Caroline Space
AH 4110 – The Photograph in Contemporary Art
A. Grundberg
5 December 2013
REVISED PAPER
Taryn Simon was born in New York in 1975. Simon's photography consists of a triad of equal elements: photography, design, and text. Her works examine the impracticality of complete knowledge and unlocks the gap between image and text, where confusion arises, and ambiguity is strong. She archives subjects that do not “officially exist, did not happen, and cannot be seen. Others who possess this urge generally write fiction.” (Simon).
Simon strives to photograph the impossible and the secrets we do not even know exist. She is predominately a conceptual photographer whose photojournalistic work is process oriented and layered. She often combines her large format pictures with panels of text, confusing the linear formation of a visual sense and demanding a more in-depth dissection of what is in the image. Michel Foucault has given us the death of authorship in a society that generates more artists than ever before (Foucault). The attempt to expose language becomes an unreliable exercise in accurate representation through the act of writing. The images and text are not complete individually; paradoxically utilizing language systems deconstructs meaning. Nevertheless, this is the condition in which Simon makes a lot of her work—this shifts reality.
The most common critical writings on Simon’s work defines her within one or another mode of realism—the hyperreal or aestheticized realism (Ulrich). Hyperreality is as a notion in what is considered real and fiction are effortlessly mixed together so that there is no clear division between where one ends, and the other begins. The layers within image frequently are a depiction of visualization dictated to the exposure of secret places and disclosure of unrequited objects.
Jean Baudrillard defines hyperreality as "the
Dialogue and characterization are effectively employed by Ruta Sepetys to create a forced atmosphere where choices are limited. Told from the perspective of an adolescent girl, Lina, the excerpt portrays a character who combats between appearance and her own ‘reality’ through her artistic expression. Her drawings are “very realistic” because she draws them based on her view of the world (Sepetys). In the ‘real world’, however, they appear to be rather unflattering and therefore, although she “longs to draw” it as she sees, she is forced to conform (Sepetys). In Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys, through the utilization of dialogue, imagery and characterization, conveys the contrast between reality and appearance in the protagonists’ artistic interpretations in order to convey the contextual setting of the novel.
In society we are surrounded by images, immersed in a visual world with symbols and meaning created through traditional literary devices, but augmented with the influence of graphics, words, positioning and colour. The images of Peter Goldsworthy’s novel, Maestro (1989) move within these diameters and in many ways the visions of Ivan Sen’s film Beneath Clouds (2002) linger in the same way. Both these texts explore themes of appearance versus reality and influence of setting, by evoking emotion in the responder through their distinctively visual elements.
All in all, I found the exploration of reality in Young Goodman Brown to be pivotal in its own right, as the function of "reality" and what defines it in literature and its effect not only depends on the author and the content of the work itself. Instead, the transactional nature of art requires a meshing of ideals and experiences to come together to create meaning independent of a single idea or concept.
Words can have a profound, meaningful impact that may alter, shift, and even end lives. In “Create Dangerously”, Edwidge Danticat reveals how words crafted her reality and identity as a woman who lived through a dictatorship. “Create Dangerously” is a nonfiction essay and memoir that focuses on the impact of literature not only in dire times, but in everyday life. Through the use of detail, allusions, and vivid recounting of the past in her writing, Danticat reveals importance and valor of creating art in times where art is a death sentence, and how this belief shaped her identity.
ABSTRACT: British Avant-Garde art, poses a challenge to traditional aesthetic analysis. This paper will argue that such art is best understood in terms of Wittgenstein¡¦s concept of "seeing-as," and will point out that the artists often use this concept in describing their work. This is significant in that if we are to understand art in terms of cultural practice, then we must actually look at the practice. We will discuss initiatives such as the work of Damien Hirst, most famous for his animals in formaldehyde series, and that of Simon Patterson, who warps diagrams, e.g., replacing the names of stops on London Underground maps with those of philosophers. Cornelia Parker¡¦s idea that visual appeal is not the most important thing, but rather that the questions that are set up in an attempt to create an "almost invisible" art are what are central, will also be discussed. Also, if we concur with Danto¡¦s claims that "contemporary art no longer allows itself to be represented by master narratives," that Nothing is ruled out.", then it is indeed fruitful to understand art in terms of seeing-as. For application of this concept to art explains what occurs conceptually when the viewer shifts from identifying a work, as an art object, and then as not an art object, and explains why nothing is ruled out.
