1994, mixed-media, experimental choreographer Bill T. Jones and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company premiered Still/Here at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Still/Here is a two segments evening-length dance piece with a film score made from interviews with people who were or are facing terminal life-threatening illnesses. Ultimately, Jones combines dance theatre and reality. Although this piece would later become a highly acclaimed piece in concert dance. However, not all critics fond over Jones’ work. In fact, dance critic Arlene Croce’s dissertation, Discussing the Undiscussable, she explains why spares herself of a “bad time” and refuses to review the piece. Croce begins Discussing the Undiscussable auguring; “By working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism. The dying people are viewed on videotape. He thinks that victimhood in and of itself is sufficient to the creation of an art spectacle. The cultivation of victimhood by institutions devoted to the care of art is a menace to all art forms.” …show more content…
In a word, Croce can't review someone she feels sorry for or hopeless about.
She goes on to describe Still/Here as victim art; forcing her “To feel sorry because the way they present themselves…In short, making victimhood into victim art.” My initial response to Discussing the Undiscussable was confusion. While she passionately argues to defend herself, Croce‘s case is missing one important piece of evidence; the concert. One of the main concepts of Still/Here is maintaining a sense of community, even though death. Croce’s (non)review is based purely on assumption. She believes the interviewees were focused into a position of victimhood, without watching the interviews or witnessing Jone’s intent to reach out and create a community-based production. In a sense, she herself is putting the interviewees in
victimhood. Overall, I disagree with Croce and find most of argument unconvincing. When Croce uses the term “victim art”, I believe she means shock value. Instead of discrediting Still/Here, I believe Croce is sloppily gushing over her dislike for the trending theme of shock value in modern dance made in the 1990s as well as how much funding such work was receiving. I think Croce believe artist only used so much shock values to receive funding; ultimately creating genuine work. While this argument has several logical merits, it seems Croce is closed off to certain subject matter. In the response to Croce, Ann Daly states,” As the fields are knowledge standard bearing of classical ascetics has made a career of enforcing her formless agenda separating the good form the bad from a position of confident omniscience.” Daly later goes on to explain the Croce refuses to review Still/Here because she does not know how to critique art that does not fit her ideals of dance for dance’s sake. Much like today, Croce struggles to find the value in both instrumental and intrinsic elements in dance.
Modris Eksteins presented a tour-de-force interpretation of the political, social and cultural climate of the early twentieth century. His sources were not merely the more traditional sources of the historian: political, military and economic accounts; rather, he drew from the rich, heady brew of art, music, dance, literature and philosophy as well. Eksteins examined ways in which life influenced, imitated, and even became art. Eksteins argues that life and art, as well as death, became so intermeshed as to be indistinguishable from one another.
“And of Clay We Are Created,” by Isabel Allende, offers an observation of what social psychologists know to as the bystander effect. In the story, Azucena is a young girl, trapped in the muck, in need of a great amount of assistance. As she suffers and countless reporters are on the scene filming, no one ever stops filming to aid her. The reporters care more about getting the story than saving the precious life of another human being. As the story progresses, Allende connects Eva Luna to Rolf and Azucena use voyeurism as a key dramatic device. Using the interpersonal relationships of the characters, Allende takes a look at how voyeurism can be a contributing factor to the growth of social insensitivity to another’s needs.
The author of the essay, Nicholas Mirzoeff, explores our conscious and unconscious needs to put forward caricatured versions of ourselves. He states that we always have an agenda, be it unconscious or conscious when creating images of ourselves. This is also seen in the self-portrait named the Drowned Man. The artwork by Hippolyte Bayard is cited as a perfect example of a man portraying himself to the audience as something he is not, dead. Some people actually believed by Bayard was dead at the
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.
As the women narrate the harm caused by men, they lose track of the beings that they once were and become different people in order to cause a reaction in others. These women are hurt in ways that cause them to change their way of living. The Lady in Blue becomes afraid of what others will think of her because a man impregnated her: “i cdnt have people [/] lookin at me [/] pregnant [/] I cdnt have my friends see this” (Shange, Abortion Cycle # 1 Lines 14- 16). Instead of worrying about the life of her child, she worries about how her...
