PERSONAL STATEMENT

Discuss the issues and concerns that inform your artmaking practice.

[The creative process of artmaking is to me, a way of communicating my ideas. It is about the viewer as much as it is about me, the artist. I find that my artmaking practice heals and empowers me and I would like for those who view my art to experience some quality of that healing and empowerment in their own way. Although artmaking is a personal experience I also see it as universal in that there is so much we share as human beings in our lives. As our society progresses, we continue to systematize and structure the world around us. Artmaking gives me the power to speak of an alternative way to view the world in which language, words, or writings cannot describe or describe fully.]

What are your artistic goals?

[As an artist, I strive to bring new and renewed awareness of who we are as human beings and of our surroundings through art. As a part of that awareness, I would like my art to inspire the viewer to believe that the world can be a gentler, kinder, more peaceful place. Even in the darkest moments, I would like to bring hope into my artwork.]

Talk about a time when a decision you made changed you. Do you think your decision was made in good or bad judgment?

[Deciding to withdraw from high school when I was sixteen was one of the most influential decisions I have made, which changed who I am and the course of my life. At first, it seemed as though I had committed social suicide, as being a high school dropout in South Korea was an unimaginable thing to be. There are far less opportunities and public awareness of alternative education or home schooling than there is here in the U.S.

Fortunately, I found a progressive arts-based alternative center in Seoul that had just been initiated and received many opportunities to learn and grow. By the time I was eighteen I had become the co-CEO of a venture company, while designing curriculum, managing educational programs, and training teachers for the educational business. I have also had the opportunity to learn web programming and designing as well as theater arts--acting and sound engineering--through the alternative learning center.

All of my previous experiences, which I would not have had the opportunity to experience if I stayed in school, helped me learn more in college. I have learned to challenge myself and persevere, while coming to an understanding that an open environment can better accommodate my way of learning. I feel passionate about many things--literature, education, social entrepreneurship, art and craft to name a few--however I have realized that in essence, I enjoy the process of creating things and learning through that process, which encompasses all my passions.]

What other studios would you like to work in besides book arts?

[Other than book arts, which I have come to realize is perfect for me, I would like to work in drawing and painting. I have always enjoyed drawing and painting as a hobby, yet I haven't had the opportunity to delve deeper. There is something about the act of drawing and the act of painting that transcends and transforms the realm of the immediate reality. The pencil or the paintbrush becomes an extension of my limb and becomes a part of me. As someone who appreciates the beauty of art and creative activity, I love drawing and painting as much as I love crafting, books, and conceptual thinking.]

Everlasting War Between Creativity and Discipline: Self-Identity and Beyond

When I was growing up, my parents hardly ever “told me” what to do or what not to do. So when my sixth grade teacher started hitting my palms during clean-up time (in most Korean schools, students clean the classrooms and hallways, not janitors) because he wanted to punish everyone in the class for talking and playing around instead of cleaning, it was not a surprise that I yelled, “I was quietly moping the floor!!!!” Everyone was surprised—it was against common law to express your innocence as a student to a teacher like that. Later on the teacher, known as “tiger” for his fearsome quality, called up my parents and told them their daughter was indeed a “Baek-ey-min-jok” (the white-clad folk, a prideful term for the Korean people) who will become an important person in the world.

After graduating from middle school I went on to high school and after the welcoming ceremony, where I didn’t feel welcomed at all (it was like I was in military school), I decided high school was the last place I wanted to be—oppressive, dull middle school all over again. When I asked my dad for permission to quit school, he asked if I could try it out for a semester. I did, but I spent most of the school days in the nurse’s office because (now that I think about it) I was severely depressed. My dad, who knew I would have to quit school sooner or later but needed to earn time to think ahead for my future, signed a paper at the end of the first semester permitting my release, and then I was free to go. I thought, in the beginning, it was my classmates’ mindless talk about T.V. drama and celebrities or uninteresting classes that made me want to escape the place. However, after leaving school and learning more about myself, I came to realize there was something more to my desire to escape. Having read the four essays of authors, John Berger, Susan Bordo, Linda Nochlin, and Michael Foucault, I can now better articulate that something more that is far more interesting than what any psychiatrist might say. I wasn’t just having an identity crisis—there was an internal war going on between creativity and discipline.

