Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- The woman portrayed may be Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of a local busi- nessman, and the painting has long been known in Italy as La Gioconda. Is it necessary to our sense of participation that we know who the sitter is, or that we know that Leonardo kept this painting with him throughout his life and took it wherever he went?
THE HUMANITIES: AN INTRODUCTION
jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 9 12/11/17 11:19 AM Structure and Artistic Form Your responses to the Mona Lisa are probably different from those you have when viewing the other paintings in this chapter, but why? You might reply that the Mona Lisa is hypnotizing, a carefully structured painting depending on a subtle but basic geometric form, the triangle. Such structures, while operating subconsciously, are Experiencing a painting as frequently reproduced as Mona Lisa, which is visited by millions of people every year at the Louvre in Paris, takes most of us some special effort. Unless we study the painting as if it were new to us, we will simply see it as an icon of high culture rather than as a painting with a formal power and a lasting value. Because it is used in advertisements and on mouse pads, playing cards, jigsaw puzzles, and a host of other banal locations, we might see this as a cliché. However, we are also fortunate in that we see the paint- ing as itself, apart from any social or historical events, and in a location that is almost magical or mythical. The landscape may be unreal, fantastic, and suggestive of a world of mystical opportunity. Certainly it emphasizes mystery. Whoever this woman is, she is concentrating in an unusual fashion on the viewer, whether we imagine it is us or it is Leonardo whom she contemplates. A study of her expression reminds us that for generations the “Gioconda smile” has teased authors and crit- ics with its mystery. Is she making an erotic suggestion in that smile, or is it a smile of self-satisfaction? Or is it a smile of tol- erance, suggesting that she is just waiting for this sitting to be done? Her expression has been the most intriguing of virtually any portrait subject in any museum in the world. It is no sur- prise, then, that Leonardo kept this for himself, although we must wonder whether he was commissioned for the painting and for some reason did not want to deliver it. The arresting quality of the painting is in part because of the enigmatic expression on Mona Lisa’s face, but the form of the painting is also arresting. Leonardo has posed her so that her head is the top of an isosceles triangle in which her face glows in contrast with her dark clothing. Her hands, expressive and radi- ant, create a strong diagonal, leading to the base of the triangle. Her shoulders are turned at a significant angle so that her pose is not really comfortable, not easy to maintain for a long time. However, her position is visually arresting because it imparts a tension to the entire painting that contributes to our response to it as a powerful object. The most savage satirical treatment of this painting is the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. (see Figure 14-15). By parodying this work, Duchamp thumbed his nose at high culture in 1919, after World War I, and after the Mona Lisa had assumed its role as an epitome of high art. His work was an expression of disgust at the middle and upper classes, which had gone so enthu- siastically into a war of attrition that brought Europe to the verge of self-destruction. FIGURE 1-5 Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa. Circa 1503–1506. Oil on panel, 30¼ × 21 inches. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Leonardo’s most personal picture has sometimes been hailed as a psychologically powerful painting because of the power of Mona Lisa’s gaze, which virtually rivets the viewer to the spot. The painting is now protected under glass and, while always surrounded by a crowd of viewers, its small size proportional to its reputation has sometimes disappointed viewers because it is so hard to see. And in a crowd it is impossible to contemplate. ©RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 10 12/11/17 11:19 AM PERCEPTION KEY The Eternal City 1. Sketch the basic geometric shapes of the painting. 2. Do these shapes relate to one another in such a way as to help reveal the obscenity of fascism? If so, how? obvious on analysis. Like all structural elements of the artistic form of a painting, they affect us deeply even when we are not aware of them. We have the capacity to respond to pure form even in paintings in which objects and events are por- trayed. Thus, responding to The Eternal City will involve responding not just to an interpretation of fascism taking hold in Italy but also to the sensuous surface of the painting. This is certainly true of Echo of a Scream; if you look again at that painting, you will see not only that its sensuous surface is interesting intrinsically but also that it deepens your response to what is represented. Because we often respond to artistic form without being conscious that it is affecting us, the painter must make the structure interesting. Consider the contrast between the simplicity of the struc- ture of the Mona Lisa and the urgent complexity of the structures of the Siqueiros and the Blume. The composition of any painting can be analyzed because any painting has to be organized: Parts have to be interrelated. Moreover, it is important to think carefully about the composition of individual paintings. This is particularly true of paintings one does not respond to immediately—of “difficult” or apparently uninteresting paintings. Often the analysis of structure can help us gain access to such paintings so that they become genuinely exciting. Artistic form is a composition or structure that makes something—a subject matter—more meaningful. The Siqueiros, Blume, and Picasso reveal something about the horrors of war and fascism. But what does the Mona Lisa reveal? Perhaps