Visual Conventions

The artwork from John Taylor of Leslie's Illustrated Gazette depicting the treaty signing at Medicine Creek Lodge in 1869 is much more representative than Howling Wolf's ledger drawing. I would consider Wolf's depiction more abstract. Taylor's interpretation is an example of realism, and the scene is easily recognizable. In Wolf's drawing, the scene is not so easily discernible. The differences lie in the naturalism which Taylor's art clearly articulates. Also, Wolf's drawing appears very two dimensional with no perspective, while the other uses a geometrical perspective to express space. Taylor’s use of this perspective is typical of Western paintings and drawings.  Wolf clearly depicts the landscape by providing an aerial view, and highlights the rivers significance by showing it streaming down the middle of the picture. Taylor chooses to leave the river out completely, which may suggest that Native Americans value the natural environment more than Western society. Taylor also centers the drawing on the white men, and all of the tribes look similar, almost unrecognizable from one another, which may indicate strong ethnocentrism. In Wolf's drawing each of the tribes are clearly displayed, giving significance to every tribe and peoples at the treaty signing. This can be partially attributed to Wolf's iconography. In his drawing, there is a special meaning to each of the visual images displayed that a Western society would not understand. The symbols like the women’s braided hair decorated with red paint, the tipi’s, and the dress of the Native Americans are deeply connected to Wolf’s culture.  Women fill Wolf's drawing whereas they are not even in Taylor's. This obviously shows the difference between the significance of women in each of the societies. It is clear Taylor's painting is from the perspective of a man from Western society, whereas Wolf's seems to be influenced by his visual conventions. 

Rebellious Silence by Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat was born and raised in Iran. After high school she moved to the United States and studied art. Through her "Women of Allah" series, she captures devout Iranian women and reveals a muted sexuality and femininity. She releases her personal feelings by attempting to disrupt the assumptions of "Islamic" femininity. Her role as an artist in "Rebellious Silence" is revealing hidden truths. She seeks to expose the unknown liberties of women in full chador (dress that only allows the face and hands to be seen). In her art she seeks to explain that this concealment actually keeps women from becoming a sexual object, therefore truly keeping men and women equal. Thus, the chador actually becomes a liberty, not a confinement. The writing on her face is a Farsi poem that expresses deep piety. From a Western perspective, this photograph seems oppressive, and can lead to misjudgment. The gun clearly represents this division between Islam and the West, and the differences between what femininity means in both cultures. This picture truly embodies a devout Iranian woman and dismisses misconceptions of her faith.

To see find out more information or to see more picture please click here :) http://www.iranian.com/Arts/Dec97/Neshat/

Lillian Hellman: Famous American Playwright

           During a theater course I took in the fall of 2008, I was required to research and write a paper on a famous playwright. Lillian Hellman was as influential as she was controversial. Not only was she a woman playwright, exceptionally rare for her time, but she was actually successful and was able to live off of her earnings. 

            Lillian Hellman was born on June 30^th, 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was born to Jewish parents Max Hellman and Julia Newhouse. Her father was a successful salesman, and her mother’s family had a small fortune in the banking industry. When Lillian was five years old her family moved to New York. Due to her father’s frequent traveling, Lillian spent half of the year in New York, where she attended public schools, and the other half of the year back in Louisiana at a boarding home run by her aunts. Hellman was an only child, but her headstrong, argumentative, and stubborn attitude was enough to keep her parents busy. In later years, she rebelled against her family, especially the wealthy relatives from her mother’s side. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman#Blacklist_and_aftermath) Hellman claims later in her memoirs that she took refuge in books during her childhood. It was said that Hellman had pawned a ring given to her on her fifteenth birthday by her uncle, Jake Newhouse, and used the money to buy herself several books. Feeling guilty, she confessed immediately after to her uncle what she had done, and he laughed and stated, “So you’ve got spirit after all. Most of them are made of sugar water.” Hellman later used her uncle’s words in her famous play The Little Foxes. (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthiday/birthday/0620.html)

            In 1922, Hellman began studying at the University of New York. After two years she went on to Columbia University, although Hellman never completed a degree. In 1925 she began reviewing books for the New York Herald Tribune. During this time Lillian Hellman and Arthur Kober, writer and press agent, got married, but only seven years later got divorced. In those years, Hellman got various jobs around New York such as reading scripts, and writing short stories, partly due to the fact that she was married to a writer for the New Yorker. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260435/Lillian-Hellman)