It was a relief to read Berger’s Ways of seeing, Bordo’s Beauty (Re)discovers the Male body, Nochlin’s Bathing as Practice, Bathing as Representation, and Foucault’s Panopticism—I felt for the first time, someone other than my parents understood me. However, when I first read Berger’s work to write an essay on the process of situating myself in history while looking at Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory, I felt like my understanding of the subject was limiting. As I read Bordo’s work to write an essay on comparing and contrasting both Berger and Bordo’s ideas, the concepts of culture, identity, and agency became clearer—I expanded on the notion of culture and the commodity-self while adding on the concepts of freedom, individuality, and ideology. Reading Nochlin and Foucault’s works broadened my understanding of all four of the authors’ ideas, one author’s ideas facilitating the others—the relationship among power, knowledge, and discourse lead me to think of the relationship between discipline and creativity in our present culture.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary online, identity is “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual,” also known as individuality (“identity”). However, as Alice, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, many of us have difficulty answering the caterpillars question, “Who are you?” Unlike René Descartes who believed that each of us has an intrinsic “soul” that stays the same throughout our lives regardless of external influences, Michael Foucault believes that although we talk about a person’s character as if it were her inner essence—as a standard discourse—more accurately, her identity is communicated through her interaction with others, constantly in flux. For Foucault, external force—whether it is called history, culture, or ideology—forms our identities. In my essay, Talk To Me, Rubbery Floppy Pocket Watches! I write, “Part of my identity is formed, shaped and created through the reading of this painting [Persistence of Memory], through my recognition of our history and my own personal history” (Son 7). Here, I am talking about how, in the process of questioning the meaning of the painting, I create an interpretation of the painting, which is affected by what I know and what I believe as Berger asserts in his essay, while on the other hand my identity is also affected in the process of determining my interpretation. In short, my confrontation with the painting forms a dialectic relationship between the painting (the image) and me (the viewer), similar to that of culture and cultural products or cultural representations.

“Culture,” according to the editors of Practices of Looking, is “the shared practices of a group, community, or society, through which meaning is made out of the visual, aural, and textual world of representations” (Sturken and Cartwright 3). As I write in Cultural Representations in Classical Art and Contemporary Advertisement: Reproduction of Images, Ideologies, and Identities, “Culture” is a persistent force that more or less determines who we believe ourselves and others to be:
…even if you and I were to choose our own identities—which would imply that our identities consist of more than our intrinsic nature—we are constantly breathing in and out “Culture” as if it were air. Culture is what surrounds us; it is our visible and invisible environment. There is no escape. It still exists even when we are holding our breaths and closing our eyes. (Son 2)
In her essay, Susan Bordo shows us how consumer culture, commodity culture, representations of female and male body in advertisements can affect what we consider beautiful. She would say that my self-image of my body is influenced by the dominant representations of the female body in our culture: presently, I would say, slim, thin, and tall. My preference for a slim, not-too-muscular male body, she would say, is also influenced by mainstream representations. Furthermore, according to Bordo, my heightened interest in surface beauty—the looks of a sexy male model—and the nervousness that follows my act of gazing upon that model are also cultural constructs. When I was fifteen I wanted to be a model. I wanted to be thin as a chopstick (which was the most envied body type at the time in Korea), popular, and wealthy. I think the idea is absurd now that I’m enjoying reading, writing, and (for the most part) eating, and cannot imagine myself feeling satisfied working as a model, yet at the time, it was all I knew, all I saw, and all that my friends would talk about. I know I was and am and will continue to be influenced by culture, however unlike when I was fifteen, I try to be more aware of how I’m being influenced, which allows me to feel more comfortable in my own skin.

