This paper contains two essays on the following topics:
Interpret Walker Evans’ photograph from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by drawing on John Dewey’s programmatic statement:
“The task is to restore continuity between the refinde and intesified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience.” (John Dewey, Art as Experience)
Use Altieri’s comment in interpreting Stein’s portrait of Picasso
“Stein shows that language can itself play various substances and registers against each one another, so that the word takes on a cubist density of perspectives and facets that echo and contrast with each other” (Charles Altieri, Painterly Abstraction in Modernis American Poetry: The Contamporaneity of Modernism (1989))
Table of Contents
1. Walker Evans / John Dewey
2. Stein / Altieri
Objectives and Themes
The primary objective of this work is to explore the intersection between artistic representation and real-life documentation by analyzing specific examples from photography and literature. The central research inquiry focuses on how artists—specifically Walker Evans in photography and Gertrude Stein in literature—bridge the gap between their aesthetic media and the raw, often mundane realities they aim to depict.
- Documentary photography and the representation of social hardship in the 1930s.
- The role of non-aesthetic documentation as a form of high art.
- Literary Cubism and the use of language to construct multi-perspective portraits.
- The relationship between artistic technique and the preservation of the "total present."
- Theoretical perspectives on interpreting art through programmatic statements.
Excerpt from the Book
1. Walker Evans / John Dewey
Walker Evans, one of the most popular American documentary photographers of the 1930s, was also one of the first artists who steered clear of aesthetic photography and focused on documenting the dignity and hardship of American sharecroppers, laborers and farmers including their living conditions. He expressed it as an “non-‘artistic’ view”, but nevertheless created art.
The photograph from “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” shows an old, shabby wooden wall with a provisorily arranged shelf and a silverware-carrier. The title “Kitchen wall in the Fields’ house, Hale County, Alabama“ makes clear, that it is the wall of a farmers‘ house.
The photo does not have any people on it, consequently the viewer gets the feeling they must be working outside of the house. But the photographs simplicity and lack of various motives nevertheless shows the situation of laborers: they are very poor, but work hard. Their lives are packed by work, but what they earn and get out of it is very little. An indicator for this is the silverware. It is placed in the center of the photograph: this suggests, that the farmers only work hard, but they only work so much to survive and be able to buy food. What John Dewey announces in his quote is, that a photographer has to connect art and real life. The real life, the life of the famers, is the base and might appear to be boring. The photographer nevertheless is able to create art by depicting this life because he is able to brigde the gap between art and life.
Summary of Chapters
1. Walker Evans / John Dewey: This chapter analyzes how Walker Evans utilized documentary photography to depict the realities of the Great Depression, bridging the gap between artistic expression and everyday human struggle.
2. Stein / Altieri: This chapter examines Gertrude Stein's literary portrait of Picasso, illustrating how she employed a technique reminiscent of Cubism to capture the essence of a subject without relying on traditional storytelling.
Keywords
Walker Evans, John Dewey, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Documentary Photography, Great Depression, Literary Cubism, Art Theory, Social Documentation, Modernism, Representation, Aesthetic, Realism, Artistic Perspective, Cultural Analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this work?
The work explores how visual and literary artists transform mundane or social realities into art through specific techniques, focusing on the works of Walker Evans and Gertrude Stein.
What are the central themes discussed?
Key themes include the documentation of poverty, the relationship between art and life, the use of repetition in language, and the concept of Cubist density in literary portraits.
What is the main research question?
The text investigates how creators bridge the gap between their aesthetic medium and the "everyday events, doings, and sufferings" of the subjects they depict.
Which scientific or analytical methods are utilized?
The author employs interpretive analysis of primary texts and visual documents, supported by theoretical frameworks from John Dewey and Charles Altieri.
What is covered in the main body?
The main body examines Walker Evans' photography of the 1930s and Gertrude Stein's literary portrayal of Picasso, dissecting their unique approaches to documenting reality.
Which keywords best characterize this work?
The work is defined by terms such as documentary photography, literary cubism, social history, artistic essence, and modernism.
How does Walker Evans "create art" through his photographs?
Evans creates art by documenting social facts with a sober, distanced perspective, allowing the details—such as the placement of silverware—to speak for the hardship of the subjects without relying on sentimentality.
Why does Gertrude Stein use repetition in her portrait of Picasso?
Repetition is used as a fundamental literary principle to emphasize different characteristics and facets of Picasso, creating a "literary picture" that functions similarly to a Cubist painting.
In what way does the author draw a comparison between language and film?
The author suggests that just as a movie consists of distinct sequences that stand for themselves to create a whole, Stein uses language in a fragmented, structured way to build an all-round view of her subject.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Pola Sarah (Autor:in), 2010, Interpretation of Walker Evans´photograph from "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" and Gertrude Stein´s portrait of Picasso, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.hausarbeiten.de/document/184801
