From the exhibition of "Stories That We Tell: Art and Identity", I choose Lorna Simpson's work which is the multi-pieces photo-text installation Details (1996). Details consists twenty-one photogravures, and from the introduction of the work, all the photogravures come from the artist's collection of family photos that she has tightly cropped to focus on gestures and hands, while she gives the ambiguous text to create a fragmentary and open-ended narrative. While considering about the Struken's and Cartwight's idea of the myth, I think Details(1996) works with the concepts of the idea that "myth allows the connotative meaning of a particular thing or image to appear as denotative (that is literal, or natural). (30)
When I was viewing these
This shows how bold and captivating the unique appearance of the book was; it contained only an illustration and name, without the boasting of achievements. Imagery played a key role in
I observed a very unique series of photographs by Vik Muniz called Seeing is Believing. Vik Muniz’s images are not simply photography but are pictures of complicated pieces of art he has produced at earlier times. Utilizing an array of unorthodox materials including granulated sugar, chocolate syrup, sewing thread, cotton, wire, and soil Muniz first creates an image, sculpturally manipulates it and then photographs it. Muniz’s pictures include portraits, landscapes, x-rays, and historical images.
Piper’s use of imagery in this way gives the opportunity for the reader to experience “first hand” the power of words, and inspires the reader to be free from the fear of writing.
Throughout the story, Walker uses brilliant imagery in describing each detail of what the mother sees through the eyes of her world. This imagery in turn creates a more interesting and imaginative story, and allows the reader to experience what the narrator is experiencing. The theme of imagery is not within the story, but how the story is told. However, the theme of love of one's family heritage is within the heart and not on the wall.
Years ago, Sister Mary Corita Kent, a celebrated artist and educator of the 1960’s and 1970’s stated, “A painting is a symbol for the universe. Inside it, each piece relates to the other. Each piece is only answerable to the rest of that little world. So, probably in the total universe, there is that kind of total harmony, but we get only little tastes of it” (Lewis "Quotes from Women Artists"). Nowadays, a painting is not the main form of art humans appreciate. In fact, literature of all sorts can be considered a different form of art and often found in literature are symbols. A "symbol" is an object, person or action which represents an abstract idea (Warren “English 102”). In literature, a symbol or set of symbols can have a wide range of meanings. For example, color is a universal symbol; some may say it is a general symbol for life. However, each color separately can symbolize something different depending on the context. Analyzing five piece of literature for symbolism, one will be able to gain a deeper understating of symbols.
Comparing different works of art from one artist can help a person gain a better understanding of an artist and the purpose of their artwork. An artist’s works of art usually have similarities as well as differences when compared together. Sandy Skoglund is a photographer that stages entire rooms to create a scene for her photographs. Skoglund uses painting, sculpture, and photography to create her artwork. Due to the fact that most of her photographs are created in similar ways, almost all of her photographs have similar components represented throughout the photographs. Differences can be found in her artwork as well. Skoglund’s Revenge of The Goldfish, 1981 (Figure 1), is a popular work of art that is represented at the Akron Art Museum
...ty. " Visual Rhetorics: History, Memory, Trauma. Eds. Barbara Biesecker and John Lucaites, University of Alabama Press.
Bishop’s use of imagism in “One Art” helps the reader to comprehend the ability of the speaker to move on from lost items such as a mother’s watch or loved houses.
Theo and the young Narrator similarly discover the revelatory capacity of art through a single pivotal painting and author respectively, both which become significant motifs in either text. Tartt utilizes an existent painting ‘The Goldfinch’ as a fixed point of reference, which, for both Theo and the reader provides a sense of reality and constancy ‘rais[ing him] above the surface’ of an otherwise tumultuous childhood. Whereas Proust uses a fictional author, ‘Bergotte’, to communicate the universality of art, and invite the reader, through the vivid immediacy with which the Narrator’s early reading experiences are described, to participate in his epiphanic discovery that art can translate ‘imperceptible truths which would never have [otherwise] been revealed to us’ (97). Artistic imagery becomes a motif in Proust’s descriptions of scenes of domesticity and nature. In a scene recounting Francoise ‘masterful’ preparation of a family meal the Narrator describes asparagus in the technical language of painting as ‘finely stippled’ provoking an association between his observations of asparagus and the creation of a painting. By forming this improbable link he elevates unremarkable asparagus to the ‘precious’ status of art in the eyes of the reader. Proust’s presentation of his Narrator’s ‘fascination’ and pleasure at their ‘rainbow-loveliness’, forces the reader to consider asparagus with unfamiliar and attentive appreciation, conveying the idea that art can uncover the overlooked beauty of the mundane. Though Theo reveals a far more cynical view of ordinary life as a ‘sinkhole of hospital beds, coffins and broken hearts’ Tartt conveys the similar belief in art’s capacity to create a ‘rainbow-edge’ of beauty between our perceptions and the harshness of reality. In the most
In her poem "Myth," Natasha Trethewey uses mythology, a unique structure, rhyme pattern, and punctuation to make form and content inseparable. Each of these elements serves to share the stages of grief one goes through one feels at the death of a loved one as well as the feelings of deep loss and longing.
My intention here is to acknowledge two problems that I believe all scholars of "the visible" will encounter at some point in their work. Both showed up early in my research on commemorative artworks, but I suspect that they crash everyone's party at some point. I have no "solution" to these problems, but I believe they should, actually must, be addressed in work on visual rhetoric. The first, "readability," is both a practical and theoretical problem having to do with the possibilities of interpretation in visual culture. The second, which I'll simply label "materiality" for the moment, has a presence in numerous arenas beyond the study of visual culture, but remains nearly unaddressed and nearly unacknowledged in rhetorical work on visual images.
Another is the interesting set of images if found if the observer flips the painting over. Here in the left half of the painting there are two images, one of a puppet and an observer kneeling to view the show.
Throughout much of European history, art has been used either to portray religious stories and icons or to capture landscape, or a person’s image. Many have argued that art is simply a representation
In order to 'read' or deconstruct myth, Barthes suggests, one must (1) accept the myth as a cultural construction, thus emptying its meaning; (2) rear the myth as full, identifying all possible signs and significations; and finally (3) recognize the signifier as both empty and full, capable of signifying many things, yet with only one clear, dominant meaning. It is my argument that such a deconstruction can render art as myth.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, exemplifies the model of art it proposes as it also offers the reader on how to read that very art. Following the main character, Stephen Dedalus, through life, Joyce uses Stephen’s immediate perception to convey how an artist views the world. The reader witnesses Stephen encountering everyday aspects of life as art—the words of a language lesson as poetry or the colors of a rose as beautiful. Through Stephen’s voyage and words, Joyce introduces the theory that “beauty” as a label for an object is not born from the actual physical object itself, but rather lies within the process one goes through when encountering the object. Joyce’s theory is also experienced by the reader as he or she encounters Stephen’s perceptions as well as the beauty of the poetic language and vivid description within Joyce’s narrative. The rhythmic patterns and stylistic sentences create a multitude of authorial voices that blend at various points in the novel involving Joyce, Stephen, and the reader.