Although Berger himself cannot avoid being part of culture, he manages to create alternative discourse other than the standard discourse of the discipline of art history, as he situates himself in history in order to “see” the art of the past. For Berger, history is not “a chronological record of significant events” nor “an established record,” (“history”) it is the culture of the past, in which, in order to better understand the culture, we must actively interpret different cultural representations of the time in history. Berger thus says we must examine the values and ideologies of the past and the power relationship between different classes, race, and gender without a bias for the “privileged minority” (“Cultural Representations” Son 5). Similarly, Bordo insists we must “understand how we came about to this phenomenon of young, naked, sexually ambiguous male bodies being displayed in advertisements” (“Cultural Representations” Son 5). Likewise, Nochlin sees the “bather theme” as a “highly artificial and self-conscious construction…particular to a certain historical period,” and situates “the bather, and bathing, back into history of social institutions, practices, and representations” (Nochlin 455). Most importantly, she considers what has been ignored or unsaid about bathing as practice and as representation. She takes a look at the larger picture, the politics and policies of “putting the body in its place” as she calls it, and the discourses surrounding it. She connects the policy of the “Enlightenment ideals of control, hygiene, and civil order” with the discourse of “prostitution, sanitation, and wet-nursing, to which the discourse of swimming and bathing are related in that all are concerned with the body’s products, comportments, or employments” (462). Nochlin sees Renoir’s Great Bathers as “a record of conflicting desires, intentions, and practices” constituting “a response to a multitude of pressures during the period preceding its creation” (466). So rather than seeing the Great Bather as a masterpiece or a sorry failure, she suggests that the painting is “the result of certain kinds of practices, the product of a particular shifting structure of cultural institutions at a particular moment of history” (472). As I write about the relationship between history and identity in my previous essay, the power of history is not to be over looked:
We have always, throughout history, struggled to make sense of our experiences and our lives. When I try to “situate” myself in history, as Berger suggests us to do, I belong to the culture, and this gives a sense of where I am in relation to the larger historical context. Without this learning of our history and self-knowledge we can feel alienated, and uprooted like a tree floating around living above the ground. (“Talk To Me” Son 8)

For Foucault, history is a form of knowledge and simultaneously a form of power; it is a medium that controls and subdues the past through the production of discourse. Power, to Foucault, is not something we possess; it is what we exercise. Thus, power circulates and where there is power, there is also resistance. Power is not all negative as it also induces pleasure, forms knowledge, and produces discourses. Knowledge, as Foucault would say, is not disinterested to power and cannot exist separate from power as not only does knowledge assume the authority or “the truth” or “fact” is has the power to make itself true. However, knowledge is not “true” in the absolute sense of “truth”—it is a discursive formation that facilitates what is thought to be true in a moment of history or in culture, according to Foucault. He sees “discourse” as a system of representation; the rules and practices that produce meaningful statements and regulate discourse in different historical periods was thus, a matter of significance to Foucault. Discourse, he argues, constructs the topic, defines what constitutes as knowledge, and governs the way we make meaning of a topic; thus, nothing has any meaning outside of discourse. If culture is like air, discourse is what enables us to breath air, in and out; without it we would suffocate, stagnate, or cease to exist.

According to Foucault, “discipline” is a type of power, a “physics” or an “anatomy” of power, a technology that produces discourse (Foucault 227). In philosopher J. Bentham’s image of the Panpticon, Foucault sees a “machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen” (216). He asserts that this “seeing” and “being seen,” the effect of gaze, or “surveillance” makes it possible for anyone, for whatever purpose, to exercise power. The Panopticon thus, becomes “a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men” (219). When “spread throughout the whole social body,” (223) the “mechanisms of observation” (219) forms what we call a “disciplinary society” (223). “Discipline,” according to Foucault, has multiple facets:
[Discipline] may be taken over either by “specialized” institutions, or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a particular end (schools, hospitals), or by preexisting authorities that find in it a means of reinforcing or reorganizing their internal mechanisms of power, or by apparatus that have made discipline their principle of internal functioning, or finally by state apparatuses whose major, if not exclusive, function is to assure that discipline reigns over society as a whole (the police). (227)
As Foucault asserts, “the disciplines are the ensemble of minute technical inventions that made it possible to increase the useful size of multiplicities by decreasing the inconveniences of the power which, in order to make them useful, must control them” (231). Thus, according to Foucault, disciplinary institutions, like the prison, and other mechanisms of discipline, exercise a power of normalization. He sees the image of the Panopticon or the prison, as an idea, a way of thinking about transgression and order, a way of thinking that is persistent and present, a body that pertains an important mechanism, which automatizes and disindividualizes power to produce the “normal” or “disciplined individual.”

However, even as a “disciplined individual,” there are ways to assert individuality and creativity. With effort, we can become aware that we are disciplined, that we are shaped by culture, history, and discourse. Once we are aware and once we know what we are being taught we can be self-critical about ourselves and what we learn in our area of discipline (writing, for example) and resist certain knowledge and discourse, thus breaking the rules (rules of grammar perhaps) and creating new discourse that we feel describes and represents more accurately our identities and the reality we wish to portray. As far as the discourses of images go, Berger would agree:
If the new language of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power. Within it we could begin to define our experiences more precisely in areas where words are inadequate. Not only personal experience, but also the essential historical experience of our relation to the past: that is to say the experience of seeking to give meaning to our lives, of trying to understand the history of which we can become the active agents. (Berger 118)
Nochlin also asserts agency and generates alternative discourse against the standard discourse of art history. She makes it clear in her essay that “there is no single way of understanding The Great Bathers, that its meanings are multiple, construed differently, often at cross-purposes by different viewers and interpreters” and that “It is only by allowing new interpretations that works of art—in our case, representations of bathers, but also bathtime itself as a cultural entity—can be more fully understood and remain a living, sometimes unruly entity rather than a respectable corps” (Nochlin 473).

