Street art is normally considered Graffiti but for artist like Blek le Rat and Banksy it’s a tool for getting their message across. For these artists stencil art or street art is the future of art, one of the few mediums which allows their works to get viewed by millions of people. Often considered satirical pieces of art, the works of Blek le Rat and Banksy are political, cultural, and ethical in nature. Blek le Rat has often claimed that his works are designed to bring often overlooked issues to the forefront of people’s thoughts.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Epistemology (the theory of knowledge). In philosophy it is considered as one of its cornerstones; it addresses the questions:
What is knowledge?
How is knowledge acquired?
What do people know?
How do we know what we know?
I’m sure there has been much debate and focus on analyzing the nature of knowledge by great people in history. Though I’m more interested in my readers’ thoughts on it.
I’m not sure how many people have seen this mini series, but I thought in an effort to make sure I post regularly I would mention this wonderful show. Desperate Romantics is a BBC series of the life of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. One thing that was impressive about this show, was all the effort they put into recreating some of the Brotherhoods paintings. In the show you will see a few pieces, such as;
Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) by John Everett Millais
Ophelia (1851-2) by John Everett Millais
The Order of Release (1854) by John Everett Millais
The Scapegoat (1856) by William Holman Hunt
Bocca Baciata (1859) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Beata Beatrix (1872) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Shadow of Death (1872) by William Holman Hunt
Oxford Union murals (1857-9) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones et al.
As well as sketch or images of;
Ecce Ancilla Domini (1849–50) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Hireling Shepherd (1851) by William Holman Hunt
The Light of the World (1853–54) by William Holman Hunt
The Awakening Conscience (1853) by William Holman Hunt
Dante’s Vision of Rachel and Leah (1855) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Blind Girl (1856) by John Everett Millais
Autumn Leaves (1856) by John Everett Millais
The Holy Family (undated) by Elizabeth Siddal
The Rowing Boat (undated) by Elizabeth Siddal
Venus Verticordia (1868) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Bubbles (1886) by John Everett Millais
Though I’m not sure how accurate the show is, it is a fascinating insight on some of some great artists.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.
Bright Star is a movie based on the last three years of John Keats life and his relationship with his muse Fanny Brawne. Though it was a Hollywood retelling of Keats romance, it was based on the biography ‘Keats’written by Andrew Motion. The highlight of the movie was really the poetry and letters by Keats. It is just nice to get this kind of insight on one of my literary heroes even in it was stylised a bit for the movie.
Disclaimer: While I don’t agree in the whole Sub-Culture labelling it does play a big part in culture itself. So I will try to remain unbiased and not try to stereotype any sub-culture.
“Clear Body, Clear Mind”
The lifestyle choice of Sobriety and Chastity
Both Straight Edge and Hardline sub cultures are not only originated from a punk rock scene, it is more of a philosophical choice for them.
Difference Between the Two
The common lifestyle choices between the two are; no drinking, no smoking & no drugs (even in some cases no promiscuous sex) but Hardline take it one step further than Straight Edge; they also have a bio-centric view of the world and pro-life stance on abortion.
Why be Straight Edge or Hardline?
It is important to know that both cultures are not religious or political based.
It’s a lifestyle centred around personal development and well being, while encouraging fun and togetherness. The movements wish to attract people away from dependancy lifestyles centred around drug habits (legal or illegal) and unhealthy and exploitative eating and general living habits common in modern cultures.
While Straight Edge is not dogmatic, Hardline is.
The X on the hands
A common practice at all-ages punk shows was to mark minors with an “X” on their hands so they couldn’t buy alcohol. As the straight-edge philosophy grew popular, punkers who were older than 18 but didn’t drink for ideological reasons started to mark themselves with the X in a show of solidarity.
Culture is all around us, especially in the music and the media, but we tend to miss it. I missed this one because I missed the show entirely but this bit of insight makes me want to watch the show.
David Lynch’s cult classic Twin Peaks has a few great examples culture. Mainly the use of dream-analysis; Dale Cooper solved the death of Laura Palmer in his sleep, literally. But he doesn’t remember, he knows that he knows but it’s been kept from him. He states in the show ‘My dream is a code waiting to be cracked – break the code, solve the crime’
Interestingly enough Lynch didn’t have an interpretation of the dream, it was an after thought; he had a ‘waking dream’ of this whole dream sequence and decided to add it into the show.
I’m sure The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud would have come in handy in solving the crime. But what is the book really about? Freud description is;
In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and obscurity of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the psychic forces whose conflict or co-operation is responsible for our dreams.
Though the book is widely considered to be his most important contribution to psychology, I have serious doubts about this book. For starters, people think differently and I suspect that they would dream differently as well. I don’t pretend to understand the whole Dream Interpretation theories; I just don’t think every dream would fit neatly into these interpretations.
Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am) is a popular phrase but do we really known what it means?
The phrase comes from solipsism; everything outside the mind is unjustified and unproven. The philosophical idea has been considered to be scepticism simply because they believe that others experiences can only be known by analogy.
Sophists live by the idea that ‘My mind is the only thing that I know to exist’.
The theory of solipsism merits close examination because it relates to three widely held philosophical presuppositions, which are themselves fundamental and wide-ranging in importance. These are that:
My most certain knowledge is the content of my own mind—my thoughts, experiences, affects, etc.;
There is no conceptual or logically necessary link between mental and physical—between, say, the occurrence of certain conscious experience or mental states and the ‘possession’ and behavioral dispositions of a ‘body’ of a particular kind;
The experience of a given person is necessarily private to that person.
