Monday, April 17, 2017

Francisco Goya Paintings

Francisco Goya is known as a master painter, but what makes his work truly interesting is his willingness to address the darker aspects of human culture. From his Caprichos, Nadie se conoce a painting from 1796 was the one that I thought embellished this dark culture feeling. To me the painting seems to show the pig like nature of men. There is a girl walking through the middle and is the focus of the painting, but in the background you see men depicted in a creepy, monster like fashion. They seem to be staring at her which to me could symbolize the objectification of women. One more small detail is you can see another female leaning in to her looking as if she is giving her support trying to lift her spirits.

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Now from the Black Paintings, the Duel With Cudgels painting had the strongest message for me. These two young men are shown ready to strike each other. But if you look deeper you can see a lot of emotion on either face. They both look like they do not want to do what they are doing. I see fear and uncertainty in both of them and it as if something is forcing them to fight to the death. To me this shows that fear can manifest in anyone and may cause you to act in ways you never thought you'd let yourself. The landscape adds a little perspective as well, seeing that they are in the middle of nowhere this could have been some kind of survival situation for both of them and being lost may have brought them to madness.

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Monday, April 10, 2017

The Scourged Back

The Scourged Back photograph was and is extremely powerful even today as it brings to life how different things are from the civil war to now and those who tried to bring that change about. The African American in the photo was named Gordon and this picture takes place in Baton Rouge in 1863. The story of Gordon however starts with Gordon escaping his master cleverly by rubbing himself with onions to deter dogs pursuing him. This lead to him running into the Union after some time and joining the army. This is where I think the significance of the picture comes into play because you can see how poorly he had been treated by his master. This makes it interesting that he will now be fighting for the cause of ending the very thing he had endured for so long and that will give him a stronger motive. Also in multiple articles it stated that most African Americans were just content with being in the army because they were then seen as men and not property for once in their lives. That was the most powerful part for me is that just being acknowledged as a human being was as good as it would get for some former slaves. As for the reason that a photo is more effective than a painting in this case is that it hits you harder when you see it for how it truly was. It sticks with you more when you see a photograph because you know for sure that was a real person and that it was a real horrible situation with no exaggeration by an artist, you truly see the horror with your own eyes.


Monday, April 3, 2017

Candide Book Analysis

My interest in literature lies with Candide by Voltaire on this book analysis because of it's heavy emphasis in satire and my desire to find out every angle of it throughout the reading. This meaning I have not read it yet but am looking forward to seeing all the short stories tied together in full descriptive manors. This means scenes that were discussed in class such as Candide falling for Cunegonde in the first place, Candide's involvement in the army, and even simple things like his relationship with Pangloss. I find this very intriguing and as the story goes on it gets more and more complex and more and more satire is added on in the form of short stories regarding Candide and his quest to see Cunegonde. If I was to compare this to something I would say Candide has resemblance to the Forrest Gump movie. This is because the plot changes so extremely fast and to such a dramatic extent throughout the whole story. For example in Forrest Gump, he was a football star, then became part of the army, then became a pingpong star, and even went on to be a shrimp boat captain. This showed great irony that a person who is considered stupid, going off and being more successful than "average" people. This isn't how I think Candide's satire will be played but, it is uncanny that the ever switching story line is close in this case. As for what I expect, I think that once I read the actual literature, the satire will be a lot clearer than with a brief summary. This is because humor, irony, or exaggeration are hard to distinguish in summary, I feel like more in depth and captivating parts of the story will not only make the message clear but also make it stick in my head.  

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