“Compare the ways in which the authors of the two texts convey ideas about art through their central characters? INTRODUCTION Marcel Proust in the first volume of his ‘In Search of Lost Time’, ‘Swann’s Way’, (1913), and Donna Tartt in her 2013 novel ‘The Goldfinch’, reveal, through their central characters, the various impacts art can have on one's relationship with reality. Although Proust and Tartt’s retrospective novels explore similar coming of age themes, as their young protagonists’, Proust’s nameless Narrator, and Theo Decker, struggle between their inbuilt passion for art versus and the common values of their respective societies, both authors conclude on vastly different estimations on the consequences and costs of valuing art over …show more content…
human relationships. Both authors use imagery, figurative language, tone, and symbolism to establish the multitude of ways knowledge and love of painting, music, and literature changes their central characters, Theo Decker, and Proust’s unnamed Narrator and Charles Swann’s can change our understanding of life. While Proust suggests art can help us appreciate beauty in the mundane, Tartt similarly suggests it can help us appreciate beauty in the tragic moments of life, they both agree it can impart meaning and sense into the absurd as well as aid in the recapture of things lost to time. PARAGRAPH 1: Proust and Tartt use metaphorical language to convey contrasting appraisals of the destructive capacity of a passion for art versus that of a more normal path leading to societal values and human relationships. Both authors establish their central character’s passion for art as outside the norm of the ‘blandly held common virtues’ and the ‘purely conventional framework’ of their respective societies, Belle Epoque Paris, and twenty-first century New York. What’s more, both Swann and Theo actively face a choice between the pursuit of art and the pursuit of human relationships, and in both texts their compulsions tragically lead to self-destruction and misery. However, Swann and Theo choose differently: while Theo breaks off his engagement with Kitsy Barbour, representing normal societal values of ‘health, domesticity, and strong social connections’ to pursue his passion for art, Swann conversely abandons his place in society and the art world, represented by his growing neglect of his essay on Vermeer, to pursue a jealous and obsessive affair with the demimonde Odette de Crecy. In Theo’s closing address he compares following his ‘heart’ to being led to a ‘beautiful flare of ruin, self immolation… toward the bonfire’, whereas Proust uses the metaphor of ‘searching for a lost Eurydice’ (277) to describe Swann’s urgent pursuit of Odette. By using fire as a metaphor for the destructive capacity of passion, Tartt positions her readers to appreciate the burning intensity of Theo’s passion, while simultaneously evoking connotations of the enslavement, and meaningless self-destruction of a moth irresistibly drawn to flame. Thereby arguing that the compulsion towards a love of material beauty over human relationships and normal values is, while ecstatic, ultimately self-destructive. Whereas Proust presents the antithetical idea that while a love of art is conducive to happiness and a sense of purpose, it is the ‘strong social connections’ and human relationships that Tartt includes among her ‘blandly held common virtues’ that yield misery and self-destruction. By alluding to Odette as ‘Eurydice’ Proust is presenting us with a quintessentially ‘romantic’ surface image. We are encouraged to associate Swann with Orpheus the mythical musician and poet whose love compels him to enter Hades. However our pre-knowledge of Swann’s ‘unsuitable marriage’ to a ‘fast’ woman lends a sinister dramatic irony to this metaphor. The indicative verb ‘searching’ foreshadows the way in which Swann jealous pursuit of Odette never culminates in his possession of her, as he desires, but is fruitless and unfulfilled. The reader is thus aware that Swann’s descent into the ‘realms of darkness’ in search of love, will, like Orpheus’, never culminate in his re-emergence into the living world of art and society. While Tartt presents art as the destructive passion for which Theo is thrown ‘into the bonfire’ and Proust conversely presents human relationship as the obsession for which Swann enters his own ‘realms of darkness’, ultimately both are tragic characters whose stories culminate in the misery of addiction and a disastrous marriage. 485 PARAGRAPH 2: Both authors use visual imagery and figurative language to describe the way art can lend an appreciation and understanding of the beauty of both the ordinary and the tragic in the human experience.
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
terrible event in the book, the Metropolitan Museum explosion, she demonstrates this idea through figurative language, describing in poetic detail “white wings of tumult”, “the ground … like moon rock” “ash like first frost” juxtaposed with graphic corporeal imagery “ached all over”, “red tinged froth bubbling at his nostrils”, “ghastly pulmonary whistle”. The extreme contrast between the beauty of Theo’s metaphorical language (representing his artistic insight), and the harshness of his ‘real’ observation makes us aware the way in which the ‘catastrophe’ of life can be beautified and even be made pleasurable to behold through art. While Proust emphasizes art’s role in helping us appreciate prosaic scenes of everyday life, and Tartt focuses on its same capacity to make palatable even the worst tragedies, both authors, through imagery and figurative language, are trying to convey the same essential idea that the way we perceive reality is improved by art.
Carol Armstrong begins her essay by pointing out the two main points that come about when discussing A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. These two points are the social context of the painting and its representation of 19th century Paris, and the internal structure of the painting itself with the use of space. She then goes on and addresses what she will be analyzing throughout her essay. She focuses on three main points, the still life of the counter and its commodities, the mirror and its “paintedness”, and the barmaid and her “infra-thin hinge” between the countertop and the mirror.