By the time of their divorce, Hellman was already intimately involved with famous American author Dashiell Hammett, who in earlier years convinced Hellman to continue pursuing her dreams as a writer, at a time she was considering giving it up. Hellman’s intimate relationship with Dashiell continued until his death in 1961. At one point Hammett told Hellman that she was the model for Nora Charles, a witty woman in one of his most famous books. He also told her that she was the model for many of his villainous women as well. In an interview in 1973 Hellman confessed that they had two periods of planning to be married.

            In 1934, Hellman made her name known. After several years of coaching from Dashiell, Hellman wrote a controversial play about a lawsuit in Scotland involving a vicious little girl falsely accusing two of her teachers of having a lesbian affair. It was an immediate hit, although it was banned in many cities such as Boston, Chicago. Miss Hellman earned 125k from its first run, and a 50k movie contract from Samuel Goldwyn. By 1935, Hellman was one of the country’s highest paid writers. Meanwhile, Hellman was obsessively working on her next play; a play that would cement her career and become her most acclaimed work. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman#Blacklist_and_aftermath)

            The Little Foxes was a play about a Southern family corrupted by money and power, and Hellman later admitted that the play helped her release much of the resentment towards her mother’s family. It was a success not only on the stage, but also on screen, which Miss Hellman also wrote. With her earnings she bought an estate and for thirteen years she lived there, and continued her writing, while maintaining an active social life. (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthiday/birthday/0620.html)

Although Hellman refused to admit being a political person, her plays and other writings were often politically oriented or socially conscious. They were also frequently centered on subjects that were “untouched”, such as lesbianism, and getting away with murder. Because of Hellman’s involvement in liberal and leftist activities and organizations, she was widely attacked as a Communist. Then in early 1941 Hellman released an anti-Nazi play called Watch on the Rhine. One of the two successes out of the eleven was plays released on Broadway during the 1940-1941 season. After the release of this play, Hellman was criticized by the Communist press for supporting the Allies. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260435/Lillian-Hellman) She just couldn’t win.

            During the forties Hellman released two other plays, The Searching Wind and Another Part of the Forest. Then, when the fifties came around, Hellman was called to appear in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) because of her relations with Dashiell Hammett, who was a known Communist Party affiliate. After refusing to give the names of people who supposedly had associations with the Communist Party she was blacklisted and risked imprisonment for contempt of Congress. She later wrote in a letter to HUAC and in it stated, “I will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” It is true that she had participated with Communists in many leftist causes, but despite rumor, Lillian Hellman was not a communist. She talked about her troubles with HUAC in her third memoir, titled Scoundrel Time. Hellman was applauded for her opposition to the “Communist witch hunts” of the 1950’s.

            Unfortunately, because of Hellman’s blacklisting after the HUAC trials, she saw her income drop from one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year to virtually nothing. Hellman ended up selling her estate, and during the fifties began adapting works from other writers for the stage. It wasn’t until Hellman’s last theatrical success, titled Toys in the Attic, did her financial straits come to an end. This play was centered around family drama involving jealously and repressed desire. This play earned Hellman a New York Drama Critics Award. (Barlow)

            During the sixties Hellman began developing a series of memoirs. Starting in 1969, Hellman released three memoirs starting with An Unfinished Woman, which leads into Pentimento: A Book of Portraits, and ends with Scoundrel Time. These memoirs discussed her career, her love life, her political activities, and other relationships. There was much discussion at the time about the validity of some of the content in these memoirs. Mary McCarthy was more than honest about her feelings about Hellman’s work when she made the comment, “every word she writes is a lie” on a PBS interview on national television. Hellman was more than just offended, which she proved to be true when she filed a lawsuit not only against Mary, but also against PBS and the interviewer, Dick Cavett. She sued for around two million dollars for “mental pain and anguish”. (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthiday/-birthday/0620.html) The lawsuit was a success to neither woman.

