Analysis of Art and Human Values - Norman Rockwell - Book Report/Review Example

Analysis art and Human value Part 1: Norman Rockwell and The Fashioning of American Masculinity - Journal 1 Reading Text: 237-294 This week’s reading is about pioneering the fashioning of American masculinity through the eyes of a painter who lived the life he painted. Rockwell (1894-1978) was famous for unique cover illustrations that idealized versions of America on the Saturday Evening Post. According to Segal[Seg96], the work of Rockwell’s artistic scenes draws not from imagination but from embodied values like honesty, hard work, and loyalty to reflect the American experience and identity effectively. Today, American art without Rockwell’s contribution appears aesthetically failed and characterized by cultural debasement. Rockwell’s works partake in the formation of modern day identity and is characteristic of competing versions of middle class, white, and American masculinity. To bring out his ideas, Rockwell uses figures of teenage boy to demonstrate Rockwell as a teenage and the roles of boys and adolescence in illustrating masculinity roles. The article goes beyond the mere depiction of boyhood as serious adventuring to humorous occasions. For instance, the picture of a boy pushing a baby carriage was an indication of changing male and female roles through forced separation of individual from group and the fact that the it is possible to assign the functions of one gender other gender which is then adopted as norm. Instead of playing baseball or any other sport, The Boy, concentrates more on feminine roles of childcare and adult roles and attire. While the baseball boys dress suitably for their sporting, the Boy pushing the baby carrier dresses in a manner that demonstrates him as a mature adult and not the child he should be at his age. As a result, the youth is denied the opportunity to access friendship boyish play that Siegal (1996) defined as a part of maturity. Additionally, the growing opportunities denied to boy’ the experience of domesticated performance of familial objectives in public thus creating sissy. In my opinion, this section strongly demonstrate that transformations on gender roles are not the boy’s own making but because of influence by social developments. Despite being inevitable, social developments influence human life in a way believed to best create and define the real boy. Unlike the sissy, the real boys are rough and tumble with a spunk and innate nobility of the ‘American boy’ who is never calm regardless of the presence of authority or not. Segal [Seg96] reveals some social developments influencing changing roles and identities of American boy include introduction and implementation of homosexuality that encourages same-sex partnership that adheres to gender conventions and Sexual acts unlike through adherence to conventions of gender. Adherence to gender conventions is evident through sports given and the crucial role of Mass media in the broadcast of cultural values defined as dominant in the perpetuation of variations in gender. The recent world cup tournaments revealed male footballers thereby perpetuating men sports as a male sport. Part 2: music in film and real life in the fifth world: Journal 2 The week’s readings are about music in films, and real life unlike fake life. Shumway [Shu96] identifies that in the current world, blending music in films results to alterations between the image and the music. This is true with regard to the fact that the audience may recognise the artist, style, or the song contributing to the successful sound track albums. The reading also examined the appropriateness of film sound tracks to the context. This is because highly successful films do make sure that musical consultants participate in obtaining the only songs that best fit the movie or movies scenario such that the audience are more appealed with more of them increasing the film’s sales level. Music in films is elaborated as going beyond entertaining in films to establishing feelings of generational belonging amongst the audience. While some film producers can writer their original songs, film songs production may also involve hired consultants who rhyme the song and the topic under discussion. The Graduate film pioneered the use of popular music to replace orchestra film and since then, film music has always involved popular songs. For the Graduate, the use of popular music for nostalgia service thereby depicting the relationship between actors and becoming the comment on narrative action while creating elegiac mood, and retrospection levels. Compared to popular music in films, rock n roll used in traditional films did not readily yield nostalgia. Other crucial movies include Easy Rider, ‘American Graffitti.’ In the section of living life in reality and not fake, the main element is to emphasize a shift from the approach of conceptions founded on common sense, but on conceptions expertise[Con96]. I understand that failing to recognise lack of expertise to emphasize fake development of art and video on the basis that misleading assumptions taken into consideration during production. However, using fakery in modern day arts has proven to be productive. For instance, Disney reveals that false scenery creates illusions, which yields the desire for the Disney land production. Given that fake and reality contribute to the formation of film, tension exist between the two the existence of fake and reality 3. Reflection of choices The representation of societal development and alterations is through the choice of art by Rockwell for its ability to emphasize that as children grow, they require sufficient exposure to the environment to enable them to learn and shape their behaviors accordingly. Rockwell identifies the needed changes by comparing and contrasting the real boy and sissy. It is for this reason that this section on the definition of the American masculinity became crucial in defining the American identity and American experience. In addition, the section clearly notes and appreciates the diversity in the American experience and specifically the experience of women in America involving childcare that involves even publicly taking part in familial affairs. Participation in sports offers the best example of an application of gender roles and gender experiences. Media perpetuates male superiority and female inferiority in sports by always depicting males through attributes like muscularity, physicality, and superiority and the female athletes feminized. The result is that although media wants to cover women and girls in athletics, the fact is that they are both first females, which is why even when given more media coverage, women athletes continually perceived and promoted as different from males. In addition, the presentation of women athletes is less than men athletes are with the most common way being comparison of female athletes’ performance to male athletes’ performance and emphasis that female athletes did not beat their male counterparts. The result is perpetuation of gender hierarchy that promotes the reaction by women to break away from ancient cultural expectations and rising above social barriers. According to Caruso [Car96], the minority group like women are never satisfied with the loss of their cultural identity and continually define self-identity. For instance, Asian American artists presently make use of art to explore self-identity, gender issues, and cultural issues. Further, Koren American minority women artists use art as in response to their customary nurture thereby questioning issues of ethnicity, politics, gender, socioeconomic status, and identity. For the Korean women, breaking social barriers involve dealing with Confucian heritage that is responsible for perpetuation of male-oriented, authoritarian, and factional ideas and practices, and the traditionally defined women roles like home making, reproduction, and nurturing children. 