o4_7xGvl8TSxiMKbSRq7yoRZCzNUZSeiD8bY-cnMhIevuxku56ZJktRDn4OAAoPUA3B5FSJUG_spq4r94jCzwUctKtVnSQI5AbPrKPuix4/s320/P61_63_M.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5640798848539887858" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" >The gospel singing (good people) Madison Square garden </span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" >(1961-3)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqGGroEf-3vIAvzzPYs8yqosoNt1T2WsOINr0_qva6XtbNO4EQwUOXIpBtVZCWyucN4wStaMqlQkjSrHKxuMkawaNPuJHj914-FhkMq7BRQIozn43iPULw47tc_RCP55s_k-HBRdqJbxFQ/s1600/P61_63_L-1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 249px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqGGroEf-3vIAvzzPYs8yqosoNt1T2WsOINr0_qva6XtbNO4EQwUOXIpBtVZCWyucN4wStaMqlQkjSrHKxuMkawaNPuJHj914-FhkMq7BRQIozn43iPULw47tc_RCP55s_k-HBRdqJbxFQ/s320/P61_63_L-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5640798789570432434" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" >Meeting the good people (Washington)</span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" > (1961-63)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMaspSDXom69DoqeZTYZX1yDVMR5BCffIRksyC0MY-Dsmq03J7LN0L1lupFB3tPffQn1SgneD7CIIKWkpxLoRELcjaDeQNL14VGu3wusENzlvhaXdxTppUwIMYkH70yxppGcCHcLKmtjC/s1600/P61_62_P-1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMaspSDXom69DoqeZTYZX1yDVMR5BCffIRksyC0MY-Dsmq03J7LN0L1lupFB3tPffQn1SgneD7CIIKWkpxLoRELcjaDeQNL14VGu3wusENzlvhaXdxTppUwIMYkH70yxppGcCHcLKmtjC/s320/P61_62_P-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5640798719610543138" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" >The drinking scene</span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;color:black;" > (1961-3)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsoaUBJhQOl0Tqwej3JhLDzLpWTEYPG-KGYOVqwZpvpEd9vaaVA8AlbVPl5l7M1jUtxUMROupXRgNqv5HBeUDSgXx2oQ-_zEKiy_zEgDdTKMe9i2Qtr7bJZ0ush82XVcLktWjV3I2-H3rE/s1600/Arte_Publicidad4_Hockney.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsoaUBJhQOl0Tqwej3JhLDzLpWTEYPG-KGYOVqwZpvpEd9vaaVA8AlbVPl5l7M1jUtxUMROupXRgNqv5HBeUDSgXx2oQ-_zEKiy_zEgDdTKMe9i2Qtr7bJZ0ush82XVcLktWjV3I2-H3rE/s320/Arte_Publicidad4_Hockney.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5640798642428346530" border="0" /></a> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <i style=""><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Tea Painting in an Illusionistic Style</span></i><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" > (1961)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6g6NiMPhEyVikU4z3B6MYtuzC5v5_EJcolVBTaE9Jov4v4jASgA3LwVnwC9COR9_fAmcZfG-_-g_VIGZ1Q-ABGjW0v8a2DI3P5UiF-XT4amSetQ3w42udYaIXTTUoxGWcHBlGj02uiN57/s1600/we_two_boys_61.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 255px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6g6NiMPhEyVikU4z3B6MYtuzC5v5_EJcolVBTaE9Jov4v4jASgA3LwVnwC9COR9_fAmcZfG-_-g_VIGZ1Q-ABGjW0v8a2DI3P5UiF-XT4amSetQ3w42udYaIXTTUoxGWcHBlGj02uiN57/s320/we_two_boys_61.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5640792410422532146" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >We Two Boys Together Clinging </span><span style="font-size:85%;">(1961)</span>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPFeQiDU-nmHrJSoiTGmI4ftNJkpU0yzzdlyNQmv3M0TtP1QePZO9fYn_yXwX5uTTQ8k4JCduowC3Zqq6Fcycc82_IpXY0c1uzQqkl4DJs8cJW9X_mYrlrw8AUEmblFouWTZFbfW1yLJCR/s1600/doll_boy_60_61.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 229px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPFeQiDU-nmHrJSoiTGmI4ftNJkpU0yzzdlyNQmv3M0TtP1QePZO9fYn_yXwX5uTTQ8k4JCduowC3Zqq6Fcycc82_IpXY0c1uzQqkl4DJs8cJW9X_mYrlrw8AUEmblFouWTZFbfW1yLJCR/s320/doll_boy_60_61.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5640791882382815730" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >Doll Boy </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:85%;">(1961)</span>
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<br />David Hockney’s work from the early sixties combines accessible, informal and sketchy graffiti marks with highly personal, layered and confessional content. The paintings visually mimic lavatorial graffiti– a space cluttered in energetic, messy imagery and words that require close reading. This graffiti aesthetic in turn enhances Hockney’s use of confessional language. In a semiotic lens, the words (or the “signifiers”) are given a greater meaning (“the signified”) once related to their context (the graffiti).
