Drawing from a wide range of theoretical fields, both Michael North in “Stein, Picasso, and African Masks,” and John Carlos Rowe in “Naming What is Inside,” analyze Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives, engaging the text as a means by which to understand the birth of literary and aesthetic modernism and as a way to explore Stein’s conceptions of the dichotomies brought up by race, gender, culture and geography. The two critical essays approach Three Lives by engaging “masking” as a technique by which to demonstrate the “conventionality” of a subject, and as an integral development in Stein’s creation of American modernism. Stein and Pablo Picasso, her friend and contemporary, both used masking as an aesthetic means by which to alter the nature of an initial subject. Inspired by African masks, Picasso painted a mask on a portrait of Stein, while Stein rewrote her own story, first captured in Q.E.D., into the black characters of the central tale in Three Lives. In doing so, North argues, Stein both invited her white readers to live in to her characters, and allowed herself to see both race and gender as a “role,” not as a biologically predetermined attribute. At the same time, the literary and linguistic mask establishes itself as representative of freedom from European “convention” and as an example of nature and freedom, but also as a construction, a cultural convention and restriction fin and of itself. The usage of the mask, for North, represents the breaking down of the dichotomy between “impersonality and individuality, [and] conventional representation and likeness.” Rowe visits North’s assertion that the role of the mask, as applied to visual art, is “convention embodied, the sign of signs,” which exposes the structure of art b... ... middle of paper ... ... concluding that Stein’s style serves to “destabilize prevailing racial and ethnic stereotypes,” Rowe constructs a framework through which to understand Three Lives as a proposal of an alternative to “rationalist and technocratic social values,” and as an exploration of literary representation. Together, the two essays build an image of Stein’s use of language and structure as a means by which to escape conventional preconceptions and representations, and to begin an exploration of American literary modernism. Works Cited North, Michael. “Stein, Picasso, and African Masks.” In Three Lives and Q.E.D., edited by Marianne DeKoven, 429-440. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006. Rowe, John Carlos. “What Is Inside: Gertrude Stein’s Use of Names in Three Lives.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 36, 2 (Spring 2003): 219-243. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346127
After reviewing Jacob Lawrence’s direct and dramatic paintings, it was clear that his painting helped him express himself. The painting was and still is a product of the economic and cultural self-determination that African-American dealt in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, during the migration and still evident in society today. The visual qualities in Jacob Lawrence artwork that is appealing are the vibrant colors and his clever way of self-expressing the time he was so familiar. In final analysis, his artwork expressed how he felt about his environment and what his perspective were during that time. And, how restrained his painting were, for instance, Street Scene – Restaurant, even though African- Americans had access to restaurants in the neighboring area but, he still place patriot outside the restaurant waiti...
Hayashi, Tetsumaro. A New Study Guide to Steinbeck's Major Works, with Critical Explications. Scarecrow Press, Jan 1, 1993
In fact, it is clear to the reader that Huggins makes a concerted effort to bring light to both ethnicities’ perspectives. Huggins even argues that their culture is one and the same, “such a seamless web that it is impossible to calibrate the Negro within it or to ravel him from it” (Huggins, 309). Huggins argument is really brought to life through his use of historical evidence found in influential poetry from the time period. When analyzing why African Americans were having an identity crisis he looked to a common place that African American looked to. Africa was a common identifier among the black community for obvious reasons and was where Authors and Artists looked for inspiration. African American artists adopted the simple black silhouette and angular art found in original African pieces. Authors looked to Africa in their poetry. In The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes, the names of rivers in Africa such as the Euphrates, the Congo and the Nile were all used and then the scene switches to the Mississippi river found in America showing that blacks have “seen”, or experienced both. Huggins looks deeply into Countee Cullen’s Heritage discussing “what is Africa to me?” a common identifier that united black artistry in the Harlem Renaissance, “Africa? A book one thumbs listlessly, till slumber comes” (Countee). The black community craved to be a separate society from white Americans so they were forced to go back to the past to find their heritage, before America and white oppression. Huggins finds an amazing variety of evidence within literature of this time period, exposing the raw feelings and emotion behind this intellectual movement. The connections he makes within these pieces of poetry are accurate and strong, supporting his initial thesis
In Stein’s book, “Tender Buttons”, she was also to use symbols to elaborate diversities of the meaning using symbols. In the object section’s a cup and sugar, “Enthusiastically hurting a clouded yellow bud and saucer, enthusiastically so is the bite in the ribbon” The whole poem have no words that is related to sugar nor cup. Because of its ambiguous but open feeling, people can interpret anyway using their own perception. Yet, the variations of the meanings is the consequence of differnet peception who have different walks of life.When we are little, though we are not concious about the enviroment, we have perceptions. In spite of the fact that the perceptions might be consiered naive but it is our
John Gardner: Making Life Art as a Moral Process. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. 86-110. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed.
