Gillian's image

This 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. 

Mr. Kerr's image (Maya Lin is the designer of the Vietnam War Memorial)

Maya 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.” 

Billy's photo

The 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. 

Hayley's Richard Serra drawing

This 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. 

John's image

The 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.

Blog post #3: My image

Anselm Kiefer (age 66) is a German painter and sculptor.  His works, which are very large scale, begin with photographs and incorporate earth, clay and other natural materials, as well as writing (names and places of people of legendary or historical importance. His work is linked to a movement called “New Symbolism.” There’s a sort of primitive, rough look to his paintings, as if a violent event has taken place and this is all that’s left—they’re pretty depressing.  His work often centers on the horrors of the Holocaust; historical references include the ruins of Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War.

This painting reminds me of The Road because of the suggestion of a road stretching out beyond the horizon, with the surrounding landscape murky and undefined.  The man seems like he’s presenting himself as a sacrifice—who knows why.  The work is constructed using oil paint, paper and blood on canvas, which also seems fitting.  It’s called Parsifal III—Parsifal is the hero of Richard Wagner’s opera (Wagner was a big cultural icon in Nazi Germany) based on the legend of Percival, one of the Knights of the Round Table who searched for the Holy Grail.

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?