An Analysis of the Self in Falling Eyelids
Adal Maldonado or ADAL, is a contemporary Puerto Rican photographer born in 1948 in Utuado, Puerto Rico. He migrated to United States at a young age with his family. ADAL’s worked for more than thirty years, and his artwork is considered to be experimental, surreal and ethereal. It deals with the complex idea this artist has coined for the principles of identity. ADAL has created and developed an all new individuality and state of mind, embracing the ambiguity of the modern Puerto Rican situation. His works are many, but one of his older ones caught my attention: Falling Eyelids: A Foto Novela. It is an animated photo novel and book that contains a series of 120 individual photographs released in 1980.
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Foto-novelas, or illustrated novels, first appear in Italy in 1947, under the name of fumetti (Italian for puffs of smoke, in reference to speech bubbles commonly found in many comic books) (Baetens). This genre of literature, notable for its complex perspectives and dark imagery, had a rise in popularity for Latino and Chicano communities in the U.S, as well as Mexico and the rest of Latin America. The fotonovela provides for the Latino community in the United States a distinctive way to address social concerns through a different and unique visual manner. (ITS) It has been used increasingly by artists and writers to focus on different issues within these ethnic groups. The plots to these foto-novels are usually melodramatic, though some exhibit elements of film noir and the supernatural; others often carry strong idealist morals. (ITS) Nonetheless, many Latino artists have been heavily influenced by this form and have transformed the style to explore different subcultures, darker realities and questions of identity, such as ADAL in Falling Eyelids. Thus, the foto-novela as a medium to express abstract or surreal themes carries a social and historical context that is critical for the understanding of ADAL’s work and its defining artistic …show more content…
A total of three core sets of pictures can be observed throughout Falling Eyelids, for which I have coined the names the dreamer, the beach, and Él y Ella (him and her.) These three series of photographs show different stories, all intertwined by what I describe as a linear dreamscape. The events in Falling Eyelids are not real, as they figments of the subconscious brought up through dreams, “a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep (Merriam Webster).” This allusion is made deliberately in the title of the foto-novela: Falling Eyelids, for before dreaming one must close their eyes. It is dreaming that we get to appreciate one of ADAL’s major features in Falling Eyelids:
Ester Hernandez is a Chicana artist, best known for her works of Chicana women. Ester’s goal is to recreate women’s lives to produce positive images of women’s lifestyle and to create icons. Her piece, Frida y Yo, contains the iconic painter Frida Kahlo. Frida, after being in multiple accidents causing long-term pain and suffering, began painting, mostly self-portraits, to portray her reality and glorify the pain. Similar to how Hernandez's goals are a juxtaposition to Frida’s artwork, the art piece Frida y Yo creates a juxtaposition between life and suffering and death and fortune.
The window view also appears to look at solar/lunar eclipse. According to NASA, it seems to appear that there was both a solar and lunar eclipse that occurred in the month of October in 1995. Although, both occurs only took place in the Eastern side of the world. Moreover, the window is shown to be surrounded by a white sheer curtain. All aspects of this painting seem to represent who the artist is as a person; a feminist Chicana who often depicts a magical realistic realm in her paintings. In this essay, I will be discussing the feminist aspect, religious elements, and Chicano content Patssi Valdez explores in her work of art titled October/ Octubre.
A quick read of Ana Castillo’s poetry will provide a reader with a good knowledge of the style she uses. The style used in “Seduced by Natassja Kinski” and “El Chicle” is conveyed vividly. A key ingredient to Castillo’s style is imagery. Castillo uses imagery to portray the environment, object movements, emotions, and everything else that is of utmost importance. Also important to Castillo’s style is her choice of words.
In this work, the colors and shapes come together to form the depiction of a woman in a chair gazing out at the landscape beyond a window. This subject matter relates to Picasso’s infamous relationship with women and may serve as a depiction of one of the many women he was linked with. The painting depicts the woman with a dual omniscient and introspective vision. Picasso develops this dichotomy through the depiction of a wayward eye gazing out the window and a larger ubiquitous eye glaring directly at the viewers. In constructing such a contrast, the painter is able to convey the personality...