just the form and structure? For us, structures or forms that do not give us insight are not artistic forms. Some critics will argue the point. This major question will be pursued throughout the text. Perception We are not likely to respond sensitively to a work of art that we do not perceive properly. What is less obvious is what we referred to previously—the fact that we can often give our attention to a work of art and still not perceive very much. The reason for this should be clear from our previous discussion. Frequently we need to know something about the background of a work of art that would aid our per- ception. Anyone who did not know something about the history of Rome, or who Christ was, or what fascism was, or what Mussolini meant to the world would have a difficult time making sense of The Eternal City. But it is also true that anyone who could not perceive Blume’s composition might have a completely superficial re- sponse to the painting. Such a person could indeed know all about the background and understand the symbolic statements made by the painting, but that is only part
THE HUMANITIES: AN INTRODUCTION
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of the painting. From seeing what da Vinci can do with form, structure, pose, and expression, you can understand that the formal qualities of a painting are neither accidental nor unimportant. In Blume’s painting, the form focuses attention and organizes our perceptions by establishing the relationships between the parts. absTraCT ideas and ConCreTe images Composition is basic in all the arts. Artistic form is essential to the success of any art object. To perceive any work of art adequately, we must perceive its structure. Ex- amine the following poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and consider the purpose of its shape. This is one of many shaped poems designed to have a visual formal structure that somehow illuminates its subject matter.
THE PILLAR OF FAME
Fame’s pillar here at last we set, Out-during marble, brass or jet; Charmed and enchanted so As to withstand the blow Of overthrow; Nor shall the seas, Or Outrages Of storms, o’erbear What we uprear; Tho’ Kingdoms fall, This pillar never shall Decline or waste at all; But stand forever by his own Firm and well-fixed foundation. PERCEPTION KEY “The Pillar of Fame” 1. What is a pillar and in what art form are pillars used? 2. In what sense is fame the subject matter of the poem? 3. Herrick is using a number of metaphors in this poem. How many can you identify? What seems to be their purpose? 4. In what sense is the shape of the poem a metaphor? 5. To whom does the word “his” in the last line refer? 6. The poem includes abstract ideas and concrete things. What is abstract here? And what is the function of the concrete references? Robert Herrick, a seventeenth-century poet, valued both honor and fame. During the English Civil War he lost his job as a clergyman because he honored his faith and refused to abandon his king. He hoped to achieve fame as a poet, in imitation of the great Roman poets. His “outrages” and “storms” refer to the war and the decade following, in which he stayed in self-exile after the “overthrow” of King Charles I. He portrayed fame as a pillar because pillars hold up buildings, and when the buildings become ruins pillars often survive as testimony to greatness. Herrick hoped his poem jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 12 12/11/17 11:19 AM
THE HUMANITIES: AN INTRODUCTION
would endure longer than physical objects, such as marble, brass, and jet (a black pre- cious jewel made of coal), because fame is an abstraction and cannot wear or erode. Shaping the poem to resemble a pillar with a capital and a stylobate (foundation) is an example of wit. When he wrote poetry, one of Herrick’s greatest achievements was the expression of wit, a poetic expression of intelligence and understanding. This poem achieves the blending of ideas and objects, of the abstract and the concrete, through its structure. The poem is a concrete expression of an abstract idea. In Paradise Lost, John Milton describes hell as a place with “Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death.” Now, neither you nor the poet has ever seen “shades of death,” although the idea is in Psalm 23, “the valley of the shadow of death.” Milton gets away with describing hell this way because he has linked the abstract idea of shades of death to so many concrete images in this single line. He is giving us images that suggest the mood of hell just as much as they describe the landscape, and we realize that he gives us so many topographic details in order to get us ready for the last detail—the abstract idea of shades of death. There is much more to be said about poetry, of course, but on a preliminary level poetry worked in much the same way in the seventeenth-century England of Milton as it does in contemporary America. The same principles are at work: Described objects or events are used as a means of bringing abstract ideas to life. The descriptions take on a wider and deeper significance—wider in the sense that the descriptions are connected with the larger scope of abstract ideas, deeper in the sense that because of these descriptions the abstract ideas become vividly focused and more meaningful. The following poem is highly complex: the memory of an older culture (simplic- ity, in this poem) and the consideration of a newer culture (complexity). It is an African poem by the contemporary Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara; and knowing that it is African, we can begin to appreciate the extreme complexity of Okara’s feelings about the clash of the old and new cultures. He symbolizes the clash in terms of music, and he opposes two musical instruments: the drum and the piano. They stand, respectively, for the African and the European cultures. But even beyond the musical images that abound in this poem, look closely at the images of nature, the pictures of the panther and leopard, and see how Okara imagines them.
