Henry James’s tale “The Jolly Corner” is singularly evocative and worthwhile for the insight it offers into the American artistic personality. With the wisdom of hindsight, James shows the consequences of a fundamental and early divergence in American aesthetic sensibility. “The Jolly Corner” reflects, in its most general sense, awareness. It is essentially a work of art about art itself, and, more particularly, about the teasingly ambivalent relationship between art and life. Just as the notions of life and death are existential polarities, the dichotomy between life and art is a central one in the history of aesthetic reflection. Art may be a representation of life, but it is emphatically not life itself. The variance is one of form. However, art can be seen as an intensified and finer kind of life in that its beauty of form transcends time and thus bestows on life its own immortality. By freezing the living moment into the formal timelessness of art, the artist disrupts the very purposes of life by leaving its processes exasperated. In this sense, art can be seen as a way of death in life. “The Jolly Corner” epitomizes this paradox. The structure of the tale is a perfect vehicle for its theme of the double agency of both art and life. Rarely have form and content been so inseparably fused. Furthermore, just as parables persuade us through the recognizable authenticity of the situations they describe, it would not be a contradiction to interpret James’s tale as a parable, not only of the artist as an international man of letters, but also as a parable of the artist as an unmistakable American. James extends duality further into the two personas of Spencer Brydon. Aside from the question of legitimacy, both the European and Amer... ... middle of paper ... ...e means by which defective vision is corrected. Spencer Brydon sports a “charming monocle,” but the alter ego needs a double eyeglass, a “great convex pince-nez” (101). The European aesthetic perception of life, James implies, may be a more finely trained and acute one, but in the comparatively narrowed scope of its vision, it is as surely damaged as the American perspective which has taken in more of life. The advancement, and also the injury, to each perspective and also the irrevocable divorce between them finally emerges from Alice’s last words to Spencer Brydon: “And he isn’t—no, he isn’t—you! (101). Spencer actualizes a cognizance of visual beauty and of himself, as one complete person, via his dueling identities as both an American and a European. The alter ego may not truly be Spencer Brydon, but he has been raised by Brydon in the house on the jolly corner.
Modris Eksteins presented a tour-de-force interpretation of the political, social and cultural climate of the early twentieth century. His sources were not merely the more traditional sources of the historian: political, military and economic accounts; rather, he drew from the rich, heady brew of art, music, dance, literature and philosophy as well. Eksteins examined ways in which life influenced, imitated, and even became art. Eksteins argues that life and art, as well as death, became so intermeshed as to be indistinguishable from one another.
“The Trusty” is a work of fiction, written by Ron Rash, that tells the story of a man and a woman who try to escape their lives. In this short story, Sinkler is depicted as a scandalous but also as a distressed character. Many painted events lead to the illustration of a peculiar setting in which Sinkler is experiencing some abnormal instances. Sinkler is not dead, and his characterization has lead the audience to believe his flawed mental state is the reason why.
Art and literature work independently of each other, however, they can be linked together to help a reader or observer understand in new ways and create new possibilities. Within this context, the perspective of Jacob Lawrence and the authors address that it takes work to build the ideal society and family. However, the authors give the stark reality of both society and family demonstrating that our reality is nothing like the ideal.
"The Disappointed Art Lover." writ. Francis Sparshott. The Forger's Art. gen. ed. Denis Dutton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Over the decades, art has been used as a weapon against the callousness of various social constructs - it has been used to challenge authority, to counter ideologies, to get a message across and to make a difference. In the same way, classical poetry and literature written by minds belonging to a different time, a different place and a different community have somehow found a way to transcend the boundaries set by time and space and have been carried through the ages to somehow seep into contemporary times and shape our society in ways we cannot fathom.
