This document summarizes Juan García Ponce's play Catálogo razonado. The play examines the construction of identity, particularly feminine identity, through the relationship between a fictional author and his model. The model struggles with her role as a creation of the author and her own agency. Like Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, Catálogo razonado explores the fluidity of characters and identity by beginning with the play still in the process of being conceived in the author's imagination. The document analyzes how the play questions whether the model has her own identity or is merely a reflection of what the author has created of her.
Jeremy Cantor is a poet whose work the author has recently discovered and become friends with online, though they had only physically met 6 months ago. The author analyzes Cantor's poetry, which contains thoughtful references to science and subtle, stealth-like revelations. Cantor's poetry evokes meanings and sensations through metaphor and anecdote rather than direct description, similar to modern music which tells stories without words. The author draws comparisons between Cantor's work and that of poets like John Donne and the philosophies of John Cage, praising how Cantor's poetry finds beauty in everyday moments and answers questions across different fields of existence.
The document provides background information on Giorgio de Chirico, a pioneer of metaphysical painting who was highly influential on the Surrealist movement. It discusses de Chirico's early works from the 1910s that depicted strange, dreamlike cityscapes with sharp contrasts and exaggerated perspectives. These works evoked an ominous, dream-like quality and disoriented the viewer. The document also briefly summarizes some of de Chirico's most famous paintings from this period that illustrated his philosophy of approximating a dream-like state of mind through illogical elements, unexpected perspectives, and strange relationships between objects.
This document provides a critical analysis of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It analyzes how the poem uses dramatic monologue to convey the inner anxieties and vulnerabilities of the narrator, Prufrock. Specifically, it examines how Eliot employs literary devices like metaphor, imagery and word choice to reveal Prufrock's shy, egoistic and paralyzed personality. The analysis also discusses how the poem portrays the thoughts of a traditional western man in the early 1900s who is full of loneliness and indecision, unable to act or seize opportunities in life.
SHGC The Womens Art Movement (Realism) Part 3rachaelwhare
The document discusses the artwork "Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)" by artist Barbara Kruger. It summarizes that the work critiques modern standards of beauty through a divided photographic image of a model's face with the text "Your body is a battleground." The work was originally intended as a poster for a pro-choice march. It also discusses Kruger's style of incorporating found images with provocative text.
Surrealism was an artistic movement that developed in the 1920s in France that explored the subconscious mind. It aimed to liberate expression and push the boundaries of imagination. Antonin Artaud developed the surrealist concept of the "Theatre of Cruelty" which sought to bypass rational thought and directly access primal emotions and truths through physical performance. Though initially shocking audiences, surrealism had a profound influence on avant-garde and absurdist theatre in the 20th century.
SHGC The Womens Art Movement (Realism) Part 2rachaelwhare
The document discusses several feminist artists from the 1960s-1980s including Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and Barbara Kruger. It summarizes Judy Chicago's 1983 Birth Project which involved over 130 needleworkers collaborating to create images of birth. It also discusses Schapiro's use of textiles and domestic crafts to highlight women's roles and experiences, as well as her co-founding of the feminist art program with Chicago. Kruger is noted for combining found photography with bold text to critique media images and cultural forces that shape gender roles.
Examining the work of a wide range of practitioners from the 20th and 21st centuries (Dada, Surrealism, Oulipo, Fluxus, Dogme 95, Glitch Art...) we will consider how the identity of the artist is constantly reconfigured in relation to their practice. We will examine how a ‘work’ is created through the means of play, constraint, disorder and/or repetition. We will ask questions of the studio, the public space and the gallery.
This document provides a biography of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski. It outlines his early life and influences, including studying under Konstantin Stanislavsky in Moscow. It describes how Grotowski developed his theory of "Poor Theatre" which stripped away spectacle and focused on the actor's technique. The document discusses Grotowski's productions and experiments in Poland in the 1960s. It also covers his later work exploring ritual and traditions around the world. It notes that Grotowski eventually moved to the US and continued his research until his death in 1999.
