Marcel Duchamp’s Fresh Widow was created in 1920, and is on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Fresh Widow is a bluish green miniature French window, which he constructed with wood and leather. The Fresh Widow is considered to be a part of the Dadaist period and retains qualities of dadaism in that it is a stand alone object, that has been completely stripped of its utility and function. In addition, across the window sill, Duchamp wrote “COPYRIGHT” in capitalized black letters referring to the classic dadaist rejection of the commodification or reproduction of art. Duchamp created the Fresh Widow two years after the end of World War I. World War I was traumatizing and horrific for most of Europe, with millions of men being killed. The timing of Duchamp’s Fresh Widow, the title, as well as the form of his piece all work together to represent the losses felt by wives in France during the war. The use of a French window that has been blacked out by black leather, as well as the bluish-green color of the wood is a reference to the macabre realities of war and the …show more content…
Following World War I, widows were abundant. Duchamp’s piece illustrates the grief stricken emotional and deadened vision widows had after the war when their wounds were ripe and unable to be restrained. The widow is much like Duchamp’s window- impenetrable and unreadable. The viewer cannot see the vision of the widow because the widow herself cannot she her own vision. Much like the inability of the viewer to look through the glass, the widow cannot look to somewhere else, to a different place. The viewer is left with an intimate bond with the widow, experiencing her inability to create a vision but is also left at a distance from the widow because of the viewer's inability to read her emotions and thought processes. The widow is draped in a veil of mourning and sadness much like the window is covered by black
Another small but important window scene takes place after Clarissa returns home to discover that her husband has been invited to Millicent Bruton’s lunch party but she has not. After reading the message about the party on a notepad, she begins to retreat upstairs to her private room, “a single figure against the appalling night.” As she lingers before the “open staircase window,” she feels her own aging, “suddenly shriveled, aged, breastless… out of doors, out of the window, out of her body and brain which now failed…” Again, there is a hint of danger as death is portrayed as a somewhat alluring transcendental experience,
The post-modernist Julie Rrap is a contemporary artist whose focal point rests on the basis of femineity and the way the female identity is represented historically within art. She is a feminist who accuses the ‘male gaze’ of instigating a predatory activity that is accustomed with the norm of society. She relates this norm to existing social structures that are attributed with a patriarchal society, where women were nothing more than sexual objects. All in all this term, the ‘male gaze’ evaluates the predatory voyeurism of society, where the male is the active subject and the female is a passive object of representation.
A distinctly visual aspect of demonstrating the experience of the characters kindles curiosity in the audience to involve and instill emotional understanding of the context. Through the use of distinct and unique techniques, composers create an emotional response that can have a significant effect on the responders’ attitude on the world. The play ‘The shoe-horn sonata’ explores the crisis of circumstances as John Misto depicts the forgotten history of the women captured and imprisoned during WW2. Misto explores the experiences of the Australian nurses and the government’s response to their pleads of salvation, to emotionally bind the audience and the characters. Likewise, David Douglas Duncan involves the audience by evoking a feeling of pity and empathy in his Korean War photograph. He creates sentiment for the loss of innocence and employs distinctly visual elements to convey the horrifying nature of war. He profoundly highlights power in the photograph to explore the despair felt by the weak fleeing Korean citizens. Hence, both authors elevate the context with a visual representation of the individuals’ struggles to create curiosity and emotional rapport with the audience to improve the understanding of the characters experiences.
In the poem “XIV,” Derek Walcott utilizes the use of inhumane imagery that is being counterpointed with the use of happy imagery to show the view of an elderly woman with his experiences with her; the speaker recalls this information by describing his experiences with her with a sense of happiness, fear and appreciation.
Bruce Dawe’s poems “Katrina”,” A Victorian Hangman Tells His Love”, “Homo Suburbiensis “ and “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” depict life and death through the use of similar poetic techniques such as metaphors, imagery, onomatopoeia, tone and similes, although, with different circumstances. The events in these four poems evoke emotions within the reader, the most common being sadness and frustration. These emotions are explored, in all four poems, through the tone of melancholy.
To conclude, Annie Dillard’s piece “The Death of the Moth;” is about Dillard being reminded of the death of a moth she observes and how it relates to herself, this piece is a great depiction of the impact of life and death. She talks about her personal experience in a tone that
“What the dead don’t know piles up, though we don’t notice it at first,” is an insight in Roger Angell’s descriptive memoir, “Over the Wall” (414). Emotional responses, stimulating thoughts and solid feelings are elicited through the use of personal reflection, regarding the death of his wife, Carol. This literary nonfiction, memoir uses the present tense, a constant tone, and an informal view to help add immediacy, by keeping the reader involved step by step as the author connects his personal present and past experiences regarding death. Readers are continually intrigued by Angell’s literary nonfiction essay, with provoking thoughts focusing on death, while using figurative language to keep Carol alive, with the use of vivid personal reflections and descriptive personal experiences.
Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.
Achille-Claude Debussy or Claude Debussy was a French 20th century composer known for his prominent role in impressionistic music. Debussy never described his pieces as impressionism as he disliked the term when it was associated with his music. Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he and his family left for Paris in 1867 only to move to Cannes in 1870 to escape the Franco-Prussion war. Claude Debussy learnt to play piano from an Italian violinist by the name Jean Cerutti and later studied under a woman, by the name of Marie Mauté de Fleurville, who claimed to have been a pupil of Frédéric Chopin. In 1872 he was enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire and remained there to develop musically over the next 11 years. Debussy was infamous for his experimental nature breaking
She describes their movement as aimless, and careless because of their lack of motivation to struggle on, seeing life as “ought” or nothing compared to what it once was before the loss. The reader can imagine being in the position of the sufferer; very stagnant, and lifeless almost like a corpse which is what makes this form of diction so evoking.
Danticat is wanting the reader to be aware of the women’s suffrage still happening in the world. Even though they themselves may not be experiencing it, the injustice displayed upon women is a real thing. She stated in the article that “my grandmother was an old country woman who always felt dis-placed in the city… where we lived and had nothing but her patched-up quilts and her stories to console her,” (Danticat). The stories shared between Danticat and her grandmother are forever etched into her memory. Since death was such a commonality, Danticat was not even fazed when her grandmother passed. The fact of the emotionless death alone should shed a light on the terribleness of the situation. Death should never be an everyday thing.
a widow’s walk was on the roof, but no widows walked there—from it (Lee 82).
In "A Sorrowful Woman" the wife is depressed with her life, so much so, "The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again"(p.1). This wife and mother has come to detest her life, the sight of her family,
Death is a difficult subject for anyone to speak of, although it is a part of everyday life. In Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth”, she writes about a moth flying about a windowpane, its world constrained by the boundaries of the wood holding the glass. The moth flew, first from one side, to the other, and then back as the rest of life continued ignorant of its movements. At first indifferent, Woolf was eventually moved to pity the moth. This story shows that life is as strange and familiar as death to us all. I believe this story was well written and will critique the symbolism, characters, and the setting.
“The July Ghost,” another Jamesian story explains a woman who stand too “sensible” to see her own son’s ghost and can only be comforted secondhand through her lodger who, to his consternation is able to see the ghost. Despite a lasting sadness, nevertheless, Byatt admits that in recent years her work has developed an unexpected lightness adding that she has only lately been able to see again properly, after a kind of blind sorrow. She’s drawn to the sparkle of Matisse, the uselessness of cheerfulness. “If one day you regain the sense that these colors and this tension are extraordinarily beautiful, it feels like an incredible gift. The human condition is horrible; all this beauty is extra.”