DuBois had to draw a line betweeen how others perceived him and his own self perception. He also had to experience and grow inside and outside of the veil, the racialized boundary created by the dominant culture of the Europeans. Yet there were times when he managed to amuse himself within the veil and make the most of the life he was born into.
Prior to these encounters, Black women and black femininity were always hidden behind a veil. This veil is a metaphor connoting the invisibility of African American females. As Barbara Smith critiques, “at a time where women studies were about white women, black studies were about black men.” (quoted in Wallace-Sanders et.al, 1) There was no room for discussion about black women; they were pushed into the cracks of obscurity. In a period where the female nude was a trending pass time a...
Toni Morrison allows her readers to explore race through their own perspectives by not explicitly identifying the race of the two main characters in her only short story, “Recitatif.” By withholding this information, Morrison enables the reader to apply their own prejudices to their understanding of the characters’ identities. Reading “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop and “Recitatif” by Morrison together creates a deeper understanding about societal standards and establishing one’s own identity than evaluating either piece alone.
...e multiplicity of meaning embedded in these works suggests the importance of the body as a liminal site, a site of inscription and meaning making, in both historical-contemporary and more recent feminist work. It is, of course, unlikely that Antin or Kraus draws directly upon any singular theory explicated in this essay. Both artists are, however, undeniably interested in the formations, constructions, and shifts of subjectivity. Both Carving: A Traditional Sculpture and Aliens and Anorexia address the body’s uncontained boundaries, exploding the dual Cartesian model of interior/exterior self. As feminist artists, both Antin and Kraus are also surely aware of the complexity of discourses around food, self, and the body. Through the artists may not be speaking “to” or “through” any particular theoretical model, they are contributing to these discourses all the same.
Durkheim and DuBois are both Non rational, Collective thinkers whose actions are motivated by morals and ethics, principles, practices, beliefs, habits, or passion, and the lives of the past are patterns, which are the result of the futures’ fundamental formation. Both theorists have concepts, and studies which overlap with one another, and both theorists can be combined in their ideas through W.E.B. Du Bois’ classical work The Souls of Black Folks. In the book the metaphorical veil is brought to attention as the visual manifestation of the colour line, while in Durkheim’s theories the symbolic veil can be viewed as a sacred and profane object. Durkheim’s theory of the collective representation ties in to the depiction of the blacks and the prejudice behind the veil within society.
Angeles, Los. (2009). African arts. Volume 28. Published by African Studies Center, University of California.
Heller, Joseph. The Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism. Twentieth-Century American Literature Vol. 3. New York. Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
Mr. Berger states in his essay, “The reciprocal nature of vision is more fundamental than that of a spoken dialogue. And often dialogue is an attempt to verbalize this- an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, “you see things” (120). This statement is a use of the rhetorical strategy, ethos, which is what Mr. Berger uses to gain influence and trust with the academic audience that he is intending to instill new knowledge in. This is a strong use of ethos that leads into how art is viewed so
In Ralph Ellison’s novel The Invisible man, the unknown narrator states “All my life I had been looking for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was…I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself the question which I, and only I, could answer…my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!” (13). throughout the novel, the search for identity becomes a major aspect for the narrator’s journey to identify who he is in this world. The speaker considers himself to be an “invisible man” but he defines his condition of being invisible due to his race (Kelly). Identity and race becomes an integral part of the novel. The obsession with identity links the narrator with the society he lives in, where race defines the characters in the novel. Society has distinguished the characters in Ellison’s novel between the African and Caucasian and the narrator journey forces him to abandon the identity in which he thought he had to be reborn to gain a new one. Ellison’s depiction of the power struggle between African and Caucasians reveals that identity is constructed to not only by the narrator himself but also the people that attempt to influence. The modernized idea of being “white washed” is evident in the narrator and therefore establishes that identity can be reaffirmed through rebirth, renaming, or changing one’s appearance to gain a new persona despite their race. The novel becomes a biological search for the self due through the American Negroes’ experience (Lillard 833). Through this experience the unknown narrator proves that identity is a necessary part of his life but race c...
Picasso’s painting of a man’s head takes many aspects of African art. Picasso had reduced the bust to a few simple shapes and large masses, with the head having an African mask-like appearance. The highly stylized lozenge-shaped eyes and mouth are dark, open voids and were inspired by wooden African masks that the natives of Africa wore in their spiritual rituals. The piece is reminiscent of the same forms that Africans used in their art, using only simple shapes with dark, wide eyes and mouths, and visual abstraction rather than naturalistic representation.