Art for Art's Sake: Its Fallacy and Viciousness. The Art World, Vol.2. May 1917. 98-102
Over the decades, art has been used as a weapon against the callousness of various social constructs - it has been used to challenge authority, to counter ideologies, to get a message across and to make a difference. In the same way, classical poetry and literature written by minds belonging to a different time, a different place and a different community have somehow found a way to transcend the boundaries set by time and space and have been carried through the ages to somehow seep into contemporary times and shape our society in ways we cannot fathom.
All of Camus' writings may be viewed as a quest for meaningful values in a world of spiritual aridity and emptiness. He begins with man's despair, estrangement, fear, suffering and hopelessness in a world where is neither God nor the promise that He will come- the fundamental absurdity of existence- but ultimately affirms the power of man to achieve spiritual regeneration and the measure of salvation possible in an absurd universe. This radical repudiation of despair and nihilism is closely bound up with his concept of an artist. Camus conceives of art as a way of embracing a consciousness of the absurdity of man's existential plight. But art becomes a means of negating that absurdity because the artist reconstructs the reality, endowing it with unity, endurance and perfection. By taking elements from reality that confirms the absurd existence, an artist attempts to correct the world by words and redistribution. Thus the artist never provides a radical transformation of reality but a fundamental reinterpretation of what already exists. He provides a new angle of vision of perceiving reality. That is why, for Camus, an artist is a recreator of myth. He teaches humanity that contemporary man must abandon the old myths that have become otiose, though once defined his existence. The artist liberates man to live in his world by redefining both man and the condition in which he exists. In this regard, it is important to point out that, for Camus, the traditional opposition between art and philosophy is arbitrary. It is because they together become most effective to create the redefinition: the philosophy awakens the consciousness and the art, propelled by such a radical discovery, ...
I am an artist. That is not a disclaimer or a boast; it is a statement of position. I believe in the undeniable importance of art and the futility of censorship. I also believe that art is one of the best indicators of the mood of a culture. Scholars, doctors, therapists, and lawyers can attempt to explain us to ourselves, but their testimony, while useful, will almost always be dry and lacking in emotional depth. I am proud to write in defense of a group that predates and outlasts all other professional analysts of the human condition-creators of art.
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.
In “The Old Acrobat,” the flanuer is lured by the naturalistic and crude appearances of the street performers caused by society’s need for abstract stimulation. The acrobat is physically and mentally drained from performing straining and exhausting tasks for the gratification of others. The dominant scent at the carnival is “a frying odor”2 which hints that the performers are sacrificing themselves and literally “frying” their souls away to satisfy their hungry audiences. Even the acrobat is described as being “illuminated all too well by two burned-down candles”3 which are “dripping and smoking.”4 There is a sense of...
The Marquis de Sade led a lifestyle that disgusted some but influenced others. “This was a life, then, of swashbuckling adventure, narrow escapes, wild abandon, and bloody crime” (Lever, introduction on front flap). He is famous for coining the term “sadism” from his known love for sexual violence in his own life and literature. The Marquis’ own libertine values, which allowed for him to escape the moral restraints of law and religion, allowed for his life and works of literature to challenge censorship.
...p from the world they live in, a world of separation and indicate themselves with their own realities. Art is handed over into society’s hands, as in one movement it is suggested - to fixate what is real, live like you create and create like you live; in other – abandon media’s proposed ideas and take the leadership of life in our own hands.
Albert Camus's "Banquet Speech" is revolved around the meaning of art. He defines art as a concept of connecting communities as a whole. Although, art is not a reason for the artist to distinct themselves from the real world. Camus stands behind this when he admits his art is to foresee the truth behind this world and to see deeper into the people suffering from the truth. For him, as the writer, he believes his art work reaches out to everyone because he does not see himself any different from the readers. They are all the same. No judgements or hatred takes place in the piece of work but only the beauty of the community.
In the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce creates a deeply personal and emotional portrait to every man. Joyce’s main character, Stephen Dedalus, encounters universal feelings of detachment, guilt, and awakening. Rather than stepping back and remembering the characteristics of infancy and childhood from and adult perspective, Joyce uses the language the infant was enveloped in. Joyce also uses baby Stephen’s viewpoint to reproduce features of infancy.