Colorful Apocalypse
The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art. By Greg Bottoms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. xvi + 184. Reviewed by Tommy Folan.
Birds of a Feather, A Room of his Own, and Tortured Saviours
Outsider artist 's eccentricity, eclecticism, and the seeming originality of their work excites critics, art historians, and collectors because they exist and create work outside of the traditional art historical narrative. But, since Morgenthaler, Prinzhorn, and Dubuffet first brought attention to the works of outsider artists, there has been a tendency to strip the art from the artist. The works are viewed primarily as found art objects – and often they actually are discovered – much as a viewer would approach
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Beginning with the announcement of Howard Finster 's death, the most likable of the three artists, Bottoms embellishes his own literary self by relating personal stories of drinking cheap booze behind dumpsters, listening to REM, skating in small town Virginia, and other typical teenage angst to which nearly everyone can relate. He further polishes his credentials for writing a book about outsider artists by telling us he is a professor of creative writing, a Southerner, and author who gained acclaim by writing about his Schizophrenic brother who had attempted patricide, conversed with God, and admitted to a rape he had nothing to do with and, importantly, who had begged to attend his father 's funeral a year after having tried to kill him. Through Bottoms nameless brother, the complexity of mental illness becomes a reality from the start of the journey. Bottoms skillfully erodes the barrier between us and the other by bringing to life the love he has for his brother and the love his brother had for their family. We are left grappling with the conundrum of a world view where it makes sense for a person to be able to attempt to kill people he …show more content…
Each of the artists Bottoms explores represent different types of outsider artists. Finster is a mythologized, historic character, a jovial fool, a backwoods jester, Thompson is a self-trained artist rejected by family and society, an odious little cripple, while Kox, a modern day St. Jerome hiding in his cave, is a trained and skilled artist who has found a community where he can co-exist. All three experienced trauma and visions. All three have been discovered raising questions of authenticity. All three 's art is outside of any art history narrative. Their ideas are not a reaction to any discourse or dialectic with art culture, but rather a raw and natural response to what is perceived as falsehoods and untruths in the world. For all three artists, we are the dupes succumbing to and being controlled by society 's false rules
They both seeks freedom from the traditional art’s narrative and description of the literal visual world. Trying to free painting from the limitation of representational association, Wright focus on the juxtaposition and reverberation of pure primary and secondary
Describing, and living the emotional rollercoaster between each character as they grew in success or perished in horrible ways. This book transforms the human mind through each one of the literary challenges that Larson uses to make a deeper connection to the readers. It takes you to a new state of mind when in Holmes head, and gives you inside look of how, and what a serial killer thinks. Yet with Burnham it gives you a inside look at the growth of the city, and the bond between people. This book would not be complete without the contrasting of the light and dark, heaven and hell, and good and evil aspect
When Silvey found himself unable to follow his promising career of interpretive dance due to a knee injury, he turned to his former passion; writing. Silvey always had a desire for southern gothic fiction; chiefly focuses on damaged, delusional characters. His inspiration being regional American writers such as Twain, Lee and Capote. Silvey knew he wanted to demonstrate and explore his capabilities within Jasper Jones. The ‘sloughing of innocence’ was a key input; “that moment where the bubble is burst and you're suddenly exposed to the real truth of things and the blind trust of childhood dissolves”- (Craig Silvey, 2016)
Kaysie Rich Mr. Dibattista ENGL A111 619 September 25,2016 Literacy is Not Just Reading and Writing Creating art is one of the many ways our brains can go on autopilot and deal with the stress everyday events may cause. It isn’t just drawing or painting; in fact, art can be defined as visual, auditory, or performing acts that convey unique and creative thoughts to be appreciated for their beauty by oneself or others. The artist’s thoughts become the art through their personal hardships, struggles, and overall awareness of oneself. In her essay The Sanctuary of School, Lynda Barry, an art major and successful artist, demonstrates her founding love and freedom through art provided by her teacher in her classroom as a young child.
Carver explores the theme of human disconnect through his pronoun choice. Throughout the story, Carver uses pronouns rather than the characters’ names as a way of making the reader feel disconnected from
Because Dean uses many different sources coming from people of many different professions, not just art historians, she successfully avoids any traces of biases throughout her essay. She shows how all different types of people, including archaeologists, anthropologists, and just an average person, often succumb to the use of these four different mistakes to incorrectly identify pieces as art. A bias is often formed when the argument is supported by only a small window of evidence, and in this essay, Dean successfully avoids that mistake, and there for creates an argument with no
Anna Quindlen in the article, “The C Word in the Hallway” argues that mental illness don’t get enough awareness or help that it actually needs. Quindlen supports her argument by using similes, tone and bias’ to state that many teachers are not trained to recognize mental illness and so some just dismiss it and so that leaves “over two thirds of the mentally disturbed children without any help”. Insurance also does not aid in covering the costs because “health insurance plans do not provide coverage for necessary treatment”, or if they do then they think that they should “penalize those who need a psychiatrist instead of an oncologist”. The author's purpose in writing this was to inform people about the scary reality that many kids and teens face today and to argue that it is nothing to joke about and that it needs to be taken seriously.
However, when Larson writes about Holmes, his tone is black and grave. He describes Holmes as having eyes like “great murders,” and possessing the disturbing ability to “sense vulnerability” (35, 36). When writing about Holmes, Larson uses words like “disgrace,” “destitution,” “disturbance,” “hellish,” and “inhuman” (123, 146). These words possess a dark, unsettling connotation that cause readers to have a negative outlook on Holmes. Larson’s choice of diction causes readers to feel two different emotions throughout the book.
From the content of books to the songs on the radio, art serves to provide a reflection of the world. Behind every design, there are great chains connecting the art to the artist to the artist 's inspirations and so on as far as the eye can see. In Jonathan Lethem 's The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism, he emphasizes these unseen connections. "My search had led me from a movie, to a book, to a play, to a website, and back to a book." (Lethem 212).
It provides a condensed history of the evolution of critical theories and discriminates between them with the aid of a simple diagram. The essay begins with the definition of modern criticism which is to exhibit “the relation of art to the artist, rather than to external nature, or to the audience, or to the internal requirements of the work itself”. This one and a half century old theory of art competed against innumerable theories such as the mimetic theory, the pragmatic theory, etc., all of which have been thoroughly discussed in the essay. Abrams quotes theorists such as Santayana and D.W. Prall to show the unreal and chaotic nature of these alternate theories.