Art imitates life. Whenever life changes art adapts to the changes and is reflective of its origin in time. We learned this when we discussed Freud, Einstein coming onto the scene. As they introduced new theories and new ideas we were introduced to new art forms like Dadaism and Surrealism. In 1967 America was going through some changes. Baby Boomers are turning into hippies and everyone is heading out to San Francisco because it’s the place to be. College enrolments have doubled since 1960 so it’s clear this generation wants higher learning. Films like The Graduate express this generations’ uneasiness with the idea of growing up and accepting responsibility. Television devotes more broadcast time to the Vietnam War and this generation is divided between those who support the war and those who oppose it. It’s like a social revolution in America. 1967 was also a great year for Andy Warhol. He had produced the work that this essay is based on. It was a work called Marilyn Monroe. It was a screen-print on paper thirty-six inches long by thirty-six inches wide. It is very disturbing looking because it doesn’t really have any likeness to Marilyn Monroe.
All moments in a life find the reflection in art. Art is a reflection of feelings, desires, hopes, successes and failures of humanity. Though there are certainly basic themes rendering the greatest influence. Certainly here it is necessary to recollect the nature that is mother of all essential and about war – as the most awful event.
Let’s find such a phenomenon in different fields. For example “When Art Imitates Sea Life” by Stephen Treffinger. Geraldine Gonzalez, right, was a shoe designer before turning to the decorative arts. Her Medusa chandeliers, above, are made of crystal paper (similar to wax paper but coated with plastic) and wire. The paper, Ms. Gonzalez’s latest medium of choice, gives the lamps a soft glow reminiscent of phosphorescent sea creatures.
The Maison et Objet home design show, in Paris last month, is considered one of Europe’s most important. And while established figures like Marc Newson, who has just designed a line of cookware for the French manufacturer Tefal, could be expected there, it was particularly rewarding to see small design houses with a more personal perspective. Many of the artisans below began in other fields and only later found their way into making pillows, tiles, pottery and lighting fixtures.
Geraldine Gonzalez, right, was a shoe designer before turning to the decorative arts. Her Medusa chandeliers, above, are made of crystal paper (similar to wax paper but coated with plastic) and wire. The paper, Ms. Gonzalez’s latest medium of choice, gives the lamps a soft glow reminiscent of phosphorescent sea creatures.
”My mother, who is a painter, used this paper to protect her pastels,” Ms. Gonzalez said. ”I loved to watch her work and to listen to the special rustle it made.” (She makes a bird-wing wall sconce out of the same material.)
The Medusa comes in three sizes, each one roughly twice as tall as it is wide
I’ve always felt that evolution is so fascinating to its friends and foes alike, not only because it has real explanatory power for certain aspects of why organisms act like they do and are built like they are, but even more because evolution embodies one of the great mythic stories of the modern age. There is something enormously attractive about the plucky hero who overcomes various forces all bent on his annihilation, only to survive and prosper and see his children grow fruitful and multiply (“All dinosaurs from the enormous Brachiosaurs to the terrifying Tyrannosaurs trace their origins back to small bird-like reptiles like Coelophysis.”). It’s a great first act!
Equally great is the second act, where the hero, like David plucked from the sheepfold and made king of Israel, moves on to unthinkable heights and glories and becomes King of land, sea, and air as he and his kind assume a wide variety of forms beautiful, terrifying, majestic, grotesque, and comic in the Jurassic period. And, like every good tragedy, the drama ends in stupendous death and heart-wrenching loss. In the very hour of his prosperity, the hero either begins to fade due to the mortal sickness of Change (“Gradually, nature turned against the mighty sauropods and their numbers began to dwindle as their food supply dried up”) or is doomed because of some apocalypse that hangs over his head (“Three thousand miles to the south, even as the majestic tyrannosaurs are feasting, a comet is about to strike the Gulf of Mexico with the force of a hundred billion Hiroshima bombs! This is the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs!”) It’s a perfect dramatic arc and one of the most satisfying mythic structures in the world. To paraphrase Voltaire, if dinosaurs did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent them just because their story is so strangely moving to us. It is a sort of cosmic commentary on Paul’s statement that creation has been subjected to futility (Romans 8:20).
That, of course, makes me think dinosaurs were invented by a God who was not unaware of the mythic power of the story. And I think this all the more since, despite the enormous power of evolutionary theory to explain some things, I also note that there are still things about creation which force me to see an Artist rather than Chance as the guiding Hand behind it all.
Take the Coconut Crab. Here’s a critter that starts as a random egg in the briny deep. After several malts, he grows from a plankton to the size of a couple basketballs (and after dodging a predator or two), and (despite receiving no instruction on how to do coconut crab things from his mommy) crawls up on an island. It is an island he’s never seen before and knows nothing about (due to the fact his itsy- crab brain is pretty much a glorified ganglion). Then, with little waving stalk eyes that can barely see, he crawls over to a coconut tree he’s never seen before and climbs it. At the top, he snips off a coconut he’s never seen before, crawls back down the tree and gropes around till he finds the coconut. Then, with limbs specially adapted for this, he cuts into the coconut and chows down.
