Blog post #3:
Go online to one of the two museum sites below and find a painting or an installation that captures your feeling of what McCarthy conveyed as a main idea or message in The Road. This could relate to character, to setting, or to theme.
http://www.moma.org/ (click on browse online collection) http://www.whitney.org (click on collection)
Upload the image file and explain in a paragraph (85 words, minimum). If you can't upload the image file, send me the URL and I'll figure out some way to post it.
· Who the artist is and why he or she might have made this object? (You will have to Google the artist).
· Why you think it’s a good representation of this idea: What connection can you clearly make between the novel and the art?
http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=61828
ReplyDeleteThe artist of this drawing is Lyonel Feininger. He may have drawn this because of all of the oppression which occurred towards Jews in Germany while he lived there. Perhaps Feininger thought that this is the path that the world was going towards. The drawing portrays the world after the apocalypse. There is seemingly no life in a city which connects well to the novel. In the novel the boy asks his father how many people he thinks are alive which shows that both the book and the drawing touch upon the lack of life on earth.
http://www.whitney.org/Collection/RichardSerra/200010
ReplyDeleteThis is a painting by Richard Serra. The painting to me looks kind of aggressive. Its a circle with a lot of depth to it and angry splatters encompassing it. Maybe it was made to convey emotions he had about the universe at that time. He was angry about the way people on the earth were? The connection between this painting and the novel is pretty obvious. The painting could be similar to the way the earth would have looked in the Road after the apocalypse occurred.
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A4%7CG%3AHI%3AE%3A1&page_number=522&template_id=1&sort_order=2
ReplyDeleteThe photographer is Boris Mikhailov and this photo was taken in 1991. He took this photo because he was living in the Soviet Union at the time, and he wanted to express the trials of everyday life in the USSR. The photo portrays a man lying lifeless on the ground and everyone around him continuing on as if the lifeless man was commonplace. The connection between this photo and The Road is strong because in the photo the bystanders just continue on with life, and not care for the helpless man. This same selfishness is apparent in The Road, people don't want to interact because the world around them is all about surviving.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_rxXiESeppBQ/Sr0RmiTsjkI/AAAAAAAAHKQ/8UPdAPscVrc/s400/Copy+of+sept.19.chelsea+187.jpg
ReplyDeleteMaya Lin's "Blue Lake Pass" is a study of landscape. This has been her interest since she was very young. She takes complex ideas about our relationship with the planet, and expresses them in simple forms. According to what I have read, she is trying to express a reverence for the natural world. She is an environmentalist not just in her ideals but in how she approaches our world itself.
Although the world portrayed in The Road is frightening, it is also beautiful. Even at its most destroyed, navigating the Earth can be a moving experience - in fact, without human company beyond his father, it is the majority of what the boy knows. There were accusations early in Lin's career that she was nihilistic. One could accuse McCarthy of the same thing, but I think that misses the point. As Maya Lin said herself, "We tend not to pay attention to that which is invisible.”
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=G%3AHI%3AE%3A1&page_number=277&template_id=1&sort_order=2
ReplyDeleteThis is a painting done by artist Qiu Anxiong. The picture is completed in black and white, and portrays a lifeless scene with what looks to be a never-ending road. The artist could have painted this at the time because of what he was feeling or to try to describe how he saw and connected to civilization at that point in time. This relates to the novel in the way that they both seem hopeless and lost. The characters in the novel relate to this painting because they are desperate to find a way out of the world and to find themselves.
http://www.whitney.org/Collection/GeorgiaOKeeffe/8552
ReplyDeleteGeorgia O’Keeffe started taking classes at the University of Virginia for art teachers when she lost the confidence in achieving distinction in her art work. The art instructor, Arthur Wesley Dow, expressed to the class his belief on art: the goal of art was for the artist to express their personal ideas and feelings, such that the subject matter could be realized through the harmonious arrangements of line, color, and shading. O’Keefe took his belief to thought and tried to put his theory to a test. She began creating art to express her own emotions instead of imitating realism. In my opinion, O’Keefe created this charcoal drawing called No.8 to express the feeling of her being trapped.
In the center of piece No.8 , there appears to be two people, one smaller than the other, being engulfed by the bleak vortex that surrounds them. This Drawing, in reference to The Road by Cormac McCarthy, depicts the man and his son being overcame by the dreary and bleak world around them.
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=G%3AHI%3AE%3A1&page_number=117&template_id=1&sort_order=2
ReplyDeleteThe artist who created this picture above is Maurizio Carrelan. He is known for his dark humor and is a comical artist who once made a sculpture of the pope hit with a meteor. This picture could be referring to chaos and fire being caused by humans and that we as a population are to blame. The art is closely related to the book because the apocalypse could have been caused by humans and that we could be responsible for our own demise.
Molly:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/DavidSmith/Images
The sculpture I chose is called "Cubi I" (it's the one of the stacked cubes in the bottom center of the 6 shown images).
This piece is from a collection by sculptor David Smith (1906-1965) entitled 'Cubes and Anarchy' (The collection is quite aptly named, I thought, to be compared to The Road). He was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures. Perhaps his most revolutionary concept was that the only difference between painting and sculpture was the addition of a third dimension; he declared that the sculptor's "conception is as free as a that of the painter. His wealth of response is as great as his draftsmanship." His sculpting works were an expression of the energy he had after working as a welder during the Second World War. I find the precarious position of the cubes speaks volumes to many causes, not just The Road. In respects to the novel, the cubes represent the people still surviving on the barren Earth. Perhaps they don't want to be, but they are reliant on each other to stay alive; no cube could 'stand' without the cube below it. The precarious positioning and angel of the tower, I find, represents the fragile social structure exhibited in the novel. The thin disk at the base of the sculpture seems to be the anchoring element and the slight movement of it could possibly send the whole tower tumbling down, just as any wrong move from the man or the boy in The Road could send their small place in the world into ruins.
http://www.whitney.org/Collection/MarkBradford
ReplyDeleteThis is a painting by the artist Mark Bradford called Bread and Circuses. The painting is Mixed-media collage on canvas by 133 x 253 in. Bradford creates “collages” – works made of paper but with the visual impact of painting. The picture has many colors, is a small circle bright silver piece layered with drawings, string and paper. The connection between The Road and the art is that in life you have many ways you can take but you have to be careful and responsible taking the risks that might happen. In life they are good and bad guys but you have to protect yourself, being responsible, do your best and keep moving forward.
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ReplyDeletehttp://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A5%7CG%3AHI%3AE%3A1&page_number=54&template_id=1&sort_order=2
ReplyDeleteThis is a barley visible smudge of graphite on a canvas. It was "drawn" by Shirazeh Houshiary an english "artist" originally from Iran. Shirazeh claims the idea for this painting was inspired when she saw her breath evaporate on a mirror and realized this was a representation of human life. As Shiazeh says " I realized this is who we really are—not concrete and not permanent, or definable. It is this illusive presence, which can only be experienced directly, a part of life, or breath.". I found this very similar to Cormac McCarthy's rather bleak out look on life in the road. Everything is fleeting and there is a constant knowing through out the book that the boy and the man will eventually fade, just like breath on a mirror.
http://www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/SherrieLevine
ReplyDeleteMAYHEM, By Sherrie Levine is an image of a crystal skull with a bright glow and an eerie gray background. The skull represents death and despair of the landscape and its beings. the gray background represents the emptiness of the nuclear winter. however, the bright glow around the skull suggests the tiny sliver of hope that the dad and the boy have of making it to the coast.