I have kept for twenty years a tattered and stained copy of a Matt Groenig cartoon entitled “How to be an Artist in Torment.”The cartoon asks if you were sickly, peculiar, alienated, or picked on as a child and, if so, did that make you feel superior? Another cell catalogs the requisite psychological impediments of the creative personality—rage, confusion, and self- doubt—and describes the proper look to emulate: an “overall postpunk neobeatnik semidisheveled drab yet hip look.”The cartoon portrays the artist’s studio companions as lice and rats. Finally, it asks if you are thin and exhausted from staying up nights fretting over an idea, or in a related vein, “Can drugs really be considered art supplies?” What Groenig laughingly and lovingly describes is the romantic stereotype known in France as les peintres maudits, or “accursed painters.” It’s a syndrome, however, that extends easily to writers, musicians, and performers. Art historian Douglas Hall describes the four key attributes of the doomed creative genius: alienation, poverty, weakness, and brilliance—the latter being essential if one is not to pass into historical obscurity. The twentieth century is littered with such talented and troubled souls: Jim Morrison, Jackson Pollack, Dylan Thomas, Warhol, Judy Garland, and Van Gogh. Yet the uncontested high priest of the syndrome is Amedeo Modigliani.
Would you have ever thought that a friendship or relationship could tremendously alter your entire life? Friendships and relationships can positively or negatively impact an individual’s life is the theme expressed in the three selections. In the Uglies, written by Scott Westerfeld, Tally faces a life- changing situation which questions her chance of becoming pretty. Furthermore, E. E. Cummings expresses the speaker’s feelings of love in [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]. In The Third and Final Continent, written by Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian man strives for a successful new life in America with the assistance of acquaintanceships. Undoubtedly, the theme-friendships and relationships can positively or negatively impact an individual’s
Cunning over Strength or Strength over Cunning? Scholars have been going back and forth about this for years. One Scholar, named David Leeming, has voiced his own opinion, he said, “Finally, Homer’s listeners might well have been particularly fascinated by another homecoming story-this one about a somewhat unusual hero, known as much for his brain as for his brawn.” He does not exactly say cunning over strength, but what he is saying that Odysseus is being noticed for his brain as much as he was for his strength. In the Odyssey, cunning over strength is found throughout the book because it is a theme of the book. In the book, we see Odysseus and women use their wits over strength to take down their enemies and/or get out of difficult spots. Homer's point of view in this book is to show the reader's the true power of cunning over strength through Odysseus mainly, but as well as women.
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.
"For some, Life is rich and creamy ... while Art is a pallid commercial confection ... For others, Art is the truer thing, full, bustling and emotionally satisfying, while Life is worse than the poorest novel: devoid of narrative, peopled by bores and rogues, short on wit ... and leading to a painfully predictable denouement."1
At first glance, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Lawrence Weschler’s Boggs: A Comedy of Values treat the issue of art’s function in converse ways. Wilde, the quintessential Aesthete, asserts that art should exist for the sake of beauty alone. Boggs, on the other hand, contends that art should serve a practical function: it should wake individuals from their sleepwalking by highlighting essential, overlooked aspects of society. Fascinatingly, neither Wilde nor Boggs firmly adheres to his ostensible artistic purpose. Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest, although it showcases certain Aesthetic elements, incisively critiques Victorian society. The play is not a functionless work of pure beauty. Conversely, Boggs’ project clearly serves an instructional function while it simultaneously revels in its own beauty. Moreover, Boggs himself is often uncertain of what his art represents and does. When placed side-by-side, The Importance of Being Earnest and Boggs queer the division between Aestheticism and Functionalism, suggesting that both schools are unattainable ideals. In doing so, the two texts elucidate a holistic conception of art that fuses aesthetic value to social critique. Aesthetic beauty coalesces with function.
Expressionism.” The Natural Paradise: Painting in America 1800-1959. Ed. Kynaston McShine. New York: The Museum
For over two thousand years, various philosophers have questioned the influence of art in our society. They have used abstract reasoning, human emotions, and logic to go beyond this world in the search for answers about arts' existence. For philosophers, art was not viewed for its own beauty, but rather for the question of how art and artists can help make our society more stable for the next generation. Plato, a Greek philosopher who lived during 420-348 B.C. in Athens, and Aristotle, Plato’s student who argued against his beliefs, have no exceptions to the steps they had to take in order to understand the purpose of art and artists. Though these two philosophers made marvelous discoveries about the existence of art, artists, and aesthetic experience, Plato has made his works more controversial than Aristotle.
"Quotations by Subject: Art." The Quotation Page. QuotationsPage.com and Michael Moncur. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. .
Diarmuid Costello, Jonathan Vickery. Art: key contemporary thinkers. (UTSC library). Imprint Oxford: Berg, 2007. Print.