"Ogun" is a compelling poem which studies the life and work of a carpenter who suppresses the true artist within himself to succeed in the world.
Whitney Broyles October 9, 2002 Advanced Placement Literature Third Period Ogun "Ogun" is a compelling poem which studies the life and work of a carpenter who suppresses the true artist within himself to succeed in the world. The theme, which Braithwaite delineates is understood when he exemplifies the carpenter's shift from an apollonian designer to a more dionysian artist who does not work for "what the world preferred," but for his own release of anger. The carpenter's very structured and routine occupation is presented to the reader in the first stanza as the speaker lists the tasks of his uncle's carpentry: "My uncle made chairs, balanced doors on, dug out coffins, smoothing the white wood out." From this nothing unusual or special is inferred or hinted at about the uncle or his work. The physical illustration of the uncle is connected to his work by the comparison of the smoothed white wood to the shine of "his short-sighted glasses," thus the poem changes subjects without losing any of the poem's consistency. The reader recognizes an abrupt shift at the beginning of the eleventh stanza with the very melancholy tone. The mood becomes more somber with the rest of the line, creating an image contrary to the one of a skilled and accomplished worker described in the preceding stanzas, "He was poor and most days he was hungry." The single line is a complete
Photography Timeline
Photography Timeline (Including some important historical events) We owe the name 'Photography' to Sir John Hershel, who first used the term in 1839, the year the photographic process became public. The word is derived from the Greek words for light and writing. Early Days It may seem strange but cameras existed long before photography. As far back as the 5th Century BC, an image of the outside scene was formed by sunlight through a small hole into a darkened room. This is known as a Camera Obscura which means 'Darkened Room'. 500- 800 The Camera Obscura was improved by utilising a simple lens at one end and a ground-glass screen at the other, upon which an image is projected. This is used as an aid to drawing and painting by artists including Vermeer, Caravaggio and Canaletto. 666 Isaac Newton demonstrated that light is the source of colour. He used a prism to split sunlight into its constituent colours and another to recombine them to make white light. 725 The German physicist Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers the basic principle of photography by noting that silver salts darken when exposed to light. 807- 808 Beethoven composes his Fifth Symphony. 802 Humphrey Davy reports to colleagues at a scientific society on the results of Thomas Wedgewood's experiments with silhouettes of leaves and other
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Can Creativity exist without emotion? First of all it is important to define how elaborate creativity is within the human mind, as well as concepts behind being creative. The idea of being creative means to create new thoughts but also new associations between what already exists in the mind and what does not. It is a phenomenon that creates a path for innovation and invention, and is most prominently seen in art and literature. "Creativity, it has been said, consists largely of re-arranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know." George Keller Creativity is stemmed from the information and experiences that are present around us in the world. From the information that our brain recieves, we process it and use it to shape the raw material that is seen in the real world (ie, paintings, etc). Before I continue it is important to define what emotion involves. Emotion can be defined as an engine that drives our actions. It can also be defined as a language that is exerted through our actions. Emotions are uncontrollable, they are a simple mental state that arises spontaneously. To expain the existance of creativity with emotion, I am going to use the example of an artist. When an artist creates a piece of work, he/she is usually absorbed in a mental state that has risen from past experiences and knowledge. The mental state creates a feeling (ie happpy, sad,
‘Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.’
'Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.' The study of the life and work of Oscar Wilde -the married homosexual, the Protestant Anglo-Irishman with Nationalist and Catholic sympathies- is characterised by his most famous literary device, the paradox, and nowhere is this more true than in his attitude to art. He was an aesthete who worshipped the cult of beauty and strove to live his life artistically yet he was unable to realise these high ideals in either his work or his life, inextricably linked as they were. Art was certainly the serious guiding principle in the life of Wilde the artist, but he compromised his aesthetic principles by his human inability to keep it, and thus himself, detached from serious ideas. On arriving in England, Wilde was initially seduced by the Oxford Aesthetes, who at that time were heavily inspired by the pre-Raphelite and Christian enthusiasms of Ruskin, and by his idea that art should remain true to nature. However, he soon fell under the more Decadent influence of his tutor, the German and Greek philosophy don Walter Pater, who had already published a number of essays on the subject of art, including one in 1866 in which he publicly declared his renunciation of Christianity in favour of 'a religion of art'1. Pater proposed in his collection of essays Studies in the History of the
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3. What does postmodernity do to art? Module code: SE3101 Student number: 0304705 Module title: Postmodernity I As a topic that has been repeatedly and exhaustively debated in recent years there are many theories circulating as to what postmodernism's real definition is. Although still largely undecided it is possible to isolate guidelines as to what cultural forms can be considered postmodern and what effects postmodernism has had on our culture. As knowing subjects we can identify postmodernism's impact on art; possibly a cultural area where its impact has been most profound. In contrast to film, literature and other cultural forms the most famous pieces of art are usually the ones considered to be the most innovative and, therefore, at least in the artistic world, postmodernism has been thrust into the mainstream. Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote 'The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982-1985' (1992) in which he made considerable attempt to define what postmodernism is and its role in culture and society. In this he stated that 'simplifying to the extreme...I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives'. In another attempt at a definition Dominic Striniti, cited in McGuigan (1999), identifies five defining characteristics of postmodern culture which include the breakdown of the distinction between culture and society; an emphasis on style at