According to life imitating art there is
He’s effective. Navy leads the nation in rushing with 323.1 yards per game, and the bruising — and bruised — Eckel is a major reason. Playing with an injured shoulder since September, he leads Navy with 1,026 yards and averages 5.3 yards per carry. Eckel is the eighth player in Navy history to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season and is the first to do so since quarterback Chris McCoy in 1997. He’s the first non-quarterback at Navy to break the 1,000- yard mark since Napoleon McCallum in 1985.
In a life-imitates-art moment this summer, Eckel matched up this summer against sophomore linebacker Jason Monts during one of the final sessions of a required boxing class. Eckel had no idea how to defend himself, nor did he want to; “I just wanted to knock somebody down,” he said. Monts opened the bout with a couple of jabs to Eckel’s face, knocking his head back. Then Eckel got mad. When Kyle Eckel walks off of a football field, it often looks as if he’s just survived a fight. His jersey is bloodied and grass- stained. He’s got nicks on his arms. Navy’s 5-foot-11, 235-pound junior fullback is tough.
“He gets banged up, hurt,” said sophomore linebacker Evan Beard, one of Eckel’s closest friends on the team. After a game, “he looks horrible.”
“He’s just a great player. He has size, he can run people over — he pretty much has the whole package,” said Army outside linebacker Ryan Kent, who will face Eckel on Saturday in the 104th Army-Navy game. “You’ve just got to contain him. You’re not going to stop him cold. You’ve got to make sure that the guy who’s responsible for him is responsible for him. You don’t want to get a guy like that going.”
Paul Johnson, Navy’s head coach, and Ivin Jasper, the fullbacks coach, point to Eckel’s improved vision as one factor behind his increased production this fall. As a sophomore, Eckel ran for 510 yards and four touchdowns on 144 carries.
“It’s experience, just knowing the system better, knowing where the blocks are coming from,” Eckel said. “There are a lot of subtle differences in our plays, and I understand them better this year. Last year, I just thought I’d see it on the field. . . . I’m reading off my blocks, instead of running into my blocks.”
“He’s old school, and I think last year that was to his detriment,” Beard said. “Now he picks and chooses the times when he runs over rather than around people. He’s a lot better football player.”
Eckel has been playing with a shoulder injury ever since Navy’s 39-7 win over Eastern Michigan on Sept. 20. He’ll undergo an MRI exam at the end of the season, but for now, there’s nothing to do other than play through the pain. Eckel makes certain concessions — he didn’t practice last week and kept his arm in a sling — but in a game, if he gets hit from a certain angle, it feels as if “someone hit me with a baseball bat.”
Eckel, who combines speed and strength, almost never goes down on first contact. Only three of his 193 carries this year have resulted in negative yardage (and each time, the loss was just one yard). His performance in Navy’s 28-25 victory over Air Force, the Midshipmen’s biggest win of the season thus far, was classic Eckel. He ran for a career-high 176 yards on 33 carries, but the most impressive thing was “how he refused to get tackled,” Johnson said.
“A lot of times, I get leverage over an opponent,” Eckel said. “When I’m running the ball, I don’t get as low as I should get. I wait until [the defensive player] picks a spot, and I read where he’s going to tackle me, and then I’ll get an inch lower than him. That’ll help me either break the tackle or fall forward a couple of yards. If he gets down, you just dip on him and explode through.”
That kind of hard-nosed running has turned Eckel into something of a cult figure among the brigade. Every time he touches the ball, the midshipmen in the stands chant his name. “His trademark is running over people,” junior slot back Frank Divis said. “They love that.”
At last ART IMITATES WAR; [CITY Edition] . The Press Democrat. Santa Rosa. I would like to begin with words of editor:” I sat in a darkened room, and listened to talk of smart bombs, burned out orphanages, rules of engagement and collateral damage. And I wasn’t watching the nightly news. I was on Main Street in Sebastopol at the premiere of Sonoma County Rep’s New Drama Works winner, “Kuwait.” How surreal is that?” Art imitating life imitating art, ad nauseam. This play may not be for everyone, but it’s easy to see why it was picked over hundreds of others. The question one must ask is “Do I really want to leave the sanctity of my television set to look at another war?” Only if you’re interested in seeing powerful theatre. Ah, that the war in Iraq were as quick as the 90 minutes and with as few victims as in Sebastopol.
The war is awful. It takes lives of many people. Thinking about it from the philosophical point we would remember about Natural selection. Anyway a lot of artists show horror of the war in their Works of art for all people to remember and not to make mistakes in the future.
Summary
That’s a pretty strong statement.
