The Mark of a Masterpiece Essays

Edvard Munch is regarded as the pioneer of the Expressionist movement in modern painting. At an early stage Munch was recognised in Germany and central Europe as one of the creators of a new and different movement of art, that helped artists to express their feelings about all the social change that was happening around them.

Orson Welles was born on the 6th of May in 1915 and died in 1985, on the 10th of October. He used to play magic, paint, and play the piano as a child, a later on he found himself directing, producing, writing and acting. Orson Welles performed in Romeo and Juliet, and started a radio career at the same time in 1934.

Citizen Kane Citizen Kane is often called the greatest film ever made. Its use of film techniques often taken for granted nowadays were completely new and had not been done before. Simple things like ceilings on the sets and realistic scenes such as the newsreel, which would not stand out in a modern film, were combined to make a film full of innovative techniques. The director, Orson Welles, developed the use of deep focus to make the flat cinema screen almost become three dimensional, which added a realism that had not been explored before.

People may consider the “classics” such as The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, or other contemporary works such as Beloved as pieces of literary merit. However, most people are not inclined to presume of prevalent novels -- a classification of works with divergent writing styles that reach an array of different individuals -- as works of literary merit. But what constitutes a piece of literary merit? It is a composed work of originality; consisting of an author's thoughts and craft of magic: cohesive and aesthetic diction they apply to tie the novel together in order to fabricate a message they attempt to convey on paper. With this magic on paper, one can “grasp the individual magic of [his/her] genius and study the style, the imagery, the pattern of [his/her] novels or poems.” (Nabokov). It is something that can relate to us not just now, but in the future as well. It is timeless. I believe a piece of literary merit is what should be read by the honors students at DePaul University. In Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs employs colloquial diction, developing characters, and his complex life as a child to demonstrate the realistic portrayals of life to successfully represent an important new era in today’s world. By doing so, he successfully imposes the idea that his novel is constituted as a piece of literary merit, and thus proving it as a novel to be read by honors students at DePaul University.

Modernism describes the ideology of the art and design that were produced during the modernist period. There has been a lot of controversy about when modernism started, yet many believe it initiated sometime in the late 19th century and continued to the early 20th century. The modernist movement was meant to be a break from traditions and it was set up to separate the value of certain works from the conservative realism. For instance, Unlike the traditional art that was aesthetic, this movement was more about space and form. In modernist design, shape and organization of products and buildings were based on their functional requirements. As a result, designs became simpler without the traditional decorative concepts. The idea behind the

     The corruption of idealism by wealth can be seen throughout the film, especially through the thoughts

The Classical style was founded during the creation of the ancient Greek civilization and was the style that was a combination of beauty, order, and proportion.

In “The Story of an Hour” (1894), Kate Chopin presents a woman in the last hour of her life and the emotional and psychological changes that occur upon hearing of her husbands’ death. Chopin sends the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard, on a roller coaster of emotional up’s and down’s, and self-actualizing psychological hairpin turns, which is all set in motion by the news of her husband’s death. This extreme “joy ride” comes to an abrupt and ultimately final halt for Mrs. Mallard when she sees her husband walk through the door unscathed. Chopin ends her short story ambiguously with the death of Mrs. Mallard, imploring her reader to determine the true cause of her death.

The Renaissance, a revival of antiquity starting in Italy around the middle of the 14th century, had broad implications for the way western society would operate thereafter. It would no longer focus on the church and its dictates, although they would still play a part. It would no longer have its government seated in Rome, with small pawns of the church controlling the land, although the church would still have a hand in government. It would no longer shun the vast stores of knowledge created in the past and ignored for a thousand years, although opponents would remain. The ideas of humanism, individualism, and secularism would come to play a role in society as they had in the past. Niccolo Machiavelli lived in a time when the

The artwork of William Hogarth is influenced greatly by social factors and the culture of eighteenth century England. In many of his works, Hogarth satirizes English society, rich and poor alike. His paintings and engravings depict the society of which he lived, with the costumes and ways of life of the times all shown in his work. Much of the time he is being satirical, exaggerating some of the faults of the people, other times he is being bitingly realistic in his views. It seems no-one is safe from his caricatures, from the lords and ladies, to slaves, servants, prostitutes, criminals and the poor.

The art world has a limitless array of mediums and different artistic periods, challenging the opinion of what should be accepted by the masses. "Expressionism is the art of the emotive, the art of tension provoked by consciousness of the forces which surround modern humankind." Challenging the academic traditions of the previous centuries, Edvard Munch impacted the art world as an instrumental leader in the development of modern German expressionism. His painting The Scream has made its mark in questioning the ideals of what is acceptable concerning the history of art. The paper will discuss Munch’s life history, uncovering the influences which led him to expressionism, as well as a detailed description and analysis of The Scream,

Today each person has their own story to be told. All of us come from different backgrounds and have circumstances we are living through. Each of has different type of person we wish to rely on. As a result of this there are no set standards as to whom we are to date and even marry and why. Instead, it’s a matter of whom each person chooses. Miguel De Cervantes, understood this at a time, the 1600 's, where this idea of love was not normal. Back then to marry for love was considered foolish.

Religious imagery is something that can be found in artwork all through the centuries. An anonymous world-renowned graffiti artist who goes by ‘Banksy’ places traditional paintings in public places altered to send an iconoclastic message about society and government. In this image he depicts a traditional figure of Jesus dying on the cross, but in his hands can be found shopping bags full of presents and candy. Jesus, an iconic figure in religious history, has been turned into a puppet to fit the mold of our consumer driven society. The rhetor presents an iconoclastic view that the integral commemoration of Jesus’ death and the religious aspects

Jack London, an American author known for his thrilling adventure stories, showed the world that even an exciting story that takes place in exotic settings can include all the intricacies of great literature. This is seen in many of his stories with the implementation of symbolism, many times a recurring theme in his work. Also, London used many ideas of the day such as Darwinism and Spencerism in his writings in order to better portray his views. However, perhaps one of the most telling signs that London wrote good literature was through London's mastery of a rising literary movement known as naturalism.

Drama."3 These changes led to the development of more actors in a play and the