Though the theory can sound complicated and even absurd; in modern society it does seem to be a common practise. People would not call themselves Sophists but they still choose to Wikipedia information to verify and prove to themselves the info is real and factual. To me that sounds very much like that whole bases of Solipsism.
Disclaimer: While I don’t agree in the whole Sub-Culture labeling it does play a big part in culture itself. So I will try to remain unbiased and not try to stereotype any sub-culture.
Possible one of the most misunderstood sub-cultures is the Emo movement. While there is a lot of stigma with this group there really aren’t grounds for it. The Emo movement is based around the rock genre of the same name, though no band claims to be an Emo band.
The Non-Existent Genre
The genre of music began in the mid 80’s as an off shoot of the Hardcore and Punk genre. In those days these styles and even grunge music was very political based and the people listened to it, while they enjoyed the music didn’t really care about politics. So a whole lot of bands started popping up that would start singing about something other that politics, they started singing something more personal. Those bands were labelled Emocore or Emo, the artists themselves never claimed to be apart of the genre, they just claim that they writing songs about their emotions and what’s going on in their world. If no band claims to be an Emo band, can it really be a music genre? Thus the reason why this is a non-existent genre
The Sub-Culture
“We’re all alone, together”
This is the response a girl said when asked about being an Emo. While amusing it does sum up the movement pretty well. The whole culture has been considered to be all about social withdrawal and suicide but the people that do claim to be Emo would probably say otherwise. They would probably say it’s not about self injury but more about expressing emotions, speaking out about the feelings of alienation, depression and angst.
Revisiting an Old Movement
The whole culture behind Emo’s is nothing new, in fact it’s almost modernising the whole Romantic Movement. There is so many connections between the two, both Romantism and Emo focus on the emotion and not order and both would be considered socially outcasts in there relevant societies.
Ultimately the whole movement is a much mocked, maligned, and misunderstood term for melodic, expressive people.
Possibly my favourite Surrealist would be René Magritte, one of the main reasons what because he ignored the previous 30 or so years of art and went back to basics, combining realism with surrealism. For example: in the painting ‘The Son of Man’ he painted an apple that looks like an apple (realism) but the apple was placed in front of a mans face (surrealism). Another artist that did some similar was Paul Delvaux and his reason for this; “to produce poetic shock by putting heterogeneous but real things together in an unexpected way.”
Poetic Shock has been used a lot nowadays, most notably in the 70’s by British graphics arts group Hipgnosis. The difference between Hipgnosis and the Surrealists was not only LSD, but the graphic design group used Poetic Shock to send very basic messages. Look at two Pink Floyd albums done by the group, Wish You Were Here and Animal. Wish You Were Here depicts two business men shaking hands but one is on fire (Getting burned in a business deal) and Animal simply has an inflatable Pig floating through the air (Pigs can fly). Magritte’s The Lovers shows two people sitting back to back with their face covered by a white sheet. Though Magritte never explained the meaning of his paintings, many have believed it’s a picture of loneliness and alienation.
Poetic Shock has also been used in Movies to scare people, one of the best example of this is the 1980’s horror classic The Shining. Danny was riding his bike around the Overlook Hotel and ran into the twins. Where normally people would think nothing of this, in the movie the twins were not expected to be there, leading to a perfect example of Poetic Shock in a movie.
André Breton, not only a poet but the founder of the Surrealist Movement took a big interest in Freud’s works on the unconscious mind. Breton found an unexpected beauty in the ravings of the unconscious patients. In attempt to capture that untapped beauty, Breton discovered Automatic Writing. A process of writing where the content does not come from a conscious thought from the writer. In some cases the writer does it in a trance but most of the times the writer does not thing about what he writes, they just write to see what comes out.
This lead to Automatism; which coved Automatic Writing, Drawing and even Music (most commonly in Free Jazz) is part of the bases of the Surrealist Movement. André Breton described the movement as “Pure psychic automatism” an attempt to capture pure untapped beauty.
Now days Automatic Writing is not used too often, but projects like NaNoWriMo, though not intended as a Surrealist project seems to push writers into a state of Automatism.
NaNoWriMo is a creative writing project that takes place in November where the participants try to write a 50,000 word story in 30 days. With a time frame like that, planning and story boards are out the window for the writer. This kind of deadline tends to lead to a lot of Automatism, giving a writer insight to a whole new way of writing.
Automatism seems to produce some very random and unusual content, but also some unexpected beauty.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Epistemology (the theory of knowledge). In philosophy it is considered as one of its cornerstones; it addresses the questions:
Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am) is a popular phrase but do we really known what it means?
Possible one of the most misunderstood sub-cultures is the Emo movement. While there is a lot of stigma with this group there really aren’t grounds for it. The Emo movement is based around the rock genre of the same name, though no band claims to be an Emo band.
Poetic Shock has also been used in Movies to scare people, one of the best example of this is the 1980’s horror classic The Shining. Danny was riding his bike around the Overlook Hotel and ran into the twins. Where normally people would think nothing of this, in the movie the twins were not expected to be there, leading to a perfect example of Poetic Shock in a movie.
André Breton, not only a poet but the founder of the Surrealist Movement took a big interest in Freud’s works on the unconscious mind. Breton found an unexpected beauty in the ravings of the unconscious patients. In attempt to capture that untapped beauty, Breton discovered Automatic Writing. A process of writing where the content does not come from a conscious thought from the writer. In some cases the writer does it in a trance but most of the times the writer does not thing about what he writes, they just write to see what comes out.