I keep my journal hidden; the script, the drawings, the color, the weight of the paper, contents I hope never to be experienced by another. My journal is intensely personal, temporal and exposed. When opening the leather bound formality of Alice Williamson's journal a framework of meaning is presupposed by the reader's own feelings concerning the medium. Reading someone else's diary can be, and is for myself, an voyeuristic invasion of space. The act of reading makes the private and personal into public. Yet, for Alice Williamson and many other female journalists of the Civil War period, the journal was creating a public memory of the hardship that would be sustained when read by others. The knowledge of the outside reader reading of your life was as important as the exercise of recording for one's self; creating a sense of sentimentality connecting people through emotions. (Arnold)
Though people can look into color and composition, others can still even look into the source of the art itself. Cole goes deeper, delving into the source of the art, looking in particular into the idea of cultural appropriation and the view a person can give others. Though it is good for people to be exposed to different opinions of a group or an object, sometimes people can find it difficult to tell the difference between the reality and the art itself. Sometimes art can be so powerful that its message stays and impacts its audience to the point where the viewer’s image of the subject of the art changes entirely. Cole brings up an important question about art, however. Art has become some kind of media for spreading awareness and even wisdom at times, but in reality, “there is also the question of what the photograph is for, what role it plays within the economic circulation of images” (973). Cole might even be implying that Nussbaum’s advertisement can sometimes be the point of some media, and that sometimes the different genres of art can just be to make someone with a particular interest happy. One more point that Cole makes is that “[a]rt is always difficult, but it is especially difficult when it comes to telling other people’s stories.” (974) Truthfully, awareness and other like-concepts are difficult to keep going when a person or a group is not directly involved.
Heterochromia Iridis is the Greek term for “differently colored irises”. More popularly known as just heterochromia, as the term is described two different-colored eyes that are on the same being. Heterochromia is most commonly found in cats. Instead of calling the condition heterochromia, the term often used for cats is “odd-eyed”. Along with heterochromia, however it has been supposedly known to be linked to other disorders, such as deafness making odd-eyed cats can be more vulnerable to. While heterochromia is usually present when the disorder; deafness is found, heterochromia in cats does not stimulate hearing loss than normally would, because how the mutation develops doesn't contributed to the linked condition, the certain breeds who are more susceptible to heterochromia along with the other associated disorder, and one known condition (hearing loss) linked to cats with heterochromia.
Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Cindy Sherman grew up in suburban Huntington Beach on Long Island, the youngest of five children and had a regular American childhood. She was very self-involved, found of costumes, and given to spending hours at the mirror, playing with makeup (Schjeldahl 7). Cindy Sherman attended the state University College at Buffalo, New York, where she first started to create art in the medium of painting. During her college years, she painted self-portraits and realistic copies of images that she saw in photographs and magazines. Yet, she became less, and less interested in painting and became increasingly interested in conceptual, minimal, performance, body art, and film alternatives (Sherman 5). Sherman’s very first introductory photography class in college was a complete failure for she had difficulties with the technological aspects of making a print. After her disastrous first attempt in photography, Sherman discovered Contemporary Art, which had a profound and lasting effect on the rest of her artistic career (Thames and Hudson 1). Sherman’s first assignment in her photography class was to photograph something which gave her a problem, thus, Sherman chose to photograph her self naked. While this was difficult, she learned that having an idea was the most important factor in creating her art, not so much the technique that she used.
The camera is presented as a living eye in her work, capable of bending and twisting, contorting reality in its own light. It is at the same time a sensuous device, one that exp...
Since its emergence over 30,000 years ago, one of visual art’s main purposes has been to act as an instrument of personal expression and catharsis. Through the mastery of paint, pencil, clay, and other mediums, artists can articulate and make sense of their current situation or past experiences, by portraying their complex, abstract emotions in a concrete form. The act of creation gives the artist a feeling of authority or control over these situations and emotions. Seen in the work of Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, Jean Michel-Basquiat, and others, artists’ cathartic use of visual art is universal, giving it symbolic value in literature. In Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
Literary realism has been defined by George J. Becker in an essay called Modern Language Quarterly with three criteria: “verisimilitude of detail…an effort to approach the norm of experience…and an objective, so far as an artist can achieve objectivity, rather than a subjective or idealistic view of human nature and experience” (Pizer 1). This, however, is not the only definition of realism that exists. Donald Pizer proposed to define realism as is applied to the “late nineteenth-century American novel” (2). This is important ...
From the creation of art to its modern understanding, artists have strived to perform and perfect a photo realistic painting with the use of complex lines, blend of colors, and captivating subjects. This is not the case anymore due to the invention of the camera in 1827, since it will always be the ultimate form of realism. Due to this, artists had the opportunities to branch away from the classical formation of realism, and venture into new forms such as what is known today as modern art. In the examination of two well known artists, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock, we can see that the artist doesn’t only intend for the painting to be just a painting, but more of a form of telling a scene through challenging thoughts, and expressing of the artists emotion in their creation.
" Architecture and Autobiography in "The Revolt of 'Mother'"" American Literary Realism 40.1 (2008): 66-82 American Literary Realism. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty(tm)s Photography: Images into Fiction. Critical Essays on Eudora Welty. W. Craig Turner and Lee Emling Harding. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1989. 288-289.