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<br />The language in these works often has the bluntness and crudeness characteristic of contemporary British art. As in the past, the words address social oppression, specifically as experienced by homosexuals. In Hockney’s piece <i style="">Doll Boy</i>, the words ‘doll boy’ appear to horizontally run into a male figure’s frail, tilted neck that precariously balances on his body, and may likely be decapitated by these derogatory words. Here, word and image importantly work to reinforce one another.
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<br />What makes these paintings different from actual graffiti, however, is that they have a uniform quality, an underlying narrative in their repeating themes of love, sexuality and oppression. One senses a singular personality in these works, which seemingly contradicts the fact that they mimic a public and anonymous form (graffiti). Thus, in a way, Hockney resembles the Romantics and other artists to be discussed in that he uses language in a self-expressive and introspective manner while, on some level, presenting the language as self-detached. Interestingly, Hockney often borrows segments from Wordsworth’s poems or poem titles, such as <i style="">We Two Boys Together Clinging</i>. The phrase crawls in between two embracing figures, giving verbal expression to their bond. Here, Hockney shows that British artistic desire to give vision to a poet’s words.<span style="color:red;"></span>
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<br />Though Hockney’s work has a critical and a torturous self-reflective quality, it nonetheless maintains the ironic, satirical humor characteristic of British art. <i style="">Tea Painting in an Illusionistic Style</i> uses the image of a ‘Typhoo Tea’ carton to ironically box up a figure seated on a toilet seat. Hockney, as past artists, in drawing from popular culture, makes his critique more accessible for and engages in dialogue with the public. He likewise maintains the roughness and sketchiness seen in his other works, furthering the distortion of a traditionally bright Pop art image. As Clothier puts it, there is here “a blend of high melodrama and absurdist humor” (20). <span style="color:blue;"></span><span style="">
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<br /></span>Hockney’s version of <i style="">A Rake’s Progress</i> uses Hogarth’s <i style="">Rake</i> series as a model, blending word and image in a similar satirical fashion to make social criticisms. However, while Hogarth’s <i style="">A Rake’s Progress</i> is clearly not a “progress,” the same cannot be assumed of Hockney’s. As Heffernan puts it, “Hockney’s picture playfully asks if homosexuality… means the end of England” (Cultivating Picturacy, 239). Hockney’s own answer to this question is an ironic ‘no.’ The rake is placed within situations that could be considered immoral or irresponsible, such as indulging in drinking, partying, frequenting gay venues and overspending. The series is thus about “the individual’s defining and redefining this self <i style="">in time</i>” (Joachim, 39). As Hogarth, Hockney incorporates the signage of the times in his depictions of public hangouts such as pubs and familiar references to music (gospel), public monuments (the capital) and campaign imagery.
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<br />At the end of the series, “unlike Hogarth’s rake, who is nearly prostrate in the final plate, Hockney’s rake ends up standing at attention” (Heffernan, 252). Thus Hockney ironically uses Hogarth’s plates to serve a contrary purpose – to show that so-called “immoral” attitudes are not so detrimental after all.
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<br />Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-27214088050977010442011-08-12T11:22:00.000-07:002011-08-12T11:29:57.965-07:00The British Word continued...
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<br />Though language in art is no longer monitored or dictated by an authority as in the past, it is nonetheless largely dominated by the museum and/or the critic. In his book <i style="">Cultivating Picturacy</i>, Heffernan, when referring to works that only deal with images, posits that images are not always “universally intelligible” and that they thus require the aid of words (16). This is partly why museums and art critics become “the verbal representative[s] of visual art,” for an “interpretive” language is used “[rhetorically]” to help tell viewers how and what to see (Heffernan, 44).