Jeremy Cantor is a poet whose work the author has recently discovered and become friends with online, though they had only physically met 6 months ago. The author analyzes Cantor's poetry, which contains thoughtful references to science and subtle, stealth-like revelations. Cantor's poetry evokes meanings and sensations through metaphor and anecdote rather than direct description, similar to modern music which tells stories without words. The author draws comparisons between Cantor's work and that of poets like John Donne and the philosophies of John Cage, praising how Cantor's poetry finds beauty in everyday moments and answers questions across different fields of existence.
The document provides background information on Giorgio de Chirico, a pioneer of metaphysical painting who was highly influential on the Surrealist movement. It discusses de Chirico's early works from the 1910s that depicted strange, dreamlike cityscapes with sharp contrasts and exaggerated perspectives. These works evoked an ominous, dream-like quality and disoriented the viewer. The document also briefly summarizes some of de Chirico's most famous paintings from this period that illustrated his philosophy of approximating a dream-like state of mind through illogical elements, unexpected perspectives, and strange relationships between objects.
This document provides a critical analysis of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It analyzes how the poem uses dramatic monologue to convey the inner anxieties and vulnerabilities of the narrator, Prufrock. Specifically, it examines how Eliot employs literary devices like metaphor, imagery and word choice to reveal Prufrock's shy, egoistic and paralyzed personality. The analysis also discusses how the poem portrays the thoughts of a traditional western man in the early 1900s who is full of loneliness and indecision, unable to act or seize opportunities in life.
SHGC The Womens Art Movement (Realism) Part 3rachaelwhare
The document discusses the artwork "Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)" by artist Barbara Kruger. It summarizes that the work critiques modern standards of beauty through a divided photographic image of a model's face with the text "Your body is a battleground." The work was originally intended as a poster for a pro-choice march. It also discusses Kruger's style of incorporating found images with provocative text.
Surrealism was an artistic movement that developed in the 1920s in France that explored the subconscious mind. It aimed to liberate expression and push the boundaries of imagination. Antonin Artaud developed the surrealist concept of the "Theatre of Cruelty" which sought to bypass rational thought and directly access primal emotions and truths through physical performance. Though initially shocking audiences, surrealism had a profound influence on avant-garde and absurdist theatre in the 20th century.
SHGC The Womens Art Movement (Realism) Part 2rachaelwhare
The document discusses several feminist artists from the 1960s-1980s including Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and Barbara Kruger. It summarizes Judy Chicago's 1983 Birth Project which involved over 130 needleworkers collaborating to create images of birth. It also discusses Schapiro's use of textiles and domestic crafts to highlight women's roles and experiences, as well as her co-founding of the feminist art program with Chicago. Kruger is noted for combining found photography with bold text to critique media images and cultural forces that shape gender roles.
Examining the work of a wide range of practitioners from the 20th and 21st centuries (Dada, Surrealism, Oulipo, Fluxus, Dogme 95, Glitch Art...) we will consider how the identity of the artist is constantly reconfigured in relation to their practice. We will examine how a ‘work’ is created through the means of play, constraint, disorder and/or repetition. We will ask questions of the studio, the public space and the gallery.
This document provides a biography of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski. It outlines his early life and influences, including studying under Konstantin Stanislavsky in Moscow. It describes how Grotowski developed his theory of "Poor Theatre" which stripped away spectacle and focused on the actor's technique. The document discusses Grotowski's productions and experiments in Poland in the 1960s. It also covers his later work exploring ritual and traditions around the world. It notes that Grotowski eventually moved to the US and continued his research until his death in 1999.
Woolf stream of consciousness technique in To the Light HouseISP
Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse explored the minds of characters using the stream of consciousness technique. It presented characters' perspectives through their own and others' thoughts without straightforward narration. Woolf rejected traditional narrative techniques and experimented with stream of consciousness and indirect interior monologue to depict inner realities and capture life's complexity. The story followed a small number of characters over multiple sections united through emotional themes rather than direct events.
Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright and theatre theorist born in 1898 who developed the theory and practice of epic theatre. Some key points about Brecht include:
- He was exposed to death and conflict from a young age which influenced his extreme theatre methods.
- In the 1920s he wrote several influential plays and collaborated with composers, developing his rejection of dramatic theatre in favor of epic theatre.
- He fled Germany in 1933 due to his leftist political views and opposition to Hitler, spending years in exile before reaching America.
- Epic theatre used techniques like the alienation effect to encourage spectators to think critically rather than emotionally experience the play. It emphasized social and political themes through a dist
Ferlinghetti's poem "Constantly risking absurdity" uses unconventional structure and meter to convey the risks a poet takes to perform above their audience. The poet is likened to an acrobat, balancing on a high wire above a sea of faces and performing tricks without mistake. The choppy line breaks and spacing mimic an acrobat's movements. In the second half, the poet is described as a "super realist" striving for beauty, but they may fail to "catch" its form. The unconventional form serves the message of risking failure to attain higher ideas.
The poem compares the poet's journey for truth and beauty through writing poetry to an acrobat walking a tightrope. The poet constantly risks absurdity and death with each line written, just as the acrobat risks falling with each step on the rope. Through daring language and an unconventional structure without punctuation, the poet balances precariously on an "eyebeam" to reach the "still higher perch" where Beauty waits.
Artemisia Gentileschi was a 17th century Italian Baroque painter known for her paintings of strong female biblical and mythological figures. She was one of the first female artists to achieve fame and recognition during her lifetime. Gentileschi faced significant obstacles as a woman artist, including being raped by her painting instructor as a young woman. Her work often depicted themes of female empowerment and resistance to male oppression. Gentileschi mastered the Baroque style of dramatic lighting and composition, which she used to bring emotional depth and power to her portrayals of women.
The poem uses an extended metaphor to compare the work of a poet to an acrobat performing daring feats on a high wire. It describes the poet balancing "eyebeams above a sea of faces" and risking "absurdity and death" with each new performance, as he searches for "taut truth" and advances toward capturing eternal beauty. In the end, it is unclear whether the poet like the little Charlie Chaplin character will successfully "catch her fair eternal form" before falling into the "empty air of existence."
Plato introduces the theory of imitation, which argues that art and literature are imitations of nature rather than reflections of truth or reality. According to Plato's theory, a painter's depiction of a chair is twice removed from the truth since it is an imitation of the carpenter's physical chair, which itself is an imitation of the ideal "chair" form. Plato believed that literature could misguide society and corrupt youth, and thus wanted to ban poets from his republic. However, the conclusion is that while Plato makes a valid point about imitation, poetry is not inherently harmful.
The document discusses the nature of art and meaning through a series of quotes and thought experiments. It presents a fable in which a philosopher named Geo unveils an abstract painting to a crowd and insists that the painting is "not about anything" despite attempts to explain what it might be about. The document explores the relationship between artist and audience and how meaning is constructed in the artworld through context and interpretation.
This poem uses an extended metaphor to compare poetry writing to acrobatics, likening the poet to an acrobat performing risky feats above an audience. Both take constant risks of absurdity and failure in their performances for the sake of creating something beautiful. The poet must balance precariously on the "high wire" of his craft and take each "stance or step" without mistake before capturing some element of "beauty" through his work, just as the acrobat risks death by misstep.
This document summarizes Arthur Danto's perspective on the philosophy of art. It discusses how the field of aesthetics was once seen as irrelevant but became important again due to conceptual artworks like Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes. These raised philosophical questions about what distinguishes art from non-art. Danto argues that art is representational and has meaning or content, unlike indiscernible real objects, making representation key to a theory of art. He also notes that the distinction between art and philosophy has become problematic as art becomes more self-conscious.
According to Aristotle, there are six essential parts that make up a tragedy: the plot, which is considered the soul of tragedy; characters, with the hero being most important; thought, which proves particular points and teaches truth; diction, or writing skill; song or melody, with the chorus integrated into the play; and spectacle, related to stage performance but should not create a sense of the monstrous.
