Klein's Performance Art

Total art is a type of art that “reaches beyond the studio and the art gallery and into the public domain.”  Artists that use total art attempt to gain inspiration from everything around them, and often use random people as part of their work.  Generally, these artists are more concerned with the process of making the piece of art rather than the finished product.  Performance art is a type of total art that Yves Klein made famous with his work, Anthropometry.  Klein had two naked women covered in paint drag each other across a canvas as “human brushes” to complete the piece.  Obviously, the final product of making that piece wouldn’t matter that much, because the more artistic part was actually how it was made.  I have a hard time accepting something like this as art.  I believe art should take talent, and while there may be talent in coming up with an idea as crazy as that, it took no real talent to create the piece.  And in fact, Klein himself didn’t even make it, he chose two women to carry out his idea for him.  This painting reminded me a lot of the works of Jackson Pollock.  He would randomly splatter paint on his canvases, not caring how the painting would actually turn out.  He was more concerned with enjoyment of the process than the end product.  Since Anthropometry might look somewhat like Pollock’s works when it was finished, I imagine Klein didn’t care much about what it looked like either.  The artistic part to these artists was actually in the creative process, and the outcome didn’t really matter.

Mass Persuasion

With the rise of the Information Age came two of the most important inventions of our time; the computer and the television.  Both computers and televisions are easily accessible to most Americans, which makes these a technologies a perfect way for companies to advertise.  Americans are bombarded with thousands of advertisements every day, but we don’t realize how regular advertisement has become in our daily lives.  French sociologist Jacques Ellul thought that advertisement was the greatest assault to human dignity and that by allowing advertisement, television was creating a “mass man.”  We have become a society of people that are all programmed to want the same things.  The television tells us to buy things, so we buy them.  The advertisements we see on the television and our computers are only those of the companies that can afford to get their product or service advertised.  Therefore, we end up seeing advertisements for many of the same or similar products.  These advertisements tell us that we need these products, that everyone else has them, and that if we don’t get them we will certainly be unhappy with our decisions.  We are a “mass man,” we buy and want all the same things.  I believe Ellul though this was an assault of human dignity because the ads we see teach us that conformity should be looked at as a good thing.  We trade in our individualism for the assurance that we will be like everyone else and won’t feel excluded.  I understand Ellul’s position, but I think it may be a little extreme.  Americans can recognize when they’re seeing an advertisement on the television and if they don’t want to buy something they have to power to turn it down.       

The House of the Spirits

One of the major themes of The House of the Spirits was change, and the entire book emphasized the contradiction of the old and the new.  The Trueba family seemed to represent the old way: a family that had traditional values and did what was expected of them.  Ferula was always very religious, prayed regularly for herself and the people around her, and upheld her very strict morals.  Esteban had the traditional idea that his peasants at Tres Marias needed a strong leader that would provide enough for them to survive and that if they started to get ideas of revolution in their head it would only make them lazier and would eventually lead to his own downfall.  He shared similar views of women, thinking that they needed a man to control them and any sort of abnormal behavior (like that of Clara’s mother, Nivea) needed to be suppressed with a beating.  This, clearly, was not a value also held by the del Valle family.  They represented a new way of thinking.  Their uncle Marcos was a traveler that had been all around the world and who was always planning some strange scheme.  Nivea, Clara’s mother, was an outspoken political supporter of women’s rights, which was still a new idea at the time and made her an easy target of gossip.  Clara, of course, was a clairvoyant that put more time into her psychic abilities than forming strong relationships with the people around her.  As the book goes on, we learn more about Esteban’s political involvement and see towards the end that his Conservative party is overthrown by the Socialists.  In a way, the Trueba family and Esteban’s traditional ideals reflect the Conservative party, while the del Valle family reflects the Socialist party.  The Socialist party gained recognition and brought new ideas to their country, while the del Valle family, especially Clara, brought their new ideas and values to Esteban.  

Theme for English B

I really enjoyed Langston Hughes’ “Theme for English B” because it was so simple.  The message was clear, and I didn’t have to do any extra digging to figure out what Hughes was trying to say.  It’s a message of equality; that we’re all the same no matter how different we appear on the outside.

                

Hughes says, “Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.  I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.  I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records – Bessie, bop, or Bach.  I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races.”  That, I believe, is the heart of Hughes’ message.  Everyone has common interests, no matter what race they belong to.  We all have the same thoughts, hopes, and fears; the only thing that really separates us from each other is the views of society.  As cliché as it sounds, we’re all more alike than we realize.

