Although Innocence is a fictional piece of literature it is still clear that McGuinness has indeed explored the real life artist Caravaggio and his art within the play. McGuinness has showed both in Innocence and also Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme that he has a great interest in the persona of the artists themselves. It is through both the strong characters of Caravaggio and Pyper and the world McGuinness has placed them in that we get a true sense of McGuinness’ plays as exploring the world of art. To expose how McGuinness does this I will be delving into the characters of both artists he has invented. It is then necessary to examine the social context of the world in which McGuinness has placed these characters to fully understand these plays as exploring the world of art. The artist and their art have to be closely looked at in conjunction with the society they are placed in to truly get a sense of the world of art McGuinness is exploring.
McGuinness was intrigued by the notoriety of Caravaggio and it is on the eccentric artist that he built the play Innocence on. McGuinness was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish literature in 1985 which enabled him to see a full exhibit of Caravaggio’s paintings. In Helen Lojek’s book, Contexts for Frank McGuinness’s Drama, She notes that from this exhibition he brought home a catalogue full of handwritten notes. It is obvious that McGuinness had an instant reaction and compulsion to write on Caravaggio. McGuinness consciously and carefully structured this play. This is evident as we see in part I of the play in that it is centred on Caravaggio’s life, and part II on Caravaggio’s death. Although Innocence is heavily fictionalised it is actually McGuinness’ interpret...
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Innocence is a play full of paradoxes and transformations. It is evidently about the struggle to see the artist as a respected figure in society. McGuinness is exploring how he sees the artistic imagination and vision of the artist and how it should be looked upon as something precious and powerful. Through Caravaggio’s ability to transform the rent boys and prostitutes into spiritual, potent pieces of art. It seems that he is appreciating the power of the artistic imagination and somehow feels a connection, which is portrayed through the artist Caravaggio. The title of the play also shows how McGuinness is exploring the power of the artists and their works. The power of these artistic images gives the outlaws of society the sense of innocence they were longing for. McGuinness ultimately is exploring the power and beauty of art and the artist’s talent.
While William Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence was written before the French Revolution and Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience was written after, creating obvious differences in formal structure; these poems are also uniquely intertwined by telling the same story of children arriving to church on Holy Thursday. However, each gives a different perspective that plays off each other as well the idea of innocence and experience. The idea that innocence is simply a veil that we are not only aware of but use to mask the horrors of the world until we gain enough experience to know that it is better to see the world for simply what it is.
Howard Hibbard's Caravaggio is an insightful look into the troubled mind and life of one of the most discussed artists of all time, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Hibbard immediately expands on his belief that Caravaggio is the most important "Italian painter of the entire seventeenth century." Furthermore, his paintings "speak to us more personally and more poignantly than any others of the time." Caravaggio is an artist whose life was far different from all other contemporary artists of his time, or any time. Unlike Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio's works were able to express many of his own feelings and emotions. As Hibbard says, Caravaggio was an artist who "somehow cut through the artistic conventions of his time right down to the universal blood and bone of life." Simply put, Caravaggio was the only Italian painter who was able to utilize his own emotion as his guide instead of the historical artistic tradition. This observation by Hibbard feels somewhat misleading. Clearly, the emotion of Caravaggio's works came out in full explosiveness throughout his years of painting. However, his lifestyle was so troubling that it seems to me that it would have been virtually impossible for him to prevent his life from entering his works. While it should be recognized that Caravaggio's emotion and difficult life is reflected in many of his paintings, it should also be noted that this may have been unintentional and only a side effect of his life. Here is a many who frequently got into trouble with law and killed at least one man in his lifetime. He was arrested almost countless times. Therefore, it seems unfair to me for Hibbard to describe Caravaggio as an ...
Abstract: William Blake's Songs of Innocence contains a group of poetic works that the artist conceptualized as entering into a dialogue with each other and with the works in his companion work, Songs of Experience. He also saw each of the poems in Innocence as operating as part of an artistic whole creation that was encompassed by the poems and images on the plates he used to print these works. While Blake exercised a fanatical degree of control over his publications during his lifetime, after his death his poems became popular and were encountered without the contextual material that he intended to accompany them.
