Art and Reproduction: Joan of Arc Images

936 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: reflection to the messenger the story of joan of arc

In the Wallach Gallery exhibition of Anna Hyatt Huntington’s sculpture (1876-1973), the viewer gets to discover different versions of the emblematic figure that is Joan of Arc, from small bronze medals, to much bigger works of art. A digital replication of the initial statue that was unveiled at Riverside Drive and 93rd Street in December 1915 is also available the public in the gallery. The success of the Joan of Arc – or The Maid of Orleans’s depictions results from the symbol that she fosters in European and American culture: a French medieval patriotic heroine who received visions directly from God and who was told to help France combat the English domination and who died burned at the stake, as a martyr.
She indeed survives through the manifold representations that have been made of this historic and popular figure. It is arguable that those layers of representations equate to 'copies' of Joan of Arc herself : copies of a lost original, recreated every time it is represented by a different artist, or narrator. And now, we have a copy of a 1915 representation of Joan of Arc - or, might one say, a copy of a copy of Joan of Arc.
But what is the real value of a copy? Is the statue on Riverside Drive worth more than the other representations that are exhibited in the Wallach Gallery? What brings the rotational photography to the initial work of art? Is something lost with the evolution of reproductive imagery, like the emotion of the instant, the spontaneity of the artist’s hand - the 'aura' of the original (as Walter Benjamin called it)?

Joan of Arc’s images all over the world breed symbols of patriotism, linked with French nationalism, fresh youth, and fair sex. She inspired hundreds of works of art, from plaster casts to re...

... middle of paper ...

...g digital museums already exists, because it would allow more people to discover works of art that are much in demand, without having to queue and be surrounded by people. The progresses in digital imagery are going to get even more faultless, but one should remember that it remains a copy, and that nothing is worth being transported by the emotion and the magic of contemplating the work of art itself.

Works Cited

Todorov, Tzvetan. Theories of the Symbol. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1982. Print.
Catalogue, Wallach Gallery Anna Hyatt Huntington exhibition
Coyle, Laura. Universal Patriot: Joan of Arc in America During the Gilded Age and the Great War and America. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art in Association with D. Giles, 2006. Print.
Benjamin, Walter, and J. A. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Beyond The Myth Summary

    1702 Words  | 4 Pages

    Joan of Arc was born in 1412 in Domremy, France. Her family consisted of peasants, including her mother, Isabelle Romee, father, Jacques d'Arc, one of the leaders of the village for collecting taxes and being the head of the town’s watch, her sister, Catherine, and three other brothers. The family lived in a small farmhouse near the village’s church, where Joan would tend the animals. Throughout her childhood to death, Joan lived through the Hundred Year War, a civil war between the French Royalists and the Anglo-Burgundians allied with the English as the war was simply a feud for the French throne as the rightful French king and the

    Read More

  • Reproduction Businesses of Thomas Kinkade?s painting

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    When I read the article by Susan Orlean, I am very aware of the big business Thomas Kinkade is trying to create by reproducing his original paintings mechanically using digital technique, but I have also carefully examined whether this article which discusses about the reproduction of his art works has a correlation with Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.

    Read More

  • Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall Analysis

    1001 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through the analysis of Thérésia Cabarus’s portrait, Amy Freund attempts to examine Cabarus’s failure to “create a feminine version of political agency through portraiture” in order to provide insight into the unfulfilled promises of female citizenship during the French Revolution. She asserts that, through the use of a combination of imagery associated with revolutionary femininity, including the emphasis on the sitter’s physical passivity and sentimental attachments, and conventions usually associated with male portraiture, Cabarrus and Laneuville, the painter, attempted to present her portrait as an argument for women to be granted an active role in revolutionary politics. Freund suggests that the portrait failed to achieve its goals because it recalled the Terror and the disunity of France in addition to invoking the “anxiety surrounding the increased visibility of women in post-Thermidorean social life and visual representation.” Because of its relative failure, Freund considers Cabarrus’s portrait a symbol of the “possibilities and limitations of female agency in Revolutionary portraiture and politics” as well as a shift in portraiture; as she remarks, “portraiture after 1789 shouldered the burdens formerly borne by history

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Fahrenheit 451

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she claimed to have communicated directly with God, an act of heresy against the Roman Catholic Church. In the painting, she is shown looking up towards the heavens in direct defiance of those punishing her for her belief. In her moments before death she is not crying or screaming but looks to be praying, maybe even hearing the voice of God in that moment. The crowd is in shadow, the sky is dark except a break in the clouds above her, showing a white fluffy cloud and a blue sky. She stands out brightly against the rest of the painting, wearing all white and cream, like an angel. Like Montag, her enlightenment is the root of her

    Read More

  • Joan of Arc

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    About six hundred years ago in Europe, the French and the English were fighting for the French throne. Charles VII, the dauphin, was fighting against Henry VI, the King of England (Clin, 3). This war, later known as the Hundred Years’ War, took place during the 15th century. Joan of Arc, a peasant girl from Domrémy, joined the side of the dauphin after voices that she claimed came from saints, instructed her to help (Schmalz). Her influence brought about the end of the siege on Orléans and the coronation of King Charles. Joan was able to rally the French forces and turn the momentum of the entire war around (Clin, 3). Despite being a woman in a time when females were subjugate to males, Joan of Arc was the most influential warrior in the Hundred Years’ War because her leading role in the break of the siege on Orléans, the crowning of the king and her symbolic significance for France were major turning points in the war.

