A boy and girl break into an abandoned house one night. After exploring, they decide to 

leave. On their way out they see a light from upstairs turn on.

The girl and boy then heard noises from inside the house, “Yatzee!!” They decide to go back in.

“Maybe they will let us play” said the boy. 

In the early 1920’s, a new surge of art overcame the aesthetic world. In a hodgepodge of dreamlike, nonsensical images, surrealism was born. The point of surrealist art was to challenge convention-- it represented an uncomfortable deviance from reality. As this art form developed, a parlor game developed along with it. Sitting in their vintage suits, surrealist artists drew a bit of a picture, hid all but the very bottom, and passed it on to another artist to continue. The result was usually grotesque, and always fascinating. An Exquisite Corpse-- a mixture of different artists’ ideas and images that couldn’t quite fit together in a homogeneous form. In an attempt to recreate our own form of this surrealist experiment, we passed snapshots of stories through our round robin of creativity. The resulting stories were just as fascinating as the results of the 1920’s parlor game.

Very early on in the process, we had to surrender our stories. We watched our initial snapshot twist into a jumbled mess of other people’s creative flows. After we got over the initial shock of losing control, however, the process became something beautiful. We “...enjoyed the mesmerising flow of fragments” (Paul D. Miller, “Totems Without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse”). The beauty of our combined creative flows helped us create our mod podge of nonsense. That mod podge, however, was the point of this whole exercise. When our stories made the least amount of sense, doors of creativity opened in our minds. Suddenly making sense didn’t matter. Fitting a mold didn’t matter. Our “flow of fragments” turned into a pure example of our own freed thought processes and creativity.

Our project process represents something beyond stories-- it represents the world’s creative process on a microscopic scale. Everybody works so differently, sees so differently, processes so differently, that every bit of art is subject to billions of unique perspectives. We may never create anything completely original, but we create things that are uniquely our own. Nobody will be able to copy the intrinsic meaning we assign to our own art, just as we will never understand exactly what somebody else’s art means. All of the art in this world comes from this individual synthesis of our surroundings. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí worked together on the 1929 film “Un Chien Adalou”, resulting in a nonsensical representation of their dreams in art form. They didn’t come up with anything new, they just came up with their own interpretation of the information they had.

The tenuous strings of narratives we created illustrate the simple, beautiful fact of our diversity. We work so differently, see so differently, process so differently… Isn’t it amazing how individual our worlds are? How we are able to come up with such a unique synthesis of our surroundings? Our stories are barely interconnected, overflowing with our ideas and interpretations and information. We may not have made sense in our exquisite corpse storyboards, but we did make something-- and that, ultimately, is what matters.

A Relaxing Death

The painting titled Ophelia was painted by Sir John Everett Millais in 1852. It portrays the character Ophelia, from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, singing before she drowns. The first time I saw this painting I was immediately struck by how calm it made me feel but after I learned the story behind it, I found the painting to be very haunting. I was shocked at how this painting was able to make me feel both bliss and horror almost simultaneously. Ever since viewing this painting, every time I listen to the song “An Arc Of Doves” by Harold Budd and Brian Eno, I feel both calm but also scared because this song makes me feel like I am underwater.

This idea of being underwater was something I tried to capture in the images I created for this week’s assignment. I did this by mostly using the color blue in my paintings but also by trying to keep a steady flow of the brush to represent flowing weightlessly in the water. For two of my paintings all I did was listen to the song with the lights out and my eyes closed and just began painting what I saw. This idea stemmed from Annie Dillard’s essay Seeing, which talks a lot about not being able to see what is around you and how it makes you feel. I also used the idea from the novel of stopping and thinking more about what I was looking at when taking pictures that made me feel like I was underwater. With this essay and project in mind I began looking at objects I saw everyday and thought what it would be like to see them while underwater. I simulated this by covering my camera lens with tape and coloring the tape blue.

I attempted to make my images feel very calming and relaxing but also somewhat off putting to convey the ideas of Ophelia, of a relaxing decline into death.

An Arc Of Doves-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okqn2Z-MT-A

Rosemary’s Baby

     Throughout all of history, horror has been a way for people to express their fears and to overcome challenges. Often political issues can be the main inspiration or driving force for creating horror movies. Women’s rights have been a constant issue throughout all of history, but organized feminism did not start until the first Women’s Conference held in Seneca Falls, America, in 1848. It was not until 1920 that women were even allowed to vote. This issue of oppressing women has often been the main theme in many horror movies including Carrie, Alien, and Scream but arguably one of the first and most powerful movies about Women’s rights is Rosemary’s Baby directed by Roman Polanski in 1968.

     The oppression of women is quickly seen through the character of Rosemary, who, throughout the whole film is always trying to accommodate others before herself. The first time this happens is the scene in which she agrees to go to dinner at her neighbors the Castevets, even though she does not want to. Probably one of the most memorable scenes and powerful scenes that portray this idea of women needing to break free from oppression is in the final scene in which Rosemary finds out her baby is the main subject of a satanic ritual and that she has given birth to the spawn of Satan. Despite finding all this terrible news out, she still submits her will and decides to raise the baby to appease others before doing what is best and most pleasing for her.

The acting in this film does an excellent job of portraying the discomfort that comes from Rosemary always being submissive to those around her. The Castevets, played by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, are very pushy neighbors who only think of themselves and not how their actions are affecting Rosemary. They come off as extremely obnoxious and oppressive people but are an excellent representative of the community in the 60’s. Another great performance was done by John Cassavetes who played Rosemary’s husband. Even though his character was subtler, he was just as bad if not worse in his oppression of Rosemary. He never took into account what she wanted and very rarely allowed her to make her own decisions through manipulating her to get his way.

Although women were able to vote in this era, there was still a huge equality gap that separated genders. Women were often forced to be reliant upon men. One of the most controversial issues in the 60’s was the approval of birth control. In 1960, the FDA approved the first birth control pill. However, it took until 1965 for the Supreme Court case Griswold vs. Connecticut to end state restrictions on access to the birth control pill. This is a prime example of outside forces controlling what a woman decides to do with her body and how the outside world can often imprison women. This issue is a major theme that arises in Rosemary’s Baby. One of the most extreme examples of this is the demonic rape scene that occurs at the hand of her neighbors as well as her own husband.

From the themes and issues that arise in this film one can assume that the director, Roman Polanski, is very passionate when it comes to gender equality, but less than ten years after releasing Rosemary’s Baby and fueling the flames of feminism, Polanski was charged with the rape of a 13 year old girl. This raises the question of “does the art become invalid, if the artist is not practicing what he is preaching?” Although many may argue that Rosemary’s Baby is not an essential part of feminist history because the creator of this film was, himself entrapping a young girl and controlling her actions, in reality, Polanski was not the sole creator of this masterpiece and the themes discussed in this film are essential in recognizing the oppression of women. It is vital to recognize the numerous other hands that went into creating this important film. Also just because a person is a hypocrite, it does not mean what he is preaching is no longer valid, it only means they are more responsible for their actions because they knew how terrible they were but still acted upon them.

 Although many may argue against its validity, Rosemary’s Baby is an essential film in recognizing the oppression of woman. It is important to study this film because of the political relevance at the time but also because many of the themes and issues within the film are still very prevalent in today’s society.