4. Reflection: Two images two examples of images that express the experience of representation of cultural, self-identity, and gender are The Boy with Baby Carriage and it is a Best-Ever Suit-YBetcha. In the image of The Boy with Baby Carriage, the boy consciously participates in childcare activities at the expense of taking part in boyish activities like playing baseball. Instead, the boy dedicates time to partake roles that traditionally been known to belong to women while the media have continually promoted sports as an activity for males who remain inferior. The boy depicts the shifting of traditionally known gender roles which is a representation of reality given that women are increasingly gaining self-awareness and actively working towards breaking social barriers. As women continually seek for their identity and seeking shifting of gender roles, the real forms of men characterized by traditions are lost while revivalist forms that delude traditional roles introduce fake lore. However, some traditions represent fake folklore, as the intentions of the revivalists were unauthentic. The image of it’s a Best-Ever Suit-YBetcha demonstrates a man showing off the brand of his suit as a measure of his masculinity and this brings out human’s capacity to immerse in and enjoy their capacity to develop surrogate environments and synthetic experiences. The surrogate environments are unreal and only work positively for humans as they try to create the likeness of themselves, their world and times only to end up with copies. From the image, the other boy’s admire his masculinity as he can determine quality, appearance, style, and value while disregarding the fact that masculinity’s definition through physical prowess and other bodily qualities. Consequently, fake masculinity is developed from purchased and applied items in under the sign of a brand name. 5. Reflection In my opinion, art refers to human inspired skills and thoughts expressed or implemented in a visual form like sculpture or painting and providing results whose acceptance revolves around their emotional power or beauty. Since art is an expression of thoughts and skills of the painter, then, art is influenced by human values, beliefs, culture, and environment. In this case, human values are consistent manners and conduct that direct humans towards doing what the society regards as right and tolerable. Consequently, the expression of human values through arts be interpreted about the environment in which the artwork has been produced or relative to other environments with shared human values. Relative art and human values, the modern day culture has changed human values especially in pursuit of fake or surrogate environments and practices that replace the traditionally shared environments. To this effect, art was traditionally valuable and filled with meaning is now criticized especially in environments where current human values are not in support of what it presents. For instance, the boy with a baby carrier would not call for any attention in environments where father and mother equally take care of their children and want the best for them. However, in chauvinistic societies, the image would represent a disgrace to the males in that society. With time, fakelore is replacing traditions positively and making life manageable within the modern day surrogate environments. During my learning, there are several significant moments with the most crucial being reality or fakeness which are common within the fifth world. The fifth world is a virtual space characterized by mass media, the White house & La Chingada, art schools, United States suburbs, and malls. In the fifth world, false and misleading are dominant with reality substituted by fake and false mistaken for real. Being part of the fifth world, fake resides everywhere and as humans there is a high tendency of attraction towards it without any questions concerning its authenticity. For instance, humans in the fifth world are exposed to ghost writing which present fake work since there are numerous issues regarding the authenticity of such work only to leave the reader wondering the level of truth in books despite quality assurance stamps. In addition, other museums focus on fake through informally developed systems like traffic jam whose organization through tweaking of own rules. In addition, misleading assumptions about artifacts made them part of the British Museum given the associated influence that could arise as a matter of exhibiting artifacts within the British museum context. For artifacts belonging to other countries, having them in Britain led to distorted understanding of them and their realness. As a result, the perception in the audience is that something is unreal and this jolts their beliefs towards the artist. To my surprise, I have heard myself asking the question of ‘what have changed?’ as people no longer understand the reasonable compromise that caution us of the reconstruction role bestowed on us without abandoning authenticity from life. Class structure as an aid to arts’ learning experience Using web classes has provided me with advantages of flexibility since I do not have to be in an actual classroom to learn provided I have a computer and access to internet. As a result, I have managed to plan a schedule that works for me so that I can access my classes from anywhere at any time. In this case, I the structure of the class facilitate my participation commitments like jobs. For this art class, the learning experience was efficient given that it is student-centered with my learning method working for me and promoting my working capacity understand class materials completely prior to proceeding to the next lesson given that I have access to the learning materials 24 hours each day. The implication here is that I can access learning materials for the course with ease to read or consult and does not have to pain my head remembering the concepts mentioned in class lectures which I never took note. Since web classes take place within a virtual space, I have come to understand this form of learning as reading through fake environments and attaining fake education that is not instruction based but self initiated with little or no consultation. What to take into future from my learning experience From this experience, fake learning using web classes is linked to the fact that the teacher and interaction with other students is missing. As a result, much of the learning is through personal initiative. In future, I would recommend the presence of virtual discussion groups that could be in form of Skype calls, teleconferencing, and online meetings where participants from different locations air their views and assist each other to understand classroom materials. References Seg96: , (1996), Seg96: , (1996), Shu96: , (1996), Con96: , (Congdon & Blandy, 1996), Car96: , (1996), Read More