In what attitude aesthetic reaction costs to all other reactions of the person how in view of this understanding the role and value of art in the general system of behaviour of the person are understood? We know, that till now on this question completely different answers are given and completely differently the role of art which is reduced by one authors to the greatest advantage is regarded, and by others – is equated to an ordinary entertainment and rest. Completely clearly, that the estimation of art every time will stand in direct dependence on that psychological understanding with which we to art shall approach. And if we want to solve the problem on in what attitude there is an art and a life if we want to put a problem of art in a plane of applied psychology, – we should arm with any general-theoretical sight which would allow us to have a firm basis at the decision of this problem.
This point of view reduces, thus, art to the most ordinary emotion and asserts, that any essential difference between ordinary feeling and feeling which causes art, is not present and that, hence, art is the simple resonator, the amplifier and the transfer device for infection with feeling. No specific difference at art is present, that is why the estimation of art and should proceed in this case from the same criterion from which we when we estimate any feeling proceed. Art can be feel unwell and good, if it infects us with bad or good feeling; in itself art as such is do not feel unwell and not good, it only language of feeling which should be estimated depending on that on it you will tell. From here naturally enough Thick judged, that art is subject to an estimation with general moral the points of view, and regarded as high and good that art which caused his moral approval, and objected to what comprised reprehensible acts from his point of view. Many criticism have drawn the same conclusions from his theory and regarded usually a work of art from the point of view of that obvious maintenance which in it is incorporated and if this maintenance caused their approval, they concerned with a praise to the artist, and on the contrary. What ethics, are those also an aesthetics – here the slogan of this theory.
To us it is thought, that if we compare ordinary shout of horror and the strongest novel or tragedy the work of art will not sustain this comparison on infectivity, and it is obvious, that it is necessary to introduce something else other to simple infectivity to understand, that such art. Obviously, art makes any other impression.
We should address to art of ball and military music, art has for an object excitation only aesthetic feelings. In my opinion, art causes a lot of the general emotions, and aesthetic emotions play only decorative role. Not speaking that military music on the war during fight does not cause any aggressive emotions, it is possible to doubt and that in general the question here is put correctly. ” The military lyrics and music ” raises spirit ” armies, “inspires” on a feat, but in fact they are not resolved by fighting emotion or fighting affect. They moderate more likely and discipline fighting mood, but also, calm the excited nervous system and banish fear. To encourage mentality, to calm the excited soul and to banish fear is, it is possible to tell, one of the major practical appendices of “lyrics” following from its psychological nature “.
It is erroneous to think, thus, that music directly causes fighting emotion, she more likely categorically resolves fear, distemper and nervous excitement, she as though enables to be shown fighting emotion, but itself is direct her does not cause. It is especially easy for seeing on erotic poetry which unique sense, on Thick, to raise in us lust of feelings, meanwhile as the one who will see true nature of lyrical emotion, always will understand, that she operates completely with return image. It is impossible to doubt that on all other emotions (and affects) lyrical emotion operates with softening image, and quite often and will paralyse them. First of all so she operates on sexual feeling with his emotions and affects. In erotic poetry if only she really is lyrical, is smaller temptation, than in those products of figurative art in which the question of love and a notorious sexual problem are treated with the purpose of moral influence on the reader “. As to the big art – Beethoven and Shakespeare’s arts of art reminds a miracle – realization of water in wine more likely, and the present nature of art always bears in itself something realizing, overcoming ordinary feeling, both the same fear, and the same pain, and the same excitement when they are caused by art, comprise still something besides the fact that in them contains.
And it something overcomes these feelings, clarifies them, realizes their water into wine, and the most important purpose of art thus is carried out. Art concerns to a life as wine to grapes, – one of thinkers has told, and it was completely right, specifying to it that art takes the material from a life, but gives over this material something such, that in properties of the material does not contain yet. Leaves, in such a manner that the feeling originally individually, and through a work of art it becomes public or is generalized. We should recognize, what in fact the science not simply infects with ideas of one person – all society, the techniques not simply extends a hand of the person as art is exact also is as though lengthened, ” public feeling ” or techniques of feelings.
It is necessary to look at the child to see, that in it it is made much more opportunities of a life, than what find the realization. Our nervous system is similar to station to which conduct five ways and from which one departs only, from five trains arriving on this station only one, and that after severe struggle, can break outside – four remain at station. The nervous system thus reminds constant, for a minute not stopping field of struggle, and our carried out behaviour is an insignificant part of what is really made as an opportunity in our nervous system and is already caused even by a life, but has not found to itself an output. Just as in all nature the carried out part of a life is an insignificant part of all life which could arise just as each born life is paid by millions not born as is exact and in nervous system the carried out part of a life is a smaller part really the prisoner in us
References:
1. When Art Imitates Sea Life. New York Times.(Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Oct 2, 2003.pg.F.3
2. Navy’s Battering Ram; ‘Old School’ Junior Fullback Eckel Leads the Country In Yards Per Game Despite Playing With Hurt Shoulder; [FINAL EditionCamille Powell. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Dec 4, 2003. pg. D.01
3. ART IMITATES WAR; [CITY Edition] . The Press Democrat. Santa Rosa, CalifMar 29, 2003. pg. B.6