This document summarizes Aristotle's six elements of tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle. It explains that plot is the most important element and soul of tragedy, involving events arranged in a complex manner. It describes Aristotle's views on each element and how they contribute to an effective tragedy, such as realistic characters and appropriate language. The document concludes that Aristotle's theory provides a framework for analyzing fine art.
This document provides an overview of key concepts for an 8th grade web quest on turning the invisible visible. It defines tragic and tragedy, discusses symbolism in art and literature, and profiles author Edgar Allan Poe. It instructs students to read one of Poe's short stories, then write a 200-word tragic story and accompanying illustration about an unfortunate event of the year. Students must use at least two techniques studied in class and present their work on the deadline to be evaluated based on composition, illustration skills, explanation of ideas, and punctuality.
This document discusses how painting has evolved to belong to and visualize networks. It analyzes works by Jutta Koether, Stephen Prina, Cheyney Thompson, and Wade Guyton that demonstrate painting's "transitivity", or ability to circulate through and translate between different contexts. These artists actualize the behavior of objects within networks by showing painting's passage through time and translation between social and cultural spheres. Their work offers a way to move beyond critiques of painting's relation to commodification by demonstrating how artworks can circulate in networks rather than become permanently arrested objects.
This document discusses the use of metaphor and metonymy in the paintings of René Magritte. It draws on Roman Jakobson's work distinguishing metaphor, which relies on similarity, and metonymy, which relies on contiguity or association. The document analyzes several of Magritte's paintings like "La Trahison des Images" and "Les affinités electives" to show how they employ metaphor and metonymy through juxtaposition of objects and unusual contexts to evoke mystery. It asserts Magritte undermined reality through techniques of realism that subtly associated elements through similarity or contiguity.
Artist Jeff Scher has two major shows of his animated films coming up in the fall. His films use techniques like rotoscoping, in which live-action footage is traced and re-drawn frame by frame. This gives his narratives a fluid, unpredictable quality that invites personal interpretation. Rather than focusing on themes of despair, Scher's stories leave viewers with a sense of hope and wholeness. His busy fall highlights how he is an acclaimed, though somewhat removed, figure in the art world.
1. Aristotle analyzed tragedy and proposed its ideal form, which influenced later playwrights. He defined tragedy as imitating a serious action that arouses pity and fear and accomplishes catharsis of these emotions.
2. According to Aristotle, the six main elements of tragedy are plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. The most important elements are plot and character. The plot should be a unified action that involves reversal of fortune and discovery.
3. Aristotle stated that the tragic hero should not be entirely good or bad, but have a flaw that leads to their downfall from happiness to misery. This arouses pity and fear in the audience.
The document discusses various methods of presenting art, including realism, abstraction, symbolism, fauvism, dadaism, futurism, surrealism, and impressionism. Realism attempts to portray subjects truthfully without artistic conventions. Abstraction moves away from realistic representation and can include distortion, elongation, mangling, or cubism. Symbolism uses signs to represent ideas. Fauvism features bright colors and free form. Dadaism was a protest movement. Futurism aimed to depict speed and modern society. Surrealism reveals unconscious imagery. Impressionism emphasizes accurate depiction of light and movement.
This document summarizes Edgar Allan Poe's process for writing his famous poem "The Raven." It discusses how Poe first considered the length, tone, and refrain/repetition element. He chose a melancholy tone and the word "Nevermore" as the repetitive refrain. He then developed the plot of a lover lamenting the death of his beloved Lenore, with a raven answering "Nevermore" to the man's questions. Poe explains how he crafted each stanza to vary the questions and emotional impact, building to the climax question about being reunited with Lenore in the afterlife. The document provides insight into Poe's meticulous and mathematical approach to composition.