...ce, although both writings are interesting in their own ways, the most interesting aspect of both writings together is that they both have a similar plot and theme. It is rare that two
In Julia Alvarez’s poem “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries”, Alvarez skillfully employs poetic devices such as imagery and personification to let the reader view the power of literature through the eyes of a young, poverty stricken, estranged woman, inspiring her love for poetry. Alvarez’s use of imagery paints a vivid picture of the setting and the narrator’s actions for the reader throughout her significant experience; all through the eyes of an alienated female. The use of personification and author’s tone brings “The Blue Estuaries” to life for the reader-just as it had appeared to the narrator.
told a story through their artwork. All the different artists had different mediums and ways of expressing
I chose to analyze the The Family, 1941 portray and The Family, 1975 portray, both from Romare Bearden, for this essay because they are very similar paintings but at the same time very different. To write a critical analyzes it was necessary to choose two different paintings that had similar characteristics. The text about critical comparison said that to compare things they have to be similar, yet different, and that’s what these paintings look to me. As I had already written an analysis of The Family, 1941 portray I chose to analyze and compare The Family, 1975 this time. Both works have a lot of color in it and through the people’s faces in the pictures we can feel the different emotions that the paintings are conveying.
“…the culture industry has brought about the false elimination of the distance between art and life, and this also allows one to recognize the contradictoriness of the avant-gardiste undertaking: the result is that the Avant-garde, for all its talk of purging art of affirmation with forces of production consumption, became an accomplice in the total subsumption of Art under capitalism.”
Humans have used art for centuries as a response to their environments. The use of icons, perspective, and cubism have all reflected the cultures and societies of those times. However, art has often been mistaken as a substitution or creation of reality, rather than a reflection. John Gardner has taken up this attitude in his novel Grendel. While Grendel is a provocative and innovative work, John Gardner's views on art, as reflected in Grendel, are based upon a misunderstanding of art and are therefore unfounded.
The tableaux vivants scene in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth is pivotal to the understanding of Lily Bart as a character. The passage not only highlights her precarious state in high-society, but it also contains one of the only instances where Lily feels truly comfortable and confident. Over the course of the description of Lily’s staging of her own tableaux, she goes from being a piece of art on display, to an artist carefully working to exhibit her own beauty. However, the contradictory reception from the audience to her intentions when her tableaux is presented, conveys her hubris in both her beauty and her ability to create visual representations of art. The scene concludes with, Gerty Farish, in response to seeing Lily’s tableaux, saying,
The aim of this essay is to explore the way in which the two authors
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.
The poetry by these two poets creates several different images, both overall, each with a different goal, have achieved their purposes. Though from slightly different times, they can both be recognized and appreciated as poets who did not fear the outside, and were willing to put themselves out there to create both truth and beauty.
Aside from the conditions, which lead to the creation of these works, they share a number of other common threads. Symbolism aside these works are very similar on the surface. Both are a collection of seemingly disjointed images, which when put together by the reader or observer serve up a strong social message. That messages being that the wars and conflicts of the times have twisted the world. This is reinforced by the contorted and misshapen images in both works.
In Confronting Images, Didi-Huberman considers disadvantages he sees in the academic approach of art history, and offers an alternative method for engaging art. His approach concentrates on that which is ‘visual’ long before coming to conclusive knowledge. Drawing support from the field of psycho analytics (Lacan, Freud, and Kant and Panofsky), Didi-Huberman argues that viewers connect with art through what he might describe as an instance of receptivity, as opposed to a linear, step-by-step analytical process. He underscores the perceptive mode of engaging the imagery of a painting or other work of art, which he argues comes before any rational ‘knowing’, thinking, or discerning. In other words, Didi-Huberman believes one’s mind ‘sees’ well before realizing and processing the object being looked at, let alone before understanding it. Well before the observer can gain any useful insights by scrutinizing and decoding what she sees, she is absorbed by the work of art in an irrational and unpredictable way. What Didi-Huberman is s...
...years later, it becomes clear that for all the emphasis put on art, on creation, and on mass production—nature is central to our human experience. We can symbolize this natural connection with art—but the art itself always harkens back to something that elicits an emotional response from the viewer. For Leontes, a statue of his presumably deceased wife, Hermione triggers a sorrowful reaction. Art indeed embellishes life as it does with flowers, but we are always working from some perspective, some emotion, before we are merely creating art. “The Winter’s Tale” takes on the challenge of investigating whether or not art can in fact breathe outside the womb of nature, and as we witness art break down, and nature hold the characters together, it becomes resoundingly clear that art seeks to react to nature, but that it cannot work without maintaining nature at its core.
James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man presents an account of the formative years of aspiring author Stephen Dedalus. "The very title of the novel suggests that Joyce's focus throughout will be those aspects of the young man's life that are key to his artistic development" (Drew 276). Each event in Stephen's life -- from the opening story of the moocow to his experiences with religion and the university -- contributes to his growth as an artist. Central to the experiences of Stephen's life are, of course, the people with whom he interacts, and of primary importance among these people are women, who, as his story progresses, prove to be a driving force behind Stephen's art.