Stephen King’s perception in “The Symbolic Language of Dreams” gave me a new, profound insight on dreams. On the other hand, his interpretations also made me realize how little is known about them and their significance to our lives.
Diego Rivera was deemed the finest Mexican painter of the twentieth century; he had a huge influence in art worldwide. Rivera wanted to form his own painting fashion. Although he encountered the works of great masters like Gauguin, Renoir, and Matisse, he was still in search of a new form of painting to call his own (Tibol, 1983). His desire was to be capable of reaching a wide audience and express the difficulties of his generation at the same time, and that is exactly what h...
In Ernesto Sabato’s The Tunnel, dreams reveal Juan Pablo Castel’s obscure and conflicting personality. Castel has lived a life of isolation, despair, and one that has been both solitary and lonesome. His existence becomes meaningful when a young lady named Maria takes notice of an abstract window within one of his paintings. Maria becomes his obsession; he seeks solace and refuge through her. Castel’s dreams unveil his true motivations for obsessing over Maria; they help to display his need for meaning, love, affection and attention. His dreams symbolize his ambiguous and construed emotions as well as foreshadow upcoming events in his life. By making the dreams complex and enigmatic, Sabato is able to mimic Castel’s mindset. Through this ulterior reality, Castel is able to escape, rationalize, and realize his multiple problems.
The essay How You See Yourself by Nicholas Mirzoeff discusses the evolution of art. The author discusses the use of art to represent changing identities over the years including cultural practices and societal expectations. The selfie, according to Nicholas Mirzoeff’s essay, is the equivalent of a self-portrait in the previous centuries preceding the technological development required for the present day selfie. The essay explores the different periods and the significance of art, particularly self-portraits, the selfies of the time, and their development over time. The author focuses on different themes including heroism, gender definition, and the focus of an image. Mirzoeff effectively provides examples illustrating and reinforcing the themes he highlights in his essay.
“Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night-sky, each with a star dissolved in the blue.” This elaborate simile creates a mental image of the natural beauty of the young princess, Irene, by comparing her eyes to the night sky. The simile also parallels the depth of Irene’s soul to the dark, endless night sky.
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,
Condensation and displacement are two types of transformation, which connect to the different structure level of the dreams (the manifest contents and the latent dream-thoughts). They are used to “encode” the dreams and “repress” the consciousness. Condensation is one or more common elements that are packed together forming a composite picture with contradictory details when constructing a dream-situation. Condensation, as Freud describes, “is the most important and peculiar characteristics of the dream-work” (154). Besides condensation, displacement has its own significance. The dream content seems to have a different centre from its dream-thoughts (155) within displacement. The latent dream-thoughts are pr...
This book is a note written by Roland Barthes to record the dialectical way he thought about the eidos(form, essence, type, species) of Photographs. Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist in his lifetime, but surprisingly he was not a photographer. As Barthes had a belief that art works consists with signs and structures, he had investigated semiotics and structuralism. However, through Camera Lucida, he realized the limitation of structuralism and the impression to analyze Photography with only semiotics and structuralism. Barthes concludes with talking about unclassifiable aspects of Photography. I could sense the direction Barthes wanted to go through the first chapter ‘Specialty of the Photograph’. He tried to define something by phenomenology
Williams, Bruce. "The Reflection of a Blind Gaze: Maria Luisa Bemberg, Filmmaker." A Woman's Gaze: Latin American Women Artists. Ed. Marjorie Agosin. New York; White Pine Press, 1998. 171-90.
Through Frida Kahlo’s extensive self-portrait pieces, audiences are able to view her life in an almost biographical way. Each portrait conveys deep emotion and meaning, and carry a story which Kahlo has experienced. Her self-portraits are very personal, and overall show just how tragic her life had been.