    Read More

  • Character Analysis Of Edith Wharton's House Of Mirth

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    This anxiety is at the heart of Lily’s conflict with her society. The choice of the |Mrs. Lloyd” painting also hearkens to this theme. Reynolds made the choice to depict his subject wrapped in the cloths of antiquity. In his epoch, at the late 18th century, the neoclassical genre was in its heyday and just as the New Yorkers of the Gilded Age looked to Europe for cultural esteem, so too were the neoclassicist looking backwards, but to ancient Rome and Greece. The anxiety of influence in the scene from the novel is thus tripled upon itself so that the reader experiences it as the influence of Rome, on Europe, on New York, and finally on Lily. As the tip of this inverted pyramid, Lily must perform a fine balancing act and be representative of the natural beauty of classical forms, the elegance and refinement of aristocratic Europe, and the culmination of both in the great American experiment. She literally represents herself as all of these facets in the tableaux vivants, and as such achieves a sense of “eternal harmony” that Selden notes in her in that

    Read More

  • Watteau And Fragonard: A Feminist Analysis

    756 Words  | 2 Pages

    Epitomizing love and passion in heterosexual courtship, women on swings remained a major motif in eighteenth century French art as demonstrated in the works of Watteau and Fragonard. Although women and swings in art have appeared from ancient Crete to pre-Columbian Middle America, the motif in the Rococo era of French art preceding the demise of the extravagant Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette remained pivotal, accompanied by the ornamentation of Rococo art and its characteristic softness reminiscent to love and playfulness. With love and folly a major focus in the ever-so decorative Rococo pieces of Watteau and Fragonard, Posner explores how the motif further established sexist notions of women and contributed to an erotic factor.

    Read More

  • An Essay On Joan Of Arc

    1447 Words  | 3 Pages

    Denis, Leon. The Mystery of Joan of Arc. Trans. A. C. Doyle. New York: E. P. Dutton &

    Read More

  • Joan of Arc

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    The accomplishments Joan achieved affected life in the Renaissance and even life today. Her success and dedication brought new hope to war-weary people, and drove the English out of France (Pegues par 1). Because of Joan, Charles VII reached his rightful place at throne and stayed there even 30 years after Joan’s Death (Gascoigne par 2). During her lifetime many people thought she used sorcery to convince people, but when she died people realized that indeed, she was divinely led (Gale Free Resources par 18). Joan’s legend of dedication and belief will always be in the world’s heart.

    Read More

  • RH

    727 Words  | 2 Pages

    The fifteenth century was a gruesome era in world history. Church and state were not separated which caused many problems because the Church officials were often corrupt. The story of Joan of Arc, portrayed by George Bernard Shaw, impeccably reflects the Church of the 1400’s. Joan, a French native, fought for her country and won many battles against England. But Joan’s imminent demise came knocking at her door when she was captured by the English. She was charged with heresy because the armor she wore was deemed for men only but she justified her actions by stating that God told her to do it. Today, Joan of Arc would be diagnosed schizophrenic because of the voices in her head but she would still be respected for serving in the military. But in the fifteenth century, she was labeled as nothing more than a deviant. She was tried and the Inquisitor characterized her as a beast that will harm society. Through his sophistic reasoning, loaded diction, and appeals to pathos and ethos, the Inquisitor coaxed the court into believing Joan was a threat to society and she had to pay the ultimate price.

    Read More

  • Revolutionary Work of Art

    1861 Words  | 4 Pages

    Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. 1051-1071

    Read More

  • Joan Of Arc Dbq

    1190 Words  | 3 Pages

    “I was in my thirteen year I heard a voice from god to help me govern my conduct and the first time I was very much afraid.”Joan of Arc was this girl who wanted to be in the military to go save France but they would not allow her to so she dressed up as a man and went and lead an army.Joan of Arc was not allowed in the military because she was a girl so she disguised herself as a man.Joan of Arc,a women who wanted to fight for her country,was forced to disguise herself as a man in order to be accepted as an equal in society and accomplish her goal.Joan of Arc’s goal was to Patron Saint of France.

    Read More

  • Elisabeth Louise Vigée- Lebrun

    2103 Words  | 5 Pages

    Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was one of the most successful painters of her time. Over the course of her life, spanning from 1755-1842, she painted over 900 works. She enjoyed painting self portraits, completing almost 40 throughout her career, in the style of artists she admired such as Peter Paul Rubens (Montfort). However, the majority of her paintings were beautiful, colorful, idealized likenesses of the aristocrats of her time, the most well known of these being the Queen of France Marie Antoinette, whom she painted from 1779-1789. Not only was Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun the Queen’s portrait painter for ten years, but she also became her close, personal friend. She saw only the luxurious, carefree, colorful, and fabulous lifestyle the aristocracy lived in, rather than the poverty and suffrage much of the rest of the country was going through. Elisabeth kept the ideals of the aristocracy she saw through Marie Antoinette throughout her life, painting a picture of them that she believed to be practically perfect. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s relationship with Marie Antoinette affected her social standing, politics, painting style, and career.

    Read More

  • Joan Of Arc: The Hero Of Joan Of Arc

    1470 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ter Joan of Arc died her family and her friends came to Pope Calixtus III and he reinvestigated Joan’s trial. After doing so, he proclaimed that Joan’s trial was “full of iniquity” and had “manifest errors in fact as in law.” Joan was proclaimed innocent. In 1869, the bishops and archbishops of France petitioned that Joan be canonized as a saint. In 1920, the act of her canonization was fulfilled and now she stands as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

    Read More

  • The French Revolution & Art

    2050 Words  | 5 Pages

    O’Donnell, Sr., Joseph J.. “Art and the French Revolution”. The Eerie Digest, May 2013. Web. 5th May 2013.

    Read More

More about Art and Reproduction: Joan of Arc Images

Open Document