Closer Look at Kahlo

As I've gathered more and more information about Frida Kahlo, I'm finding it hard to give my paper direction. There are many ways and facts/stories I could share about her but and it's hard to form a clear thesis with so many things I want to get across. What I did do was look at some critiques of her paintings and analyze more about what influences from her life made her create the art. One of her most famous pieces was "The Two Fridas" which shows on one side Kahlo in a white (possibly wedding) dress and on the right her in traditional mexican wear. Both of their hearts are shown with veins running until they finally meet one another. After further research I found out she painted this right after divorcing Rivera and I think it is a reflection of the separation between the part of her that was influenced by him and loves him and the parts that are totally separate. I think it was extremely brave of her to paint her feelings so clearly for the world to see.
My Wet Nurse and I is also another very interesting piece that gives further insight into Kahlo's personal life. Because her mother got pregnant again right after giving birth to her, Frida was breastfed by a native indian wet nurse. The picture depicts a baby Kahlo with her adult head being fed by her wet nurse who has a mask on because she couldn't remember what she looked like. The relationship seems to be very cold and it also hints at the fact that Kahlo had to grow up very quickly and may have thought she never really had a childhood. This paper is definitely going to be hard but when it's done I know I will have learned a lot! P.S. I tried to put the two pictures below but it wouldn't let me add a link :(

Black Music in America

        The title of my post is the title of my third book. This book focused upon individual artists that were influential to today's American music. According to this book, blues, jazz, and rock n' roll all originated from African Americans. White performers like Benny Goodman to Frank Sinatra to the Beatles to Rod Stewart--have said that they owe their biggest debt to "black music." Like my first book, this book stated that these popular forms of music started on the slave ships coming to America. Complicated beats and sorrowful melodies came from Africa, and they brought these songs with them to America. 

        Big bands become popular during the Civil War era. The Frank Johnson Band and James Bland were popular during this era. Even though they toured in the north and in Canada, they were unable to tour in the southern states because of the racism. It wasn't safe for any African American in the south at the time of the Civil War and even afterwards. The first recognized black female singer was Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield. She and her mother were slaves, but she was freed when she lived with the Quakers in Pennsylvania. In her 40's, she toured the north, Canada, and Europe as a soprano singer. She was known for being able to sing a wide range if notes. Audiences were shocked that blacks were capable of singing opera and classical music, which was music only white people usually sang. Elizabeth even performed for Queen Victoria of England. Again, she was unable to tour the southern states. Most black musicians during the Civil War era would perform in circus acts or vaudeville acts. They still weren't earning the respect they deserved.

       Slowly, as time moved on, people like Louis Armstrong were able to change this. His fame grew and by the 1930s, Louis Armstrong was on the verge of international stardom, and not far away from his first European tour. Armstrong's famous trumpet solos and his jazz style originated from the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. The Black Renaissance (it is also called) also inspired artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday. The jazz craze spread like a fever all throughout America and throughout the world. By the 1940s, it was the most popular type of music in America. 

At this point, after explaining the creation of jazz and where it came from, I will go into greater detail of how Ella Fitzgerald specifically was able to break the social boundaries and earn respect from both white and black Americans.

Of Infinite Importance

To condense all of the information I have will be difficult at best.  There are opinions of Christianity everywhere and not all of it is positive, which isn't a bad thing, but must be addressed.  I think that my thesis for this paper will be based on the quotation by C.S. Lewis, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, of infinite importance.  The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."  I think that my paper will attempt to prove that Social Media has increased the apathy and atheistic attitudes of this generation and will look at the influence this will have on the future of the Church.

I wish I could say I have this paper outlined and planned out in that way at this point, but I don't yet. I'm not sure which of my resources I will use in the end and which will be left out of the final edit, but I am at the point now where I need to focus on the sources I'm taking in and determine whether or not they will actually contribute to my paper.  While it is coming together well and I'm learning a lot in research, it has come to the point where I need to determine how much I can present in the final paper without overwhelming or confusing the reader.

This paper won't be easy, I never thought it would be.  I welcome any and all input, information, opinions (positive, negative, neutral), etc. and definitely have some work to do before anything is solidified.