As I write in my essay on Persistence of Memory, “If we take away previous assumptions of art and strip it down to art as an image, we are left with something we must interpret and make meaning for ourselves,” if I strip my identities down to me as a human being with unlimited possibilities, I am left with having to create my own identity (“Talk To Me” Son 1). This does not mean that I can somehow exist separate from external influences. However, it is a thought experiment, where I can see what I am left with, see what I choose to believe in about myself, after disposing all labels I identify myself with. I did this experiment several times after leaving high school because all of a sudden I felt like I was nobody. I did not have an institution or occupation to identify with; I was like an actress on stage with no role to play. As Kurt Vonnegut reminds us in Mother Night, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Through different experiments and experiences I realized that I became more vibrant and happy when I somehow helped others with the skills I’ve attained—and thus, learning and helping others became what I value the most. My previous experiences lead me to believe that my life purpose, for now at least, is to contribute in generating alternative ideas for our current education system. Berger, Bordo, Nochlin, and Foucault tells me that in order to be an individual, and be free, we must first see how culture, history, and discourse affect how we see the world and ourselves. Seeing that you and I have a choice and can decide what to value and what to believe in to what degree; seeing that by making choices we take on agency which helps us better understand ourselves and the world; believing that there is nothing more inspiring in life than putting effort into becoming a better person through the choices you make; all of this is what, I believe, distinguishes us humans from lab rats, and I believe it is the most effective way to pursue freedom and happiness—So, let’s question everything we see, not with fear, but with curiosity.

Works Cited

Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

Bordo, Susan. “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

Foucault, Michael. “Panopticism.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

"history." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online. 8 June. 2008 .

"identity." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online. 8 June. 2008 .

Nochlin, Linda. “Renoir’s Great Bathers: Bathing as Practice, Bathing as Representation.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

Son, Vickie. “Cultural Representations in Classical Art and Contemporary Advertisement: Reproduction of Images, Ideologies, and Identities.” Diss. Southern Oregon U, 2008.

---. “Talk To Me, Rubbery Floppy Pocket Watches!” Diss. Southern Oregon U, 2008.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.

Cultural Representations in Classical Art and Contemporary Advertisement: Reproduction of Images, Ideologies, and Identities

Living in the 21st century, especially here in America, we believe we have the freedom and freewill to choose the kind of person we want to be. We choose who and what we want to become. We are “unique.” We are “individuals.” However, despite our uniqueness, we recognize shared similarities in each other, which makes it possible and easier to relate to one another and communicate. When we look at an image of a baby smiling we feel warm and fuzzy inside, or at least we think we should—I might have a different emotional response rather than feeling good, but if that was the case I would think to myself something’s wrong with me. When we visit Grand Canyon and see the “sublime” nature, we will share a “sublime” moment. Yet, is this “sublime” experience an innate response or a cultural construct? John Berger in Ways of Seeing and Susan Bordo in Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body question our assumptions that you and I are sovereign individuals who have the freedom from external control. They assert that our ideas, feelings, and actions, our ways of thinking and being, are “constructed for us by a large, organized, persuasive force (sometimes called history, sometimes called culture, sometimes called ideology)” (782 Bartholomae and Petrosky). We don’t feel like we are being controlled, but that is part of the power of culture, and we are lead to believe that the constructions are “natural” and “inevitable” because that’s just “the way things are” (782 Bartholomae and Petrosky).

Berger and Bordo both believe that even if you and I were to choose our own identities—which would imply that our identities consist of more than our intrinsic nature—we are constantly breathing in and out “Culture” as if it were air. Culture is what surrounds us; it is our visible and invisible environment. There is no escape. It still exists even when we are holding our breaths and closing our eyes. In Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, the editors define culture as “the shared practices of a group, community, or society, through which meaning is made out of the visual, aural, and textual world of representations” (Sturken and Cartwright 3). Thus, according to the editors, whether we are aware of it or not we are constantly encoding and decoding information shared within culture. So, if culture is a shared practice, we are the ones producing culture and if so, what’s the big deal? Both Berger and Bordo would agree that we live in a capitalistic consumerist society in which cultural products go through the process of commodification, which produces the “shared practices” we call culture. In this commodity culture, the production of cultural representations of the kind of world we live in, which we depend on in order to make sense of our place in the world, is dependent upon who gains the power for what purpose or “what sells” and “what sells to whom.”