PIANO AND DRUMS
When at break of day at a riverside I hear jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw like bleeding flesh, speaking of primal youth and the beginning, I see the panther ready to pounce, the leopard snarling about to leap and the hunters crouch with spears poised; And my blood ripples, turns torrent, topples the years and at once I’m in my mother’s lap a suckling; at once I’m walking simple paths with no innovations, rugged, fashioned with the naked warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 13 12/11/17 11:19 AM
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in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing. Then I hear a wailing piano solo speaking of complex ways in tear-furrowed concerto; of far-away lands and new horizons with coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint, crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth of its complexities, it ends in the middle of a phrase at a daggerpoint. And I lost in the morning mist of an age at a riverside keep wandering in the mystic rhythm of jungle drums and the concerto. Reproduced from Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems, edited by Brenda Marie Osbey, by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copy- right 2016 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Used with permission. PERCEPTION KEY “Piano and Drums” 1. What are the most important physical objects in the poem? What cultural signifi- cance do they have? 2. Why do you think Okara chose the drum and the piano to help reveal the clash between the two cultures? Where are his allegiances? Such a poem speaks directly to legions of the current generation of Africans. But consider some points in light of what we have said earlier. In order to perceive the kind of emotional struggle that Okara talks about—the subject matter of the poem—we need to know something about Africa and the struggle African nations have in modernizing themselves along the lines of more technologically advanced nations. We also need to know something of the history of Africa and the fact that European nations, such as Britain in the case of Nigeria, once controlled much of Africa. Knowing these things, we know, then, that there is no thought of the “I” of the poem accepting the “complex ways” of the new culture without qualification. The “I” does not think of the culture of the piano as manifestly superior to the cul- ture of the drum. That is why the labyrinth of complexities ends at a “daggerpoint.” The new culture is a mixed blessing. We have argued that the perception of a work of art is aided by background infor- mation and that sensitive perception must be aware of form, at least implicitly. But we believe there is much more to sensitive perception. Somehow the form of a work of art is an artistic form that clarifies or reveals values, and our response is intensified by our awareness of those revealed values. But how does artistic form do this? And how does this awareness come to us? In the next chapter we shall consider these ques- tions, and in doing so we will also raise that most important question, What is a work of art? Once we have examined each of the arts, it will be clear, we hope, that the principles developed in these opening chapters are equally applicable to all the arts. Participate, analyze, and participate again with Edward Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning (Figure 1-6). jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 14 12/11/17 11:19 AM FIGURE 1-6 Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning. 1930. Oil on canvas, 35 × 60 inches. When the Whitney Museum of American Art purchased Early Sunday Morning in 1930, it was their most expensive acquisition. Hopper’s work, centered in New York’s Greenwich Village, revealed the character of city life. His colors— vibrant, intense—and the early morning light—strong and unyielding—created indelible images of the city during the Great Depression. ©Whitney Museum of American Art/akg-images PERCEPTION KEY Early Sunday Morning 1. If you did not know the title of the painting, what emotions might it excite in you? 2. How does Hopper’s title, Early Sunday Morning, direct or enrich your emotional response? 3. What are the concrete objects represented in the painting? Which are most obvi- ous and visually demanding? Which provide you with the most information about the scene?