Discuss the use of the Uncanny by artists or designers in their work.
Discuss the use of the Uncanny by artists or designers in their work. The uncanny is "...that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar." (Freud, S. 124) In order to discuss the uncanny within the realm of Art, it is necessary to understand what the uncanny is. The uncanny has been a topic of interest since the 19th Century, therefore establishing the people behind the theory entails the analysis of Freud and Jentsch with particular reference to E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'The Sand-Man'. This is where the use of the word in this context originated from. This understanding can then be applied to artists or designers that used this in their work and for what reasons they did so. Sigmund Freud in 1919 wrote his essay 'The Uncanny', with the intention of discovering why a feeling of the uncanny can occur in some instances and not others. He felt that the uncanny was the feeling of what once had been repressed and then remembered in a new surrounding and so giving the familiar a sense of the unfamiliar. However the topic of the uncanny was first approached by Ernst Jentsch in 1906 with his essay 'On the Psychology of the Uncanny'. This was due to E.T.A Hoffmann's 'The Sand-Man', written in 1819 in German and is part of a series of short stories entitled 'The Night Pieces'. This would be classified as German Romantic literature. The
Illustrate and discuss the flaws in the contention that 'the camera never lies'.
Assignment 1 Illustrate and discuss the flaws in the contention that 'the camera never lies'. Everyday we are surrounded by hundreds of images, from family photos around the home and pictures in glossy magazines to advertisements in the streets. As we go about our daily lives we are unconsciously responding to vocal cues all the time. Photographs are being taken on a daily basis by different people, for different reasons and the diversity of the medium means that no two pictures ever look the same. While some people will earn a living from taking photographs others will use them to record a time (or memory) that they will be able to look back on in years to come. It is as much a profession as is it a pass time and the one thing that everyone who takes pictures has in common is the tool they use, the camera. The large range of cameras available in the shops reflects the popularity of the medium and means that everyone can be catered for, from children to the most dedicated professional. How well a photograph is taken will depend on many factors and the experience of the photographer will often be important but with the rise in digital photography and affordable photo editing packages for the computer the authenticity of photographs is now being questioned more often. The aim if this essay will be to investigate why people sometimes question the validity of photographs
Hermeneutic Interpretation of Pan's Labyrinth
. INTRODUCTION: HERMENEUTIC PHILOSOPHY The term hermeneutics is an old notion that was derived from Greek Myth and religion. It is believed to have come from ancient Greek's messenger, Hermes. He was the messenger for the Greek gods and basically had the task of mediating information from the gods to the people (Bleicher 1980: 12). The term itself has since developed and evolved quite a lot into its own autonomous philosophy. Hermeneutics (2008) explains that it exists as the study of understanding and interpreting of texts. These texts referred in the past exclusively to religious and biblical content but in the present it refers to anything from literature to film. The latter is my main concern in this essay as I will interpret a film hermeneutically and compare it to the author's view as well as alternative interpretations from other individuals. The film I felt appropriate to interpret is Guillermo Del Toro's El Laberinto Del Fauno. It has been internationally translated to Pan's Labyrinth to assist with English-speaking individuals. This has brought up some conflict because of what the word Pan refers to in Greek myth (Pan's Labyrinth: 2008). This does have a large influence on someone's prejudgment of the film if one is aware of these citations. The Greek god Pan is largely admired by numerous religions including the Pagans because of his relationship with nature. He
Artists of the early 20th century Modernist era often denied any influence by African sculpture in their work, yet there remains clear evidence that this influence did not just shape the aesthetic stylings of Western art, but helped to establish African a
Artists of the early 20th century Modernist era often denied any influence by African sculpture in their work, yet there remains clear evidence that this influence did not just shape the aesthetic stylings of Western art, but helped to establish African art as a distinct artistic form of its own. Discuss 'In the contemporary postcolonial era, the influence of traditional African aesthetics and processes is so profoundly embedded in artistic practice that it is only rarely evoked as such.' 'Traditional African Aesthetics: A Philosophical Perspective' by Innocent C. Onyewuenyi. There is a distinct contrast between the appreciation of art in African culture and in Western society; the Western concern with the conservation, preservation and appreciation of art within a home, museum or gallery setting, compared to the African sub-cultural concept of its relative use in everyday life. This is perhaps the primary reasons that many object of African art were placed within the categories of artefacts, handicrafts, folk or primitive art. The appreciation of African art, its conception, and execution within the native culture allows for the artist to be recognized for his/her relative importance; even though he or she may remain anonymous, the objects that have been designed become valuable as a reflection of the culture from which they are derived. The respect and value is held
VINCENT VAN GOGH - His Life And Works
VINCENT VAN GOGH His Life And Works The rapid evolution of a style characterized by canvases filled with swirling, bright colors depicting people and nature is the essence of Vincent van Gogh's extremely prolific but tragic short career. Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Holland, son of a Dutch calvinist1 minister and the eldest of six children. His brother Theo, who was four years younger, was to be enormously important in Vincent's life and in the evolution of his art. When Vincent was thirteen years old, he went to a boarding school. That next year he was sent to The Hague to work for his uncle Cent who was an art dealer, but van Gogh was unsuited for a business career. Actually, his early interests were in literature and religion. Very dissatisfied with the way people made money and imbued with a strong sense of mission, he worked for a while as a lay preacher among poverty-stricken miners. Van Gogh represented the religious society that trained him in a poor coal-mining district in Belgium. Vincent took his work so seriously that he went without food and other necessities so he could give more to the poor. The missionary society objected to Vincent's behavior and fired him in 1879. Heartsick, van Gogh struggled to keep going socially and financially, yet he was always rejected by other people, and felt lost and forsaken. In 1880, at age 27,
Why was the vote considered to be so important in first wave feminism?