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<br />One observes – as in the work of David Hockney, Tracey Emin, R.B. Kitaj, Grayson Perry and Banksy– that British artists today have in part incorporated words into their artwork so that they can speak for themselves and can attempt to become “the verbal representative” of their own art. Whereas before artists rebelled against the language of the aristocracy, today artists battle with the language of the museum and the critic.<span style=""> </span>Indeed, in discussing such language, Hockney describes it as largely estranging and inaccessible to the greater public, claiming that it likely sounds “a little like scholasticism…of no great relevance to [the public’s] own interest” (That’s the Way I See It, 150). Hockney withholds that in order to make art speak to the public (and not just a selective audience), one must at times reach out of the art world into a more plain language that describes art in a manner that “a person sees” (150).
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<br />Artists today, like Hogarth, frequently draw from popular culture and signage to both criticize it and to make their work relevant to the public. This is one of many instances where artists use plain, colloquial language in order to communicate more directly and honestly with their viewers – a trend traced back to artists and writers in the late eighteenth century.
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<br />Today, however, unlike in the past, the viewer, more often than not, has to struggle before making out the messages in the artworks. This is largely due to a trend to inscribe letters in a sketchy manner or in a style that suggests instantaneity. This way, the viewer has the impression that the words were not overwrought, that they flowed right off the artist’s hand in an honest, blunt and intimate manner. Alternatively, the words are deliberately constructed in a way that makes it difficult to read – the viewer understands it as a conscious effort, a deliberate obscuration. Or, as with Banksy, the words are sneakily blended into the environment. Thus, in all these cases, there is an initial moment of doubt; the viewer is not warned of the disturbing content that the words may withhold. Rather, the viewer must first pause and break through the works’ layers, a quality that again testifies to the semiotic nature of these artists’ work.<span style=""></span>
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<br />British art history reveals a common belief that the word helps bring accuracy and immediacy to narrative and self-expression. Whereas the word was first used in art as an authoritative tool, now it is used to speak against authority. Likewise, as the word became appropriated by the artist, it developed a satirical and increasingly accessible and personal character. Over time, the word has become more intertwined with the image so that the words themselves have become visual elements in the works; their aesthetics are just as powerful as their actual denotations. However, unlike in the past, the words today have a gutsy and informal visual quality, which in turn complements their content. The language of British art today, though in dialogue with the past, has taken on a distinctly more tortured and aggressive character. Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-5788162468103479962011-08-08T15:27:00.000-07:002011-08-08T15:40:34.382-07:00The British Word continued... <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
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<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">British art underwent a change during the Victorian period by turning to moral narratives, realism and a fear of introspection. According to Graham-Dixon, “the rise to eminence of the art critic” coincides with a time when people wanted “to have [artworks’] narratives explicated and their moral meaning teased out” (Graham-Dixon, 166). Victorian art criticism likewise developed “the argument of ‘<i style="">ut picture poesis</i>,’” where the art critic approached a picture by translating it into prose (295, Hewison). The image in itself, without poetical explication, was considered less valuable. Furthermore, it was not the actual pictorial detailing or the technique that was explored; rather, several critics “[concentrated] upon an explanation of [the] subject” (Althoz). Thus the word was considered a higher art for its poetical ability and a more direct art in its efficacy in delivering a subject. Though images are no longer disregarded as such, we shall later see that the language in art criticism and in museums is still in large part considered to dictate artworks.<span style=""> </span>
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<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">During the same period, there arose an interest in structuralist semiotics, which paid attention to the organization of words. Ferdinand de Saussure, the great figure of this semiotic line of thought, introduced the notion of the “signifier” (the word) and the “signified” (the concept). He claimed that a word could only gain its concept or meaning when related to its context or to the other words that it modifies. Saussure realized that words’ meanings are an automatic, instinctual process, which he justified with the claim that “each [linguistic sign] is recognized over and over again to be the ‘same’ sign because it has the same set of relations to other signs” (Bredin, 68). What Saussure, and other semioticians, aimed to do was to slow down our instincts by breaking down linguistic signs. Words became interpretative forms, and with this came a consciousness of the weaving of words and what they are made to do.