Furthermore, Berger and Bordo would argue that images play a significant role in spreading ideologies that generate or have the potential to generate maximum profit. These images interpellate the viewer in that they position us as the viewer they wish us to be, speaking to us as if we were that viewer, which helps shape us into an ideological subject. Using reproductions of images, corporations produce dominant ideologies, often offered as “common sense,” which are constantly in flux with other ideas and values. Berger’s idea on mystification seems relevant to the definition of “ideology” by Marx that “the masses are instilled with the dominant ideology of the ruling class and that constitutes a kind of false consciousness” while Bordo’s perspective seems to align with Antonio Gramsci’s definition of “hegemony” that describes how “dominant ideologies are always in flux and under contestation from other ideas and values” (Sturken and Cartwright 357).

In exemplifying the power of images and cultural implications of that power, in their essays, Berger demystifies visual representations of European history in classical art, while Bordo deconstructs visual representations of the male body in advertisements. Bordo’s work is a continuum of Berger’s work in which Berger initiates that the “language of images” is ubiquitous in our visual culture and “what matters now is who uses that language for what purpose” (118). Berger’s example of the painting Venus and Mars, serves as a preface to Bordo’s reading of the images in advertisements. Berger simply crops the face of Venus, taking it out of the original context, and “an allegorical figure becomes a portrait of a girl” (112). As Berger puts it, “In the age of pictorial reproduction the meaning of paintings…becomes transmittable” (111).

This “transmittable” quality of meaning is what allowed Calvin Klein and many other advertisers there after, to reproduce dominant ideologies of the female body and feminine qualities onto images of the male body. This “dynamic tension” (133) between masculinity and femininity creates a fantasy world where women are given the power to gaze upon a seductive male, and where men are positioned to desire the suitably fit body of the male model—consequently both women and men feel the need to buy the underwear of that brand and find the new type of male body attractive. Looking at the two Calvin Klein ads, one with the averted look of willing subordination (133) and the other recent “Escape” ad with a young man leaning against the wall with the copy reading “Take Me” (148), one might assume that this “male sexual ambiguity” mirrors or reflects our culture. However, this “attitude of male sexual supplication” (133) is a new trend in contemporary mainstream representations and is not readily accepted by many. As Bordo writes, “For many men…to be so passively dependent on the gaze of another person for one’s sense of self-worth is incompatible with being a real man” (134) and “Women aren’t used to seeing naked men frankly portrayed as ‘objects’ of a sexual gaze (and neither are heterosexual men)” (138). So as Bordo suggests, the new representation of the male body is a representation that has the “possibility and profitability of…a ‘dual marketing’ approach” creating a “variety of potential consumers, straight and gay, male and female” (141).

If advertisers invent a fantasy world to serve their purpose, Berger argues that a privileged minority invents a history to “retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes” (100). In a study published on Frans Hals, an authoritative art critic writes of the Regentesses of the Old Med’s Alms House:
Subtle modulations of the deep, glowing blacks contribute to the harmonious fusion of the whole and form an unforgettable contrast with the powerful whites and vivid flesh tones where the detached strokes reach a peak of breadth and strength. [Berger’s italics] (101)
Berger asserts that this author writes as though the composition of the painting itself is the emotional charge of the painting, while using terms like harmonious fusion, unforgettable contrast, reaching a peak of breadth and strength, transferring the provoked emotion from “lived experience” to disinterested “art appreciation” (101). Not only does this art critic mystify the painting, he also mystifies the artist in referring to
Hal’s unwavering commitment to his personal vision, which enriches our consciousness of our fellow men and heightens our awe for the ever-increasing power of the mighty impulses that enabled him to give us a close view of life’s vital forces. (103)

The author of this authoritative work, Berger would argue, is creating a fantasy world in order to justify values that “can no longer make sense in modern terms” (100) as a “final empty claim for the continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture” (110). Hals, Berger writes, “was the first portraitist to paint the new characters and expressions created by capitalism” (103). The drama of Hals’ paintings, Berger suggests, comes from the confrontation of the Regents and the Regentesses and Hals “who has lost his reputation and who must try to surmount the way he sees as a pauper” (102).