Why was the vote considered to be so important in first wave feminism? Throughout this essay I intend to look at the period in history which defined first wave feminism and I seek to analyse why the vote was considered so important. To begin this essay I want to start with a discussion of the term 'first wave feminism' in order to get a better understanding of the subject. 1.First wave feminism refers to the first concerted movement working for the reform of women's social and legal inequalities in the nineteenth century. First wave feminists were those that fought for a woman's right to vote and achieved it, these women are often referred to as suffragists or suffragettes. Meanwhile the term suffrage refers to the mobilisation of the whole suffrage movement in America, England, Australia and New Zealand between the 1880s and 1920s. in comparison second wave feminism often refers to the increase in feminist activity which occurred in the late 1960s .For the purpose of this essay however I am going to focus predominantly on the feminist movement within Britain and America. The key themes concerning these first wave feminists centred around education, employment, and marriage laws. This movement was originally dominated by intelligent, middle-class, single women who were not that concerned by the problems facing women from the working classes. At the time these women did not
Vermeer's Secret Science
Vermeer's Secret Science CHRISTINA PARKER A great teacher once told me that the key to art is not to create, he said the only reason we have "old masters" is because they had "ideas". "Just as a Shakespeare created plays?" "Yes, he created, but is that the reason he is studied worldwide?" "Well, being the only known writer of the 15th century leaves him to be exclusively famous... does it not?" "No, minority did not exist within the arts centuries ago, as matter of fact there are thousands of artists from the past left anonymous." The answer was therein comprehended. It is the idea and creation behind a piece of art that makes it famous for hundreds of years after. Without it is would be an illustration or graphic or in plain English: Plagiarism. The historical academies have studied artifacts and mysteries of the past for centuries, which is most thoroughly claimed within our art history textbooks. However, it has evidently taken over five hundred years to question the embedded facts of part of our "accurate history." It seems as though the secret knowledge that has been possessed by few for centuries has slowly been seeping out. Some great artists of the past have used optics and mirrors to aid themselves within their masterpieces. Nonetheless, it has been understood that our great artistic masters of the past excelled in extraordinary hand-and-eye
How influential was Jan Van Eyck?
How influential was Jan Van Eyck? It is argued that the development of realism in the north could not have happened without the influence of Italian art. Such an argument however fails to consider that there was a strong tradition of realistic representation in the north; most evident in the sculptures of Carl Sluter. This realistic approach to depiction had in turn its roots in the Sienese art of the trecento whose influence underpinned the move towards realism in both the north and Italy. Therefore it can be argued that the advent of naturalistic depiction was not sudden, it did not suddenly appear with Van Eyck; he fits in with the natural development of the trend. However Van Eyck's influence is discernable in his approach. He takes realism further than any of his predecessors in its hair-splitting minuteness. His approach is akin to an attempt to get as close as possible to the perfection of God by trying to reconstruct reality down to its minutes detail. The care that Van Eyck took to depict in meticulous detail even the most insignificant object must have had a considerable impact in laying the foundations for the development of still-life, which became an important genre in Dutch and European art in subsequent centuries. The focused attention on every day objects, seeing them as sacred however insignificant, must have had an impact on the development of still-life.
WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTMODERN AESTHETICS? ANALYSE THE WORK OF AN ARTIST/WRITER IN ANY MEDIUM. HOW IS THIS WORK POSTMODERN?
2) WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF POSTMODERN AESTHETICS? ANALYSE THE WORK OF AN ARTIST/WRITER IN ANY MEDIUM. HOW IS THIS WORK POSTMODERN? Through an examination of postmodernism theory it can evidently be seen that it is fundamentally an aesthetic that has derived through the cultural movement of modernism. Through the differences between the movements, however, the characteristics of postmodern aesthetics, such as fragmentation of the individual subject, impossibility for originality, pastiche, self reflexivity, appropriation and bricolage, can be clearly distinguished. Through an examination of Baz Luhrmann's film's 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Moulin Rouge' in relation to such aesthetics it will be clearly seen how these works are undeniably postmodern. Postmodernism is a cultural movement which is seen to have evidently emerged in the 1960's. Many theorists believed that modernism had reached its full capability and that there was nothing else that could be achieved and therefore the notion of postmodernism is seen by many as marking the space of an era after modernism. Many postmodern theorists have based their work through the ideas the modernist movement brought forth: "Modernism lurks in its sequel, haunts it. The very fact that a phenomenon is called 'postmodernism'- that it differs from modernism by nothing more than a prefix- pays tribute to the power of modernism's
What is Musical Romanticism?
What is Musical Romanticism? A great number of musicians, poets, musicologists and critics have attempted a definition of the term 'Musical Romanticism' - but there has not been a single simple explanation of the expression so far. It seems even though the main characteristics of the Romantic period can be pinned down, it does neither necessarily mean that they can therefore be found in every piece of music composed during this era, nor that these characteristics will make any sense at first, because very often they are contradicting themselves. Thus a broad overview of the 19th century is the only possibility to understand what Musical Romanticism is and how it started, and how it more or less became the equivalent to the Sturm and Drang movement in German Romantic literature. There are basically three different definitions of the term 'Romanticism' in general, as discussed in D.G. Charlton's book on the French Romantics. The first possible meaning of the term describes a spiritual state that reached from the Middle Ages right through to the 20th century and therefore includes everything of the 'new age'. The second definition refers to 'Romantic' or 'Romanticism' as "imaginatively and emotionally inspired art"1, while the third description mentions the historical use of the term, referring to the so called 'Romantic movement' in all the arts, namely literature, art and