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<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Moving into the twentieth century to this day, modern semiotics further elaborates on the role of the reader in its analyses. It asks <i style="">why</i> we make the immediate associations that we do with certain words. It tends to answer such questions around the belief that “signs are related to their signifieds by social conventions which we learn” (Chandler). In inspecting these social conventions, semioticians emphasize the fabricated nature of linguistic signs. Their goal is to often “denaturalize signs, texts and codes [to] demonstrate that ‘reality’ can be challenged” (Chandler). Thus modern semiotics interrogates the contexts out of which words’ concepts arise, as opposed to simply acknowledging them.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""></span><span style=""></span>Several British artists today incorporate language in their work with the same consciousness of a semiotician. In the Victorian period, words were valued for their ability to explicate moral messages. Today, artists similarly take advantage of the word’s directness; however, they explore further by giving importance to the process of the reading of an artwork, of how the words are visually organized. Like a semiotician, artists today have developed a layered reading to their work.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">This concern for close reading, however, can be traced back to the very work of Hogarth, where one must delve into the prints to find the copious messages and ironic pairings of images and words before fully comprehending the criticism. Like Hogarth, these artists make it so that their words interact with, and are not necessarily superior to, other visual elements within the overall oeuvre. The artists’ words, the “signifiers,” develop a richer meaning once related to their neighboring visual elements, or their context, the “signified.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">In the contemporary artwork that will be discussed, some artists place words within contexts where they would usually belong so as to enrich and facilitate the viewer’s understanding of the language. Other artists, though, may challenge the way in which we are accustomed to reading by placing words within new or unusual contexts. They explore the social constructs of what is considered ‘allowed’ language and ‘not allowed’ language. The reader is forced to rearrange his/her visual and verbal associations. Several artists, particularly Grayson Perry and Banksy, further respond to a notion implied in the study of semiotics: “<span style="color: black;">If </span>signs do not merely reflect reality but are involved in its construction then those who control the sign systems control the construction of reality” (Chandler). These artists attempt to debunk such associations, attacking those who construct reality, which include the tabloids, media, government and art establishments.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;">Thus, as in the past, contemporary artists still make social commentary, particularly in regard to authorities and social oppression. Importantly, most of the artists’ criticism, though serious, maintains the satirical and humorous undertones that have been the historical trademarks in British art.<span style="color: blue;"><span style=""> </span></span></p> Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-76251530806390938352011-08-05T11:59:00.000-07:002011-08-05T12:09:24.721-07:00The British Word continued...<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEq6m_SkJe9iexz2w1cMoEqD6m-R52oi1clJo6S5jByp8lAWCDKi9wedXMeG6HWunO0QFNBHwUZN93ukj0bb6bNbl6UNt__8FYOGAUyku_KS9z4sRMr_MPvpcmz-9_zVZziHt5OoB4NS8P/s1600/800px-Slave-ship.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEq6m_SkJe9iexz2w1cMoEqD6m-R52oi1clJo6S5jByp8lAWCDKi9wedXMeG6HWunO0QFNBHwUZN93ukj0bb6bNbl6UNt__8FYOGAUyku_KS9z4sRMr_MPvpcmz-9_zVZziHt5OoB4NS8P/s320/800px-Slave-ship.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5637450575780309890" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:78%;">J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship (1840)</span><br /></div> <style>p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%;"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">J.M.W. Turner, a contemporary of Wordsworth, greatly drew from Romantic poetry in his artwork. Turner particularly appreciated the manner in which words captured atmosphere, such as in Scottish poet James Thomsons’s “The Seasons.” Turner is said to have depicted “the sunrise…such as he imagined was in the poet’s eye” (Timbs, 365). Not only did he use Romantics’ poetry but he also used his own poetry to accompany his paintings. His writing was something personally significant that helped him to refine his vision and emotions on nature and the sublime (Nadaner). Words, however, by no means took precedent over his images; rather, much like the British art today, each complemented and enriched the other. In 1812, Turner addressed the Royal Academy in a lecture: “Painting and poetry flow from the same fount mutually by vision, …[and] reciprocally…heighten each other’s beauties like…mirrors” (Nadaner, 32). Turner’s paintings and poetry work together to grasp and convey that which cannot be seen but that is inexplicably felt in a setting’s atmosphere.