Both Berger and Bordo would agree that for us to “see” the art of the past, and to “see” the advertisements of the present, we must “situate ourselves in history” (100). We need to place ourselves in the historical context, and understand the situation. For Berger this means we must examine the culture of the past, the values and ideologies of the past, and the power relationship between different classes, race, and gender without a bias for the “privileged minority.” For Bordo this means we have to understand how we came about to this phenomenon of young, naked, sexually ambiguous male bodies being displayed in advertisements. In her essay she guides the reader along the history of the representation of the male body from fashion to movies, from Greek culture to existential philosophy to contemporary representations. She also reminds us that the naked and near-naked female body has been an object of mainstream consumption and has been sexually objectified (131). She says, now, for the sake of profit, it’s the men’s turn to be on display. And what are the consequences?

Berger answers, “When we are prevented from seeing it [the art of the past], we are being deprived of a history which belongs to us” (100). A reality is created where unless you are the “privileged minority,” you have no authority or agency to know art. We believe we don’t have a say in what a classical painting means because we are not the ones who can publish what we think they mean. However, if classical art, which is essentially the products and producers of past culture, were open to everyone (this has happened through reproductions, yet museums still exist) and if we were to believe that anyone can learn the historical context (especially if art history were taught in such way), then we would have a better understanding of where we are coming from and how our culture came to be what it is now. In other words, we would have a better understanding of ourselves because we would have the understanding of our history and culture which more or less defines our identities, and we would be taking active agency in choosing and defining for ourselves what we value in our lives and why.

Likewise, female or male, gay or straight, when our values on sexuality, gender, beauty, masculinity, femininity, and attractiveness are essentially the same, we are deprived of our unique identities. If we were to pay attention to our own unique beauty—which I truly believe comes from the uniqueness of each of our minds, experiences and personalities—we would feel more comfortable in our own skins. The danger of buying into mainstream ideals can be detrimental to our identities, as Bordo writes, “Obsessively pursuing these ideals has deprived both men and women of the playful eros of beauty, turned it all into constant, hard work,” and unfortunately, “Consumer culture…can even grind playfulness into a commodity, a required item for this year’s wardrobe” (174).

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David, and Anthony Petrosky, eds. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

Bordo, Susan. “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.

Talk To Me, Rubbery Floppy Pocket Watches!

John Berger, in his essay, Ways of Seeing, defines an image as “a sight…recreated or reproduced…detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved” (98-9). To see art as an “image” and not “art” is a proactive political statement. If we take away previous assumptions of art and strip it down to art as an image, we are left with something we must interpret and make meaning for ourselves. This gives agency to each individual viewer taking away the authority of specific minorities such as, art specialists. Some art specialists, Berger says, focus on justifying the “remarkable works of art” (101) in their criticism, which we then read in textbooks or museum brochures and accept. Berger calls this—justification of the quality of European history and European art—mystifies classical art.

If I were to look at a painting and simply praise it for its genius, beauty, and form, I would be obscuring the past because not only am I assuming the perfect quality of a product of the past, I am not putting into consideration the story of the painting and the story of the artist. In other words, when I mystify the painting, I am seeing the style—the surface—of the painting and not the substance—what is beneath the surface. If I put effort into looking at the painting, in terms of a story, while asking questions and trying to answer them, I can perhaps demystify the painting, unlearn and relearn about the painting. This takes effort, time and energy. And a lot of thinking.

My personal desire is to look at a painting, like Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory and see it as both an image and Dali’s artwork, although it would be easier to just read what the art critics think of it and believe it, or simply not think anything of it other than the fact that it pleases my eye. I can research historical background of the work—I read that Dali painted in the melting watches onto the already painted background after noticing the state of his Camembert cheese on a hot summer day—while being aware of historical art and philosophical movements and still examine and create my own meaning of the image. I can even disregard the title of the painting which is also known as The Persistence of Time, Melting Clocks, Soft Watches, and Droopy Watches. The titles of the painting act as labels, which give contextual meaning to the painting. It would be hard for me to not notice the watches and not think of “time” and “memory” as a relevant keyword in my interpretation. More on the positive side, it can guide the viewer in their interpretation. Nonetheless, the title in itself retains some kind of agency.