            Julia, a character in Hellman’s second memoir, was supposedly a woman Hellman had once smuggled 50,000 dollars to in order to bribe Nazi guards to free prisoners. In the late seventies Hellman turned down 500,000 dollars to movie rights to these memoirs, including the one involving the infamous lady named Julia. Her reasoning being that several people she had written about in her books were still living and she did not want them at risk of being hurt. Later she sold rights to the Julia story, which was made into a movie in 1977. Then Muriel Gardiner surfaced with accusations that Hellman’s Julia was an appropriation her life. Nothing came from these accusations. (Partnow)

            Hellman’s tough and fierce, but intellectual and sometimes melodramatic style of writing constantly decorated stages and screens during the twentieth century.  She is arguably the most successful professional woman playwright that has ever existed. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts, and she taught writing classes and the University of New York, as well as Yale, Harvard, and MIT. In 1964 the National Institute of Arts and Letters presented her with the Gold Medal for Drama, and in 1976 she was awarded the MacDowell Medal. She was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1973, and received a National Book Award for her first memoir. (Partnow) She was a truly remarkable and determined woman.

Works Cited

Barlow, Judith E., ed. Plays by American Women 1930-1960. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 2001.

"Lillian Hellman." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Aug. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260435/Lillian-Hellman>.

“Lillian Hellman”. Wikipedia. 2009. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia. 25 Aug. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman#Blacklist_and_aftermath >.

Partnow, Elaine. The Female Dramatist. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1998.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthiday/birthday/0620.html

Chester Arnold Analysis

Picture provided by:

http://cclarkgallery.com/dynamic/artwork_detail.asp?artworkid=239
Chester Arnold can be characterized as one of the world’s leading advocates for environment and social responsibility. No, he is not a politician. Chester Arnold is an artist. Through his work he criticizes the human existence on the natural environment, emphasizing the impact of a consumer driven world, human intervention on landscape, and dense populations. His enormous oil paintings of landscapes that are full of waste and destruction, clearly direct from man’s “hand”, evoke overwhelming and frightening feelings.  Arnold paints traditionally of 19^th century European artists. Caspar David Friedrich and Albrecht Altdorfe, both German Romantic painters, have been very influential on Arnold. (Vanessa Vancour) Although his technique can be considered traditional, Arnold’s art includes postmodern techniques and “the contemporary sublime” in many of his works. It is the biblical referencing used in his paintings, the natural environment, and the chaos of mankind that lead a plurality of styles. (Henry Sayre) His paintings also seek to “describe the seemingly infinite, immeasurable vastness of the earth and the universe beyond”. (Nevada Museum of Art)

            After seeing some of Arnold’s work in person at the Nevada Museum of Art, one of his paintings spoke to me, actually visually screamed. This painting is titled Thy Will be Done and was painted in 2006. At first glance this large-scale painting looks like a mob of workers digging holes and filling up containers at a barren, muddy construction site. After more careful observation, I realized this was actually a horrific visual depiction of brutal murders and beatings.  These atrocities are being committed by men of all sorts, some in what looks like officer uniforms, others in plain clothes.  These violent attacks are hidden by groupings of workers. The scene eerily reminds me of descriptions of the Holocaust. The title of this painting is directly pulled from the Lord’s Prayer.  It is believed the “Kingdom will come by the hands of those faithful to work for a better world”. (Lord’s Prayer) Perhaps Arnold intended to show his cynicism of man’s true motives. To me, his painting represents genocide, discrimination, violence, and war without regard to its effects not only on the human race, but to the environment. Arnold has truly captured the tragic, undeniable effects of human progress in his paintings. Although marvelously intriguing, the dark humor of his works brings about a reality usually shadowed by the power of corporations and public demand. (Affiliated Artists)  His work becomes increasingly invaluable as human existence continues to erode the natural environment, but will his cautions be heard?

Works Cited

"Affiliated Artists Chester Arnold." Welcome to Linda Hodges Gallery, Contemporary West Coast, and American Art. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. <http://lindahodgesgallery.com/artists/arnold.html>.

"Lord's Prayer." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 17 July 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord's_Prayer>.

Sayre, Henry M. "The Design Profession." A World of Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010. 402. Print.

Vancour, Vanessa. "Official Reno Tahoe USA Blog » Chester Arnold." Official Reno Tahoe USA Blog. 2 Aug. 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2010. <http://blog.visitrenotahoe.com/tag/chester-arnold/>.