<span style=""></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /><span style=""></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style=""></span>In expressing his subliminal emotions and visions, Turner placed value on individual experience, as Wordsworth and other Romantic poets did. During this period, the emphasis on the individual in turn inspired a concern for political and social causes. Turner extended his work from personal reflections to “sublime or awesome aspects of contemporary life” in general, such as in his work on the terrifying travels of slave ships (Barker). Thus the early nineteenth century saw trends that resemble today’s. Both periods have artists intertwine images with words to express emotion to its fullest, to connect to one’s inner self. Yet these artists also reach out of themselves to address universal concerns, particularly in regard to social oppression. </p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-60627000192872816142011-08-04T18:41:00.000-07:002011-08-04T18:52:59.799-07:00The British Word from Hogarth to Today: A Desire to Tell, Not Show<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPLpaPXbQf1idqgK3Op07mA8GqbQ53kCMR1dAWWdWUhd_ZVnkcdnZa2Jh3Shz0BD0HR6rT4i3jchSIT8qejpSHPwYmUP1XwkJC5DsU7RsH3bg8_5hxiAvb0RIiMqRwWDlJTNzenI6ULTc-/s1600/black_prescence_gallery_05.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPLpaPXbQf1idqgK3Op07mA8GqbQ53kCMR1dAWWdWUhd_ZVnkcdnZa2Jh3Shz0BD0HR6rT4i3jchSIT8qejpSHPwYmUP1XwkJC5DsU7RsH3bg8_5hxiAvb0RIiMqRwWDlJTNzenI6ULTc-/s320/black_prescence_gallery_05.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5637182803752769266" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:78%;">William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress, Plate 3, 1735 (taken from the BBC)</span><br /><br />It's been a while since I haven't posted any of my art-related essays, and I recently got inspired to rummage through my old essays. During my sophomore year at Barnard I took a great seminar with Simon Schama on Contemporary British Art. In that seminar, I wrote a paper on the relationship of words and images in British art throughout history. Since it's a bit on the longer side, I'll post this one day by day, and hopefully I'll keep you interested! :<br /><br /><br /> <style>p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style>The history of British art reveals an affinity for incorporating words in artworks, particularly in the form of narrative. Beginning with the Reformation period, there prevailed what Graham-Dixon terms a sense of “anti-art,” where the image was thought to deceive, while the word had the virtue of introducing a clear narrative or message (218). These beliefs sprung from a Protestant perspective, which feared that “the supernatural can never be made manifest in the likeness of a figure” (42). The essential belief behind this statement – that words can communicate more directly than images – remains relevant to this day in British art.<br /> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span></p><br /><br />As Graham-Dixon describes it, in the Post-Reformation period, “words did not replace images, they <i style="">incorporated</i> them in a different way. Language was to summon up all the pictures that had been destroyed” (53). With this, there developed a trend in British art where images became often verbal, and literature, likewise, pictorial. Over time, words shifted from being solely tools employed by religious and political authorities to a significant mode of artistic expression.<br /><br />This shift becomes most obvious when moving into the eighteenth century, where words and images are twisted in an ironic and satirical fashion to make social commentary and attack authorities, as in the work of Hogarth. Known as “the guilty conscience of the British eighteenth century,” Hogarth’s work is one of the first to reach out of the aristocratic mindset into the public realm and to express a personal view (Graham-Dixon, 95). By delving into wider social and largely middle class concerns, he “[revised] the aesthetic discourse for art with its rejection of low and inappropriate subject matter” (Paulson). Indeed, he insisted on incorporating the imagery and language – the signage – of his time. He depicts the street, which appears as it would have been then with salesmen and women, pub signs, placards and public spots. This way, Hogarth’s work communicated with the public; it facilitated the important process of drawing associations among the images and the words. Indeed, whereas words had previously been about instruction, now the words were more open to “interpretation” and aimed for “the interplay of artist and spectator” (Paulson, 24). With this in mind, “Hogarth brought works of art into the lives of men and women who had never owned or purchased images before…He was the chief pioneer of…a genuinely popular visual art form” (Graham-Dixon, 99).<br /><br />Hogarth has been a model for many British artists to this day. Of the contemporary British artists that will be discussed, all of them have taken after Hogarth in that they have incorporated language that is accessible, critical of authority and artistic conventions, and frequently satirical. Graham-Dixon claims that “the history of British art after Hogarth cannot be told in quite the same way …It must take account of a growing sense of duty felt by artists to themselves…The lives and struggles of individual British artists will necessarily form a greater part of the story from now on” (103).<br /><br />Indeed, following the French Revolution, British art and literature took on a more self-expressive form. “The restrictive taste of the aristocracy” was regarded “as a kind of tyranny” and artists “would write in the plain language of plain men,” a desire that still persists today (Graham-Dixon, 104, 130).