I stare at the painting—the digital reproduction of the painting. The silence is more than frustrating. If Berger’s right about original paintings being even more silent and still, which I believe to be the case most of the time, it must feel far more intimidating and uncomfortable to look at an original painting. Too puzzling perhaps. The silence broke after a long while—longer than I’ve expected. I suspect the silence and stillness to be a natural reaction. Our brains are divided into two sides—right and left. In order to feel anything fairly concrete about the painting we still have to somehow make sense of the painting. But there is a long moment where I can’t seem to think of anything. The feeling of ambiguity. I simply have no words for how I feel about the painting or any idea of what to think of it. Nothingness. Or massive overwhelming confusion. After a while my brain pieces bits of information together to come up with something. Sometimes that something is not worth saying though. Or it sounds like someone else’s words, something any body else can say and would say, like “Wow, that’s beautiful.” Well, how beautiful? Like what? Do we even have to go there? Why? Berger says yes, we must go further. Dig deeper, he tells us.

I’m not sure if Berger took into the account that reproductions of art found online (Google images or digital art archives) have high enough quality for the viewer to actually notice the brush strokes and provide a different kind of virtual experience. However, his claim that reproductions are not as silent and still as original paintings can be a valid observation in that originals provide a unique context. The presence of something created in the past, puts us in the past, as if we were going back in time, like time-travel. Most of us do not live our daily lives thinking of the past before we were born. It is hard to conceptualize that the world exists outside of you and did exist before you ever existed. It is also a different experience in that like watching a live play of Shakespeare and watching a filmed version of the same play gives a different impression. Different kinds of mediation are involved. There is a difference between looking at your lover right in front of you and looking at a picture of your lover. The sight of your lover might illicit similar feeling inside of you, whether it is the real person you are looking at or a picture, yet there is a difference.

Before I do more research on the painting and artist, I try to converse with the painting. So this is my first attempt. Hello? Of course, no answer. I like the color of the sky, the rocks and cliffs in you. I try to complement. I like how the tree looks alive and real. Then, I question. Why are the pocket watches melting? Is it too hot? Why do you look like a photograph instead of a painting? Why are you so dreamy and beautiful? Are you real? Are you fake? Are you both? What are you trying to tell me? Are you trying to tell me anything? The conversation seems one-way. Lopsided. My questions echo into the painting but I hear nothing coming back. I at least wanted to know what the melting watches signify. I fail miserably. I am more puzzled than before.


In order to talk to the painting I decided to do some background research. Maybe if I learn a little bit about the painting I can ask different questions and perhaps get some answers. I am amazed how accessible information on the painting and artist is online. Quick and easy. In a sense, the Internet gives agency to individuals who can and know how to use the technology and who choose to use it.

I Googled information on Dali and his painting, as well as surrealism, cubism, and Dadaism. As a result, I learned of Dali’s eccentric character, the melting watches being an iconic image of surrealism, and the history of cubism and Dadaism relating to the surrealist movement. Dali’s talent as a painter capable of imitating classical artists and his eccentric personality made it possible to create a painting bizarre in its content but realistic in its representation. While the cubists deconstructed objects depicting the subject from multi-angles to represent an image in a greater context, and while the Dadaists rejected labels and categories embracing chaos and irrationality presenting “anti-art” rather than “art,” the later surrealists considered ordinary expressions as vital, and arranged images with full range of imagination. The surrealism movement attempted to free people from false rationality and restrictive customs and structures. Interesting… Now what?

Ok. So do the rubbery floppy pocket watches suggest the duality of human condition? Maybe. Well, everything in the painting looks solid and soft at the same time. Watches are supposed to be hard objects, right? We think time and reality as firm and fixed even though time is relative and reality…well not so fixed or firm, right? Maybe. So perhaps time or memory of time, whichever, is melting away with the procession of time while nature remains? The rocks and cliffs and the tree do not look like they are fading or melting away. No? Yes?

Ok. Look. Our memories are fading away, we are fading away, yet our memories and ourselves still continue to exist at this moment. We change with time, yet time is relative, and so our past experiences echo throughout our lives in the present moment. Am I even close? What we consider reality is no longer concrete or certain, but malleable and in flux as we dream, imagine, and simply think and feel. So the gaps between dream and reality, the imagined and the real, fact and fiction close as I step into the world of rubbery floppy pocket watches. Am I saying what you are trying to say? Well, I’m satisfied. I like it. I can live with it.

The historical meanings and conceptions of art, whether I am aware of it or not, seem to affect how I view art. When I look at Persistence of Memory, I look at it because of my expectations for what I consider art. The culture that surrounds me, and the history of how we arrived here in the present, affects what I consider art. I value beauty, imaginative images, and provocative ideas yet what I consider beautiful, imaginative, and provocative also depends on what I know and believe in the present culture. Furthermore, because I am looking at the reproduction of Dali’s art and because it is possible to see reproductions everywhere, perhaps it is easier to disregard the original meaning of the painting and its unique superiority. As Berger puts it, “What we make of that painted moment when it is before our eyes depends upon what we expect of art, and that in turn depends today upon how we have already experienced the meaning of paintings through reproductions” (116). I agree.

