From a Symbol of Japanese Imperialism into a Monument to Modernist Aesthetics - Assignment Example

Reynolds’ idea in one sentence: The Ise Shrine has been transformed from a symbol of Japanese Imperialism into a monument to modernist aesthetics. This exercise was more difficult than it appeared, because the article covers a number of historical, cultural and artistic points. The strategy that I used to condense it into one single sentence was to re-read the whole article and pick out what I thought the single words which I thought represented the key ideas in the article. This produced a list of over twenty words and I realized that it would not be possible to include them all.

After this I reflected on what the author’s main intention was in the article, and I concluded that all the references to the appearance of the shrine were important, but they could be summed up in the phrase “modernist aesthetics”. This has connotations of minimalist beauty, using simple shapes and solid materials. I concluded that the different media that were used to communicate its meaning to different audiences, such as photography, were interesting to me as a student, but they were used as examples of how the change in the monument was communicated to others.

Logically then, the most important part was not how something was communicated, but what exactly it is that was in fact communicated. I think the single main idea is the change through time from Imperialist meanings to modern, democratic meanings. I wanted to show that it was an artistic progression, and so I chose the word symbol, to emphasize the aesthetic element in history, and the word monument to represent the historical element in art. I used the verb transformed because I think this is the single main idea in the whole text.

In summary, therefore, I read the text by means of keywords, rather than as a continuous narrative, and this was different from before. ReferencesReynolds, Jonathan. “Ise Shrine and a Modernist construction of Japanese tradition. The Art Bulletin 83 (2), pp. 316-332.