Theo and the young Narrator similarly discover the revelatory capacity of art through a single pivotal painting and author respectively, both which become significant motifs in either text. Tartt utilizes an existent painting ‘The Goldfinch’ as a fixed point of reference, which, for both Theo and the reader provides a sense of reality and constancy ‘rais[ing him] above the surface’ of an otherwise tumultuous childhood. Whereas Proust uses a fictional author, ‘Bergotte’, to communicate the universality of art, and invite the reader, through the vivid immediacy with which the Narrator’s early reading experiences are described, to participate in his epiphanic discovery that art can translate ‘imperceptible truths which would never have [otherwise] been revealed to us’ (97). Artistic imagery becomes a motif in Proust’s descriptions of scenes of domesticity and nature. In a scene recounting Francoise ‘masterful’ preparation of a family meal the Narrator describes asparagus in the technical language of painting as ‘finely stippled’ provoking an association between his observations of asparagus and the creation of a painting. By forming this improbable link he elevates unremarkable asparagus to the ‘precious’ status of art in the eyes of the reader. Proust’s presentation of his Narrator’s ‘fascination’ and pleasure at their ‘rainbow-loveliness’, forces the reader to consider asparagus with unfamiliar and attentive appreciation, conveying the idea that art can uncover the overlooked beauty of the mundane. Though Theo reveals a far more cynical view of ordinary life as a ‘sinkhole of hospital beds, coffins and broken hearts’ Tartt conveys the similar belief in art’s capacity to create a ‘rainbow-edge’ of beauty between our perceptions and the harshness of reality. In the most
Art is an integral part of society. It is imbedded deep within human culture and has been around since nearly the beginning of humankind. How people view art greatly differs, not only between cultures, but between individuals. So many different meanings can be extracted from a single piece of work, which leads to the complexity and beauty of art itself. The meaning behind a work of art is not always what is important to people, it can also be the aesthetics. People like art that is pleasing to the eye as well as to the mind. In Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, Griet, the protagonist, silently appreciates and critiques the artwork in the Vermeer household while busy acting as maid, a
Innocence is usually associated with youth and ignorance. The loss of one’s innocence is associated with the evils of the world. However, the term “innocence” can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Similarly, the loss of one’s innocence can be interpreted in more than one way, and, depending on the interpretation, it may happen numerous times. The loss of innocence is culture specific and involves something that society holds sacrosanct.
In Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789 and 1794), William Blake arouses readers' minds and leads them into a path of finding their own answers and conclusions to his poems. He sets up his poems in the first book, Songs of Innocence, with a few questions as if they were asked from a child's perspective since children are considered the closest representation of innocence in life. However, in the second book, Songs of Experience, Blake's continues to write his poems about thought-provoking concepts except the concepts happen to be a little bit more complex and relevant to experience and time than Songs of Innocence.
In several poems found in Songs of Experience and Innocence Blake presents the church, as well as religion, as corrupt and damaging to the innocence and purity of youth’s souls. The poe...
-the refuge of art: his diary, the car, the hotels, his confession, and finally the novel.
In 1789, English poet William Blake first produced his famous poetry collection Songs of Innocence which “combines two distinct yet intimately related sequences of poems” (“Author’s Work” 1222). Throughout the years, Blake added more poems to his prominent Songs of Innocence until 1794, when he renamed it Songs of Innocence and Experience. The additional poems, called Songs of Experience, often have a direct counterpart in Blake’s original Songs of Innocence, producing pairs such as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” In Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake uses musical devices, structure, and symbolism to develop the theme that experience brings both an awareness of potential evil and a tendency that allows it to become dominant over childhood
The Song of Innocence and Experience is a collection of poems written by William Blake. “Innocence” and “Experience” are two definitions of consciousness that rethink John Milton’s existential-mythic states of “Paradise” and the “Fall”, this coincides with the romantic notion that adolescence is a state of protected innocence instead of original sin and yet is still not immune to the fallen world and its institutions.
emotional state of his characters to create dramatic works of art. Through Caravaggio's painting of The
Diarmuid Costello, Jonathan Vickery. Art: key contemporary thinkers. (UTSC library). Imprint Oxford: Berg, 2007. Print.
James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man presents an account of the formative years of aspiring author Stephen Dedalus. "The very title of the novel suggests that Joyce's focus throughout will be those aspects of the young man's life that are key to his artistic development" (Drew 276). Each event in Stephen's life -- from the opening story of the moocow to his experiences with religion and the university -- contributes to his growth as an artist. Central to the experiences of Stephen's life are, of course, the people with whom he interacts, and of primary importance among these people are women, who, as his story progresses, prove to be a driving force behind Stephen's art.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, exemplifies the model of art it proposes as it also offers the reader on how to read that very art. Following the main character, Stephen Dedalus, through life, Joyce uses Stephen’s immediate perception to convey how an artist views the world. The reader witnesses Stephen encountering everyday aspects of life as art—the words of a language lesson as poetry or the colors of a rose as beautiful. Through Stephen’s voyage and words, Joyce introduces the theory that “beauty” as a label for an object is not born from the actual physical object itself, but rather lies within the process one goes through when encountering the object. Joyce’s theory is also experienced by the reader as he or she encounters Stephen’s perceptions as well as the beauty of the poetic language and vivid description within Joyce’s narrative. The rhythmic patterns and stylistic sentences create a multitude of authorial voices that blend at various points in the novel involving Joyce, Stephen, and the reader.