From learning about the past and present in relation to this painting, I have discovered that knowing how we—as a culture—came to this point in art history enhances the meaning of Dali’s painting. Some people found and still find Dali annoying because of his attitude towards promoting his artworks as a commodity and his love for accumulating wealth. Aren’t artists supposed to be poor? Isn’t it suffering from poverty that creates great art? So, Dali’s stance and his artwork, in a sense, represent the shift in our societal values as we expand our application of consumer capitalistic values.

We can also see how the two World Wars influenced the minds of the artists and philosophers. As many Dadaists believed “reason” and “logic” of bourgeois capitalist society the cause that led many of us to war, their artistic expression appeared to reject that ideology. And then the surrealists added meaning to that rejection. If you eliminate labels and categories what are we left with? Idiosyncrasy. Different groups of people see (interpret) different words and images in variety of ways. There is no set meaning in something, nothing innate. The meaning of something depends on what you make of it. So the surrealists embraced idiosyncrasy wanting to free people from set, confined ways of seeing and looking.

I see myself in the painting. I identify with its ideology. I dream of minimum labeling and categorizing and of a time and place where people recognize, respect and consider the other’s perspectives rather than ignoring the other’s voices. Part of my identity is formed, shaped and created through the reading of this painting, through my recognition of our history and my own personal history. I recognize we live in a postmodern world. I cannot understand what that means unless I understand what the “modern” world was like, and the world before that. We have always, throughout history, struggled to make sense of our experiences and our lives. When I try to “situate” myself in history, as Berger suggests us to do, I belong to the culture, and this gives a sense of where I am in relation to the larger historical context. Without this learning of our history and self-knowledge we can feel alienated, and uprooted like a tree floating around living above the ground.

The process of creating meaning of my own gives the impression of personally knowing the painting. It gives a sense of ownership. I own my interpretation of the painting and I am responsible for my perspective. This act of agency is vital to our rights and responsibility as citizens and individuals, as Berger writes, “If the new language of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power. Within it we could begin to define our experiences more precisely in areas where words are inadequate. Not only personal experience, but also the essential historical experience of our relation to the past: that is to say the experience of seeking to give meaning to our lives, of trying to understand the history of which we can become the active agents” (118). If we were to truly practice equality, rather than trying to physically, politically, or legally take away power from authorities, we need to educate individuals of “the history of which we can become active agents” which is the fundamental place for an individual’s act of agency to begin. And we can start this practice through actively interpreting and creating our own meanings of paintings and images around us.

I took an upper division art history course my junior year in college. The class title was Art, Culture, and Technology. The course objective was to examine how twentieth-century technological, social, and historical change influences our conceptions of art and culture. Shortly before I started taking the course, my friend, at an art gallery, saw chopped logs piled up displayed as an art piece and came to me and asked whether or not I consider it art. I did not know how to answer. I said, “I don’t know. It depends on what you consider art. I mean, what I consider art.” Then I thought to myself: What do I consider art? And why would someone chop logs and display them as art? What does it mean? What is it supposed to mean?

As I learned about the relationship between art and culture, and the social and technological development throughout western history, I came to realize that none of the questions I was asking myself were easy to answer. However, the course clarified my conception of the relationship between art and culture as dialectic; the work of art is both product and producer of culture. If the culture of the past is part of history, yet we see the past through the lens of the present, then as Berger suggests, “the art of the past no longer exists as it once did” (118). However, if we refuse to see where we stand in the present (because we fear to know the present, as Berger claims), we cannot understand the past. As Berger writes, “Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way” (103). Different ideologies of different cultures of different times affect our interpretation of art.

Art works produce and reproduce ideologies of the culture, which gives power to some and takeaway power from some members of our society. Looking at art thus, becomes a political act. Artworks (or images in general) created within a culture, whether in the past or present, are products and producers of culture. Thus, the ability to read these paintings and images gives the viewer the power to know the history, the culture and themselves as well as the power to choose what to believe. As Berger emphasizes, “This why—and this is the only reason why—the entire art of the past has now become a political issue” (118).

Work Cited
Berger, John. "Ways of Seeing." Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.

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