<br /><br />The early nineteenth century saw an establishment of ‘the self’ as the main subject among writers and artists. William Wordsworth’s writing attests to this self-centered vision in its sentimental and introspective quality. However, as Graham-Dixon puts it, “Wordsworth’s desire…was to armour his own frail subjectivity by making it appear a monument” (137). We shall later see that artists today likewise verbally express highly personal matters while making their work simultaneously stand for universal concerns.<span style=""> </span>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-79351565399265581752011-07-24T13:15:00.000-07:002011-07-24T13:30:29.097-07:00July<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicIrgyM3XK28RNkCrKnW8-bmSsJCLzgG-xLfdKlAhZAqrvMBx6V8QS8orULHUIaNKjPOSXOc88dK0NbsSM9zh7_BSgUDHLjp-VC_nNwgIhh8c67HHLiT55ZMiWaCqgLKLK2NiNMELQ1_oD/s1600/DSC03691.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicIrgyM3XK28RNkCrKnW8-bmSsJCLzgG-xLfdKlAhZAqrvMBx6V8QS8orULHUIaNKjPOSXOc88dK0NbsSM9zh7_BSgUDHLjp-VC_nNwgIhh8c67HHLiT55ZMiWaCqgLKLK2NiNMELQ1_oD/s320/DSC03691.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633017242238159378" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Felt Images has been on a much too long hiatus... the problem is my story, Mamãe, has undergone a few changes and is going to be revised here and there. So, I will have to leave you in suspense for a little bit and in the meanwhile I'll post some other things that I am working on.<br /><br />Today I'm going to post my first poem of a series of monthly poems. A calendar in the form of poems, let's say.<br /><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">July </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Black frames the windows, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The nape of your neck </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Still.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The sun heats the floorboards, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The clock clicks stubbornly.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Clogged by a sunless cloud,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The spines of plants blacken </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And twist,<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Angrily </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Shadows entangle our legs.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">A droplet of sweat </p> <p class="MsoNormal">On the nape of your neck, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Balancing, fattening.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">You turn, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Twisting, angrily </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The droplet spreads,<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Wet and sighing, you whisper </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s summer.<span style=""> </span></p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1393061524175133445.post-72568708669126976502011-06-24T13:00:00.000-07:002011-06-24T13:04:57.456-07:00Mamãe (continued)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge-ZZkyEhpzncY5U_LtkEW_63H-rdh5ll9ZowR2jTZUB9UgFtrdJPTEyAUKEnb12uadiMHZZymKODFErhSxaxfESh_EtZCa0FeFVPYkL4F35BT6EY6tqBbiT7tZRTmlOS1Aka4fQ9Y1CxD/s1600/P7160005.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge-ZZkyEhpzncY5U_LtkEW_63H-rdh5ll9ZowR2jTZUB9UgFtrdJPTEyAUKEnb12uadiMHZZymKODFErhSxaxfESh_EtZCa0FeFVPYkL4F35BT6EY6tqBbiT7tZRTmlOS1Aka4fQ9Y1CxD/s320/P7160005.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621878975814257026" border="0" /></a><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:20pt;">V.</span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:20pt;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mamãe and I would go for walks together on the weekends. Sometimes we talked and sometimes not so much. No matter how early we tried to get started, it was always hot, and dry. We’d go to the Parque da Cidade and we’d get freshly opened coconuts to drink their water along the way. The Brasília sky felt especially immense. You can always see so much of the sky in Brasília because the land is so flat. But when you are walking under the sun for hours, you carry that opening and brightening sky on your back. It hovers over you, and sometimes it knocks you over.<span style="color:blue;"> </span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal">About two weeks before I left Brasília, we went for our walk. I thought we would maybe talk about how things were going to change and were already changing. I would bring it up myself if I had to, but only once we had parked the car and stepped out unto the open pavement. But I never got the chance to because that morning, unlike any other day in Brasília, was very windy. The red Brasília earth wouldn’t stick to the ground. The wind kept picking it up so that it wore thousands of twirling bloody-looking skirts. I was wearing one of them too, and it scratched up my knees. If I tried to talk I would’ve swallowed a handful of earth. I walked with my eyes closed and mamãe held my hand. Very uncharacteristically, mamãe didn’t make a fuss. No yelling or words of indignation. She patiently walked through the wind with me, not saying a word. She kept trying to slap the dust off me, but to no avail. When we got to the car, I slipped off my sandals and put them in the trunk. As I walked barefoot to the car door the whisking ground scraped and blushed my soles. For a second, I was sinking into earth. When I got in the car mamãe asked me if I was all right and then gently placed her hands around the wheel. She didn’t have any dust on her, only beneath her fingernails. </p>Elisa Wouk Alminohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07278766258901589835noreply@blogger.com0