Responsibility of the Artist in The Bluest Eye, Faith in a Tree, and Conversion of the Jews
Toni Morrison, in her work, Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation, voices her opinion about the responsibility of the artist and proclaims that art should be political. I would like to examine Grace Paley and Phillip Roth's short stories and Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye. Each of these works can be considered political, and I believe they fit Morrison's idea of what literary fiction should be.
In both Paley and Roth's work, strongly political themes emerge. Paley's short story, "Faith in a Tree", deals with the Vietnam war and Roth's short story, "Conversion of the Jews", treats religious and moral questions in a public setting. Neither Paley nor Roth state that art must be political, or that it is the responsibility of the artist to create political work. Their work as illustrated in the short stories above, however, is decidedly political in nature as is Morrison's work as exemplified in her novel, The Bluest Eye.
Morrison's definition of the responsibility of an artist is limiting in terms of what sort of art is good and worthwhile.
" 'I am not interested in indulging myself in some private,
closed exercise of my imagination that fulfils only the
obligation of my personal dreams--which is to say yes, the
work must be political....It seems to me that the best art
is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably
political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.' "
(Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation)
Here, Morrison not only states that political art is better than art which is simply beautiful, but also implies that it is the responsibility of the artist to create art whic...
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...rison's definition of art say about more speculative works, such as As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, or J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey? These works don't directly address any major political themes, so they are automatic lesser on the Morrison scale simply because they don't defend an ideal which isn't accepted by a majority of the public.
Although Morrison's, The Bluest Eye, was an incredible book in many respects, I must ultimately disagree strongly with her views on what art should be and the responsibility of the artist. To adopt Morrison's ideals would be to disvalue entire artistic movements and many important works and artists, without regard to their other merits.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye, New York, Penguin Books Ltd, 1994.
Paley, Grace. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, USA, Harper C.Collins Canada Ltd. 1995.
This short story gives the opinions and beliefs of Ozzie Freeman, a thirteen year old Jewish boy who questions the rationality of the Jewish religion. Rabbi Binder, his teacher, is persistent to overthrow Ozzie and put an end to his profane questions. Eventually this leads to Ozzie's escape up to the roof of synagogue. In turn, Ozzie achieves religious freedom by making the Jews convert to Christianity. In the Conversion of the Jews, it is my belief that Roth's character Ozzie reenacts the dark hours of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and by doing so I believe Roth is stressing the importance of religious tolerance.
John Gardner has used Grendel as an argument proclaiming that art is really cultural propaganda, a lie to improve human existence, and the creator of rational order in our world. Art, however, is not any of the ideas mentioned above. Art is the human effort to escape the deadening effects of our contrived environments and the principle way for us to maintain our humanity.
Though people can look into color and composition, others can still even look into the source of the art itself. Cole goes deeper, delving into the source of the art, looking in particular into the idea of cultural appropriation and the view a person can give others. Though it is good for people to be exposed to different opinions of a group or an object, sometimes people can find it difficult to tell the difference between the reality and the art itself. Sometimes art can be so powerful that its message stays and impacts its audience to the point where the viewer’s image of the subject of the art changes entirely. Cole brings up an important question about art, however. Art has become some kind of media for spreading awareness and even wisdom at times, but in reality, “there is also the question of what the photograph is for, what role it plays within the economic circulation of images” (973). Cole might even be implying that Nussbaum’s advertisement can sometimes be the point of some media, and that sometimes the different genres of art can just be to make someone with a particular interest happy. One more point that Cole makes is that “[a]rt is always difficult, but it is especially difficult when it comes to telling other people’s stories.” (974) Truthfully, awareness and other like-concepts are difficult to keep going when a person or a group is not directly involved.
The article Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History (1980) by Griselda Pollock is a forty page essay where Pollock (1980), argues and explains her views on the crucial question, "how art history works" (Pollock, 1980, p.57). She emphasizes that there should be changes to the practice of art history and uses Van Gogh as a major example in her study. Her thesis is to prove that the meaning behind artworks should not be restricted only to the artist who creates it, but also to realize what kind of economical, financial, social situation the artist may have been in to influence the subject that is used. (Pollock, 1980, pg. 57) She explains her views through this thesis and further develops this idea by engaging in scholarly debates with art historians and researcher, and objecting to how they claim there is a general state of how art is read. She structures her paragraphs in ways that allows her to present different kinds of evidences from a variety sources while using a formal yet persuasive tone of voice to get her point across to the reader.