Surrealism: Tying it Together

     The more I have researched the unconsciousness of surrealism, the more connections I have been able to make. As I was reading about Dali, I kept seeing more and  more about the dream interpretation theories of Sigmund Freud. I decided to look into his theories (which was easy, as we are learning about them in psychology) and was able to find many connections between Dali and Freud.
      Freud has very detailed theories about the unconscious and the dreaming mind. He believes that dreams are ways to put our unfulfilled and mad thoughts into something we are able to bear. Dali did the same thing that Freud was describing, except in paint. Upon meeting each other for Freud to psychoanalyze Dali (who had many psychological problems), Freud stated that there was nothing for him to uncover because Dali's subconscious was already laid out on all of his paintings. There is no doubt that what Dali was trying to express was repressed and unexpressed emotions.
      The connections grow and grow so I decided that this would be an interesting direction to take my paper in. What I am thinking of would be to do my paper on the psychology behind surrealism and use the connections between Dali and Freud as a type of case study or example. Right now, I have books on each Dali and Freud, on surrealism as a whole, and on the psychology of dream interpretation. My goal is to try and explain why surrealists can think and express in the manner that they do.

A Closer Look at Surrealism

      For my second book, I decided to take a step back and get a better understanding of surrealism as a whole. To get a better understanding of what surrealism is, I read the book Essential Surrealists by Tim Martin. This book was very insightful on surrealism because along with an introduction and knowledge of what surrealism actually is, it gave many examples of surrealists, their work, and explanations behind these works.
      I found that although every surrealist had their own unique styles and techniques, like any other type of artist, they all had many things also in common. From reading the facts of their lives and gaining basic knowledge of these artists, it is clear that they used the art as a way to express emotions, dreams, or wishes. But what set them apart from other artists was the fact that these were all somewhat unconscious desires. They had used their canvas as a way to depict something that couldn't make any sense aloud.
      Everything that I had read about Dali was that he was putting his unconscious mind into his art but what I have found by reading this book is that that is what created surrealism. These artists were taking the raw, uncut depths of their minds and trying to express it in the only way possible.
     

Wilde: Forming the Paper

So, now that I have finished my two major work, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as some literary criticism, I have chosen to explore how Wilde highlights the destructive/amoral nature of Victorian society. As it stands my thesis is: Wilde uses The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray as a platform to display the destructive nature of Victorian society. (This will likely change as I go through more of the writing process and begin to more deeply explore my evidence.)

From PDG, one of the main points that I plan to emphasize is the societal obsession with youth and beauty, and the one place that people can real see that is through Dorian himself. Even, Basil Hallward, perhaps the book’s most moral and sane character, is completely intoxicated by Dorian’s beauty. However, simply because people feel inclined to assume Dorian is moral, because he is beautiful he devastates so many people in the book. A perfect example of this is Sybil Vane. She falls to the charm to Dorian’s graces, ends up obsessed with him, and ends up killing herself, showing how destructive the obsession turns out to be. This message is further amplified by the strife of her brother, James, and her mother.

A societal flaw that appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest is that of deceit. Nearly every character in the play lies. One of the key component of the play is the concept of “bunburying”. Bunburying is a concept invented in the book by Algernon Moncrieff. It involves create a person with some issues in his/her life for which he/she needs constant assistance. For example, a dear friend who is an invalid and needs help around the house. One would then use this character to escape the responsibilities of everyday life and those present in your life (friends and family). This may seem harmless, but ends up leading to a lot of mistrust and manipulation throughout the book over this deceit.

Nureyev: Where My Paper is Headed

Over the course of doing research and reading books about Nureyev, I began to see how much he had changed the course of the ballet world. As I said in my last post (if you're reading the whole saga of ballet blogs), in the beginning of ballet in France men were revered more highly than women. Women were meant to essentially just stand around and look pretty. This was mostly because their clothing was unsuited to quick movements and jumping. Men were the ones who got to do all the dancing and learn proper technique. Ballet was created for men by men, and would continue to be dictated as such. But over the next hundred or so years (in accordance with the invention of the tutu), women came to power in the world of ballet. They began to take over the big roles and the men faded into the background. Men were seen as the coat racks that held up the female dancers.

This got me thinking that a paper about gender in the ballet world could be really interesting to write. Another topic I want to explore is the implied homosexuality of male dancers in the past hundred years or so. Many people assume that male dancers are not strong, but that could not be further from the truth. They are extremely powerful (especially in their legs and core) and can perform feats that most male athletes could never dream of. I'm not totally sure yet where my paper will end up, but I know what I want to include. My tentative thesis is the following (any feedback on this is appreciated):
Rudolf Nureyev reversed the stigma, three-hundred fifty years later, for male ballet dancers and allowed them to be taken seriously again.