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Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte was a master not only of the obvious, but of the obscure as well. In his artwork, Magritte toyed with everyday objects, human habits and emotions, placing them in foreign contexts and questioning their familiar meanings. He suggested new interpretations of old things in his deceivingly simple paintings, making the commonplace profound and the rational irrational. He painted his canvasses in the same manner as he lived his life -- in strange modesty and under constant analysis. Magritte was born in 1898 in the small town of Lessines, a cosmopolitan area of Belgium that was greatly influenced by the French. Twelve years later, Magritte, along with his parents and two younger brothers, moved to Châtelet, where the future artist studied sketching. On vacations with his grandmother and Aunt Flora during the summer months, Magritte frequented an old cemetery at Soignies. In this cemetery, Magritte often played with a little girl, opening trap doors and descending into underground vaults. This experience would prove a great influence upon his later artwork, as wooden caskets and granite tombstones recur in many of his paintings. Magritte also developed a fascination with religion around this time, often dressing up as a priest and holding mock mass services in complete seriousness. In 1912, Régina Bertinchamp, Magritte's mother, committed
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Lichtenstein "Roy Lichtenstein was the master of the stereotype, and the most sophisticated of the major Pop artists in terms of his analysis of visual convention and his ironic exploitation of past styles. The work for which he is now known was the product of a long apprenticeship. "He was born in New York City in October 1923. His parents were middle-class and he described himself as having had a quiet and uneventful childhood. Though art was not taught as part of the curriculum at his high school, in his junior year he started to draw and paint as a hobby. His first subjects were jazz musicians (the product of a youthful enthusiasm for their music), and his work was affected by Picasso's Blue and Rose Period paintings, which he knew from reproductions. "In his last year of high school, 1939, he enrolled for summer art classes at the Art Students' League under Reginald Marsh. His subject-matter was then strongly influenced by Marsh's own work. On his graduation from high school, Lichtenstein decided to leave New York and study art. He went to the School of Fine Arts at Ohio State University, but his artistic education was interrupted by the war. He was drafted in 1943 and served in Britain and continental Europe. During his time in the services he was able to do some work as an artist, particularly drawing from nature. Demobilized in 1946, he returned immediately to
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Persuasive Essay Nathan McLennan, 5 Kintyre B The Turner Prize Recently, considerable media attention has again been given to the critically acclaimed Turner Prize and its entries. The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist who is under 50 years old for an outstanding presentation or exhibition of their work in the twelve months preceding the judgement date (usually in May). The Prize was established by Tate's Patrons of New Art in 1984. The Turner Prize is widely recognised as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe. There are no surprises that a work of classical media (i.e. paint) failed to clinch the elusive prize, but paintings are rarely seen, or even short-listed. A few years ago, however, Chris Ofili's unusual portrayal of the mother of Christ done in acrylic, oils, glitter and elephant dung took first place - the closest thing to a traditional painting for a long time. Chris Ofili is renowned for his alternative approach to art. He is acclaimed in the art world, even though he uses elephant dung in his work - a passing nod to his roots in Zimbabwe and British Colonialism - and the generally offensive nature of his work. In fact, the mayor of New York threatened to cut the grant for the Manhattan museum of modern art unless the show which contained Ofili's work was cancelled. He specifically singled out some work,
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Joan Miró Spanish painter, whose surrealist works, with their subject matter drawn from the realm of memory and imaginative fantasy, are some of the most original of the 20th century. Miró was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona and studied at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts and the Academia Galí. His work before 1920 shows wide-ranging influences, including the bright colors of the Fauves, the broken forms of cubism, and the powerful, flat two-dimensionality of Catalan folk art and Romanesque church frescoes of his native Spain. He moved to Paris in 1920, where, under the influence of surrealist poets and writers, he evolved his mature style. Miró drew on memory, fantasy, and the irrational to create works of art that are visual analogues of surrealist poetry. These dreamlike visions, such as Harlequin's Carnival or Dutch Interior, often have a whimsical or humorous quality, containing images of playfully distorted animal forms, twisted organic shapes, and odd geometric constructions. The forms of his paintings are organized against flat neutral backgrounds and are painted in a limited range of bright colors, especially blue, red, yellow, green, and black. Amorphous amoebic shapes alternate with sharply drawn lines, spots, and curlicues, all positioned on the canvas with seeming nonchalance. Miró later produced highly generalized, ethereal works in which his