Jacob Paul Schmidt
Comp Lit: Unspoken Modernities
7 September 2016
Pericles Lewis and
the Crisis of Representation
Throughout
the semester we will be studying modernist texts. In these texts, authors have
sought new ways to present narratives and other arts to their audiences. We
have already seen this demonstrated in Gertrude Stein’s, seemingly chaotic,
text Melanctha. The slow moving,
arguably plotless text, which is filled with continually repeated phrases and generic
descriptions makes for a difficult read. For example, in our discussion the
idea that characters could be seen as different forms of artistic expression.
Through her desire to marry and settle down, Rose fit a Victorian era motif,
and Jeff Campbell, always lost in thought, approached the world in an extremely
Realist manner. In contrast, Melanctha has trouble fitting in to social
standards and always desired “knowledge”, which she found by “wandering”. Many,
if not all, characters found in Melanctha
can be easily categorized but Melanctha herself. In this way, Melanctha
fits the Crises of Representation perfectly.
The Crisis of
Representation is the abandonment of Mimesis, the imitation and mimicry of
traditional forms of art and literature, for new abstract forms of
representation. Two great quotes that describe modernist art are: “All that is
solid melts to air” – Karl Marx and “Life is not a series of gig lamps” –
Virginia Woolf. Both of these quotes describe the instability of what modernist
artists are striving to present to the world, to present something as Avant
Gard. There are many great examples of the Crisis of Representation such as:
Painting: Cubism Pablo Picasso’s: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Cubist paintings
were able to break free from traditional representation. The break from Realism
and its connotations allow artists to portray their art in new and exciting
ways, which result in infinite meaning.
The
breaking of the 4th wall allowed artists to directly involve
spectators of plays and the audience of narratives. Today video games and
movies are a great example of how to break the fourth wall.
Literature: Oscar
Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Preface
The artist is the
creator of beautiful things.
To reveal
art and conceal the artists is arts aim.
The critic is he who can translate
into another manner or a new material
his impression of beautiful things.
The
highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of auto
biography.
Those who find ugly meanings in
beautiful things are corrupt without
being charming. This is a fault.
Those
who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are
the
cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful
things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books
are
well
written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of
Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his
own face in a glass.
The
nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of
Caliban
not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of
the subject-matter of the artist,
but the morality of art consists in
the perfect use of an imperfect
medium.
No
artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be
Proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an
artist
is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No
artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist
instruments of an art.
Vice
and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the
type of all the arts is the art of the
musician. From the point of view of
feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who
read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of
opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new,
complex, and
vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as
he does not
admire
it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it
intensely.
All
art is quite useless.
-Oscar Wilde
Here Oscar Wilde is turning art entirely on its head.
During the Romantic era, art was a way to find meaning in everything and
spiritually transcend our understanding of the world. In the Realist era, art
was a way to display the atrocities of real everyday life. But here, Wilde is
arguing that “art is quite useless” and that is okay. In Lewis’s The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, Lewis
states, “The modernists were not necessarily seeking an art without any
conventions, but rather an art that examined its own conventionality, that put
the conventions of art on display, an art that put art itself in question (6).
This idea of putting art into question is exactly what Oscar Wilde attempts to
do in his Preface to Dorian Gray, which
is to say art becomes nothing more
than art itself.
My questions for the class are:
1. How does the Crisis of Representation present itself in the texts that we have read so far? I encourage the class to continue to consider this question throughout the class.
2. What types of barriers of Mimesis are being broken? What familiarities are being broken down and what new techniques are being introduced and how does this pertain to culture at the time period we are observing?
My questions for the class are:
1. How does the Crisis of Representation present itself in the texts that we have read so far? I encourage the class to continue to consider this question throughout the class.
2. What types of barriers of Mimesis are being broken? What familiarities are being broken down and what new techniques are being introduced and how does this pertain to culture at the time period we are observing?
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