Having started long before, the Civil Rights Movement was at its peak in the 60’s, having had the success of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While they were making legal progression, it is no secret that there was still hatred felt towards colored people of the time, which was expressed through lynching and racial slurs. Rarely, if ever, would a colored person be seen as a movie star or someone considered beautiful. The expectation of beautiful was found in actresses like Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple, both blonde, blue eyed, and, most importantly, white. Writing her first novel as a colored female in this time period, Toni Morrison is engulfed in this reality. In her novel, The Bluest Eye,
In her novel The Bluest Eye, Morrison illustrates how ownership, class structures, and consumerism are interconnected and shape the characters' identities. Many characters define themselves by their material possessions, such as cars, consumer products, and property. However, Morrison also highlights the contradiction of class status among the characters, as beauty determines social stratification. The Fishers, a white family, are at the top of the class hierarchy, while Rosemary, who has Italian features but is classified as white, is on the same level as Frieda and Claudia. The opening scene of the novel depicts envy and competition among the characters, as they all want to be superior to one another.
In his first essay of Ways of Seeing, John Berger claims that all power, authority, and meaning that was once held by an original work of art has been lost through the mass reproduction of these works that has occurred in recent years. He writes of an entirely bogus religiosity (116-117) that surrounds these art objects and that the meaning of the original work no longer lies in what it uniquely says but in what it uniquely is (117). He claims that because of reproduction, the art of the past no longer exists as it once did (127). Obviously, something created hundreds of years ago is not the same as it once was, but the distribution of art and music to the general public has had a positive effect on society rather than a negative one. Works of art have even more meaning than they had when first created through the interpretations offered them by generations of critics and artists. Fresh new sources have been given the ability to offer their insight and abilities into art, creating entire new genres of art, music, theatre, and the like. It has allowed for a truer search for knowledge than was ever possible before. And ultimately, the search to find the true meaning of art and of the ideas of the artists forms a true sense of religiosity, which gives passion and meaning to the lives of groups stretching far beyond the cultural elite.
At first glance, one might assume Raymond Carver’s "Cathedral" illustrates the awakening of an insensitive and insulated husband to the world of a blind man. However, this literal awakening does not account for the fact that the husband awakens also to a world of religious insight, of which he has also been blind. The title and story structure are the first indicators of the importance of the religious thesis. It is also revealed when one examines the language and actions of the characters in the story. Finally, Carver’s previous and subsequent writings give an overall background for the argument that "Cathedral" has a significant religious import.
The Bluest Eye is one of the most famous and elegant works by Toni Morrison. The novel shows how women are affected by society through the eyes of an African American family during the Great Depression. The novel is being researched because many connections can be made in today’s society.
Art is used as a form of expression, conveying opinions and views about political and societal states through satirical symbolism. Through their work, artists use explicit and subversive messages to make comment, targeting the anonymous masses and the privileged elite1, ‘opening our eyes’ to a more abstract or visual representation of a societal issue. These representations often have an equal or opposite reaction from an audience, establishing awareness and creating controversy for the issue. Such artworks include, Patricia Piccinini’s (1965) The Young Family (2002), Fiona Foley’s (1964) Black Velvet (1996) and Gordon Bennett’s (1955-2014), Jackson Pollock and his other (2001).
One who has experienced life must acknowledge "That world contains many things, and on the level of society, part of what it contains is the political reality of the time - power structures, relations among classes, issues of justice and rights, interactions between the sexes and among various racial and ethnic constituencies" (Foster 115). The reality of American society is the learned conformism to stereotype, ostracize, discriminate, and to be prejudice to one another based on the societal definitions of beauty, success, and normality. The African American female Literature Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, explored America’s racial prejudice of the 1940s in her eye-opening novel The Bluest Eye. Through developing a parallel structure between
The novel The Bluest Eye describes how society was in the 1940’s in America. The novel shows how behind the national image of wealthy white families were the hard workers who faced real world issues. Toni Morrison exposes these problems through the horrific stories through the characters she wrote about. Since the start of the novel, she shows how lives of hard-working African-Americans were much different than the innocent and “clean” ideology.
Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and the brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with, and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when it concerns gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society.
There have been many people over the past few years argue over the question of what art is. Several different interpretations as to what is considered to be a work of art are given daily since there are so many different types of artworks. It can be argued that the 20th century was a turning point in our understanding of what art is. Some people believe that anything and everything in the world is considered to be art, while others believe that art is much more than that in which it takes talent, and a creative vision to produce real meaningful art. While art can seem to lack skill or meaning that's not always the case because art will always have a purpose behind it. We believe that any kind of artwork should
Religion and Its Effect on Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man