                

Later, the poem says, “You are white – yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.  That’s American.  Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.  Nor do I often want to be a part of you.  But we are, that’s true!”  He brings up the idea that America is made up of many different races, and even if the races may not want to associate with each other at times, they all comprise this country and they wouldn’t be here without each other.  It is easy to see why Hughes’ poetry was so influential.  He was fighting for racial equality, and poems like “Theme for English B” really helped to emphasize the unfairness of how African Americans were being treated because it emphasized how everyone is the same, regardless of skin color.  

John Cage

               I was stunned when I read about the unconventional work of John Cage in the text.  He invented the prepared piano, which is simply a normal piano with random objects attached to its strings.

               Later on in his career, Cage “composed” a strange piece of “music” called 4’33”.  In 4’33”, the performer literally just sits in front of a piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.  The actual music of the piece becomes all of the noises in the room.  This is an example of the aleatory work that made Cage so famous.  Aleatory means that his work depends on random happenings.  So, if a person sitting in the room watching 4’33” coughed, it would become a part of the piece.  I understand that Cage had new ideas and was being very experimental, but I DON’T understand how something like 4’33” can be a respected piece of music or how it can be called music at all.  Cage composed another piece of “music” called “Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” in which twelve radios are playing at the same time while performers mess with the volume and the controls.  I don’t know which would be worse: having to sit in awkward silence watching a still performer sit in front of a piano for five minutes or having to listen to the chaotic noise of twelve radios playing over each other.  Either way, I don’t consider these pieces music at all and if I was an audience member I would want my money back.

4'33"

Imaginary Landscape No. 4

               While John Cage was doing something completely different from any artist that came before him, I can definitely see the connection to the Dada movement.  Cage’s work is nonsense, and it raises the question of how far an artist can stray from the norm while still calling his work art.

  

1984

                I’m surprised how little the book talked about utopian and dystopian novels.  It seems like the book tries to focus a lot more on painters and poets, when there’s so much great literature that it barely discusses.  It gives all of two sentences to 1984, a book written by George Orwell in 1949 as his prediction of what the future would be like.  1984 gives the reader a greater feeling of hopelessness and dread than any other book out there.  Almost every aspect of the characters’ lives is controlled by the government, which is headed by a possibly-fictional dictator called Big Brother.  The book centers around the character Winston Smith, who is determined to rebel against the government and become a member of a rumored resistance group called the Brotherhood.  Winston’s efforts prove futile; he ends up being found out and tortured until he is brainwashed and completely submissive to the government he tried to fight.  The book’s last line reads: “He loved Big Brother.”  

                 This book reflects a growing fear in the mid and late 1940s of a totalitarian government that could strip people of their personal freedoms.  The book was published around the time that World War II ended, when the effects of the war were still being felt.   People were worried that a war like World War I or World War II could happen again, but that it would be much worse and could lead to a government like the one in 1984.  A character in the book says to Winston, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”  Although the book is very sinister, it is one of my favorites because it doesn’t end happily like many others; it gives the reader something to think about after they’re finished.  It was relevant then and is still relevant now, because people always seem to be scared that a government will gain too much power.    

Battleship Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein is known as the father of the montage; a method used so often in films today that it goes unnoticed.  The book defined montage as “the cinematic technique that depends on a rapid succession of images.”  To put it more simply, montage is literally just the process of editing and cutting out the parts of the shot that aren’t necessary.  It allows the audience to see multiple things that are going on at the same time.  Montage is used in almost every movie today, and it can be very effective when the director is trying to make a statement or get a point across, like the Odessa Steps Sequence in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.     

The scene cuts back and forth from the mass of citizens running down the steps, the army slowly following them with their guns, and then to close-up shots of certain individuals.  One part that particularly sticks out in my mind is the woman holding her son in front of the army, begging them not to shoot because her son is sick.  The soldiers shoot her anyway and move on.  Another disturbing part is when the mother gets shot and accidentally sets her baby carriage (with her baby in it) rolling down the steps.  Even though the acting seemed a little over-dramatic, scenes like those help illustrate the pain and suffering that the individual people were going through.  If Eisenstein hadn’t added the close-ups, the whole scene would just be the soldiers advancing on the crowd.  That would have been effective in showing the fear of the people, but the close-ups seemed to make the whole situation more real and put it on a personal level.  One could imagine oneself as a part of the attack.  Eisenstein used the montage as a tool to demonstrate the horrors of war.  Although Battleship Potemkin was not based on a real story, Eisenstein was still able to make clear his feelings on war and unnecessary violence, and I believe he made his audience feel the way he felt.  

                

I haven’t seen the entire movie, but I was captivated by the Odessa Steps Sequence.  I wasn’t as entertained as I am by recent movies, but Battleship Potemkin is definitely more entertaining and thought-provoking than many other movies that came out around 1925.  This movie may seem technologically unimpressive compared to the movies of today, but it was the first of its kind and modern movies would be nowhere without the ideas and the work of Eisenstein.