Running Head IMITATIVE ART1IMITATIVE ART3Imit.docxcowinhelen
Running Head: IMITATIVE ART 1
IMITATIVE ART 3
Imitation As the Specific Concept That Most Piqued My Interest in Art
Student’s Name:
Instructor’s Name:
Institution Affiliation:
Course Name and Number:
Date Submitted:
Imitation As the Specific Concept That Most Piqued My Interest in Art
The specific concept in the different art and poetry topics that most piqued my interest is “imitation”. As noted in Book X, Plato banishes the poets from his city simply because he says that they are imitators who cannot spread wisdom due to falsity of their pieces of art. Plato was unlike his ancient Greek counterparts who thought that drama, poetry, and other forms of fine art were imitations of reality, a reality that could be actual or potential. They in fact believed that fine art was imitative in nature and attached a great importance to poetry as an integral part of the Greek education. Further, the Greeks held art as an imitation of nature or reality. However, because Plato’s theory on nature and reality was widely different just like was his ideas on the mechanism of imitation from other theorists and poets, he banished the poets as liars (Plato 2015).
Similarly, Danto compares Socrates and Hamlet who describe art as a mirror meaning that art is an imitation of nature. From his point of view, the mirror perspective of both Socrates and Hamlet defining art as a mirror, makes art an imitation or mirror image that is meant to deceive because it is an imitation lacking reality or originality of craftsmanship. He therefore, demystifies Hamlet’s thinking of art as a mirror that shows people what we they cannot see for themselves, as well as Socrates thinking that art is like a mirror that reflects what people can already see (Danto 1964, 571-584). It is therefore evident that the topic of imitation in art is dominant in both Danto’s and Plato’s reading making it a topic that piques my interest in art.
How Art Imitation Is Analyzed By Plato and Danto
According Plato, art can never truly represent reality, for life itself, of which art is merely a copy, does not represent reality. This is why he says that the world, we experience it, is just an illusion or collection of mere appearances which are like reflections in a mirror or shadows on a wall (Muller, 1982, 229-247). Therefore, he believes that anything the artists produce is just an imitation that lacks reality. Further, any artistic representation is at best a third remove from reality according to Plato. He only asserts that only God is perfectly good, and therefore changeless and incapable of deceit, but artists are deceptive. On the other hand, Danto emphasizes the need for reality as opposed to imitation. He for instance explains that art is something that is original and distinguishable. Although it may look like the exact object it is however easily recognized and distinguished from all others.
Relevance of Imitation to Plato’s And Danto’s Overall Argument
Imitation is relevant to P ...
Cover Page
Subject
Your name
Course title
Professor’s name
Date
Favorite Artist:
Picture of your artist
Favorite Artist:
Biography of your artist
Image of the first artwork
Title, date if known, medium, size, current location
Description and analysis of the first artwork
Image of the second artwork
Title, date if known, medium, size, current location
Description and analysis of the second artwork
Image of the third artwork
Title, date if known, medium, size, current location
Description and analysis of the third artwork
Conclusion
Works cited
Pablo Picasso
(you can be creative to choose a title)
Art 100 Art Appreciation
Student’s name
Professsor’s name
Date submitted
Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973)
Biography
Pablo Picasso is considered to be one of the most famous painters in the twentieth century. He was born in Malaga, Spain on October 20, 1881. In addition to painting, Picasso was also a printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright. He spent most of his adult life in France.
Early life
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil". From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son's technique, the father felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him and vowed to give up painting.
Fame
Picasso grew up to become one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Picasso is now regarded as one of the artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century
Personal life and Death
Picasso had affairs with a lot of women and was married twice and had four children, Paulo, Maya, Claude and Paloma by three women. He died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.
The weeping woman
October 26, 1937
Oil on canvas
t has been in the collection of the Tate Modern in London since 1987 and is currently located there.
Analysis
The color scheme used in the painting seems like a mystery. Picasso frequently used a monochrome or even a grisaille ...
Woolf stream of consciousness technique in To the Light HouseISP
Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse explored the minds of characters using the stream of consciousness technique. It presented characters' perspectives through their own and others' thoughts without straightforward narration. Woolf rejected traditional narrative techniques and experimented with stream of consciousness and indirect interior monologue to depict inner realities and capture life's complexity. The story followed a small number of characters over multiple sections united through emotional themes rather than direct events.
Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright and theatre theorist born in 1898 who developed the theory and practice of epic theatre. Some key points about Brecht include:
- He was exposed to death and conflict from a young age which influenced his extreme theatre methods.
- In the 1920s he wrote several influential plays and collaborated with composers, developing his rejection of dramatic theatre in favor of epic theatre.
- He fled Germany in 1933 due to his leftist political views and opposition to Hitler, spending years in exile before reaching America.
- Epic theatre used techniques like the alienation effect to encourage spectators to think critically rather than emotionally experience the play. It emphasized social and political themes through a dist
Ferlinghetti's poem "Constantly risking absurdity" uses unconventional structure and meter to convey the risks a poet takes to perform above their audience. The poet is likened to an acrobat, balancing on a high wire above a sea of faces and performing tricks without mistake. The choppy line breaks and spacing mimic an acrobat's movements. In the second half, the poet is described as a "super realist" striving for beauty, but they may fail to "catch" its form. The unconventional form serves the message of risking failure to attain higher ideas.
The poem compares the poet's journey for truth and beauty through writing poetry to an acrobat walking a tightrope. The poet constantly risks absurdity and death with each line written, just as the acrobat risks falling with each step on the rope. Through daring language and an unconventional structure without punctuation, the poet balances precariously on an "eyebeam" to reach the "still higher perch" where Beauty waits.
Artemisia Gentileschi was a 17th century Italian Baroque painter known for her paintings of strong female biblical and mythological figures. She was one of the first female artists to achieve fame and recognition during her lifetime. Gentileschi faced significant obstacles as a woman artist, including being raped by her painting instructor as a young woman. Her work often depicted themes of female empowerment and resistance to male oppression. Gentileschi mastered the Baroque style of dramatic lighting and composition, which she used to bring emotional depth and power to her portrayals of women.
The poem uses an extended metaphor to compare the work of a poet to an acrobat performing daring feats on a high wire. It describes the poet balancing "eyebeams above a sea of faces" and risking "absurdity and death" with each new performance, as he searches for "taut truth" and advances toward capturing eternal beauty. In the end, it is unclear whether the poet like the little Charlie Chaplin character will successfully "catch her fair eternal form" before falling into the "empty air of existence."
Plato introduces the theory of imitation, which argues that art and literature are imitations of nature rather than reflections of truth or reality. According to Plato's theory, a painter's depiction of a chair is twice removed from the truth since it is an imitation of the carpenter's physical chair, which itself is an imitation of the ideal "chair" form. Plato believed that literature could misguide society and corrupt youth, and thus wanted to ban poets from his republic. However, the conclusion is that while Plato makes a valid point about imitation, poetry is not inherently harmful.
The document discusses the nature of art and meaning through a series of quotes and thought experiments. It presents a fable in which a philosopher named Geo unveils an abstract painting to a crowd and insists that the painting is "not about anything" despite attempts to explain what it might be about. The document explores the relationship between artist and audience and how meaning is constructed in the artworld through context and interpretation.
This poem uses an extended metaphor to compare poetry writing to acrobatics, likening the poet to an acrobat performing risky feats above an audience. Both take constant risks of absurdity and failure in their performances for the sake of creating something beautiful. The poet must balance precariously on the "high wire" of his craft and take each "stance or step" without mistake before capturing some element of "beauty" through his work, just as the acrobat risks death by misstep.
This document summarizes Arthur Danto's perspective on the philosophy of art. It discusses how the field of aesthetics was once seen as irrelevant but became important again due to conceptual artworks like Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes. These raised philosophical questions about what distinguishes art from non-art. Danto argues that art is representational and has meaning or content, unlike indiscernible real objects, making representation key to a theory of art. He also notes that the distinction between art and philosophy has become problematic as art becomes more self-conscious.
According to Aristotle, there are six essential parts that make up a tragedy: the plot, which is considered the soul of tragedy; characters, with the hero being most important; thought, which proves particular points and teaches truth; diction, or writing skill; song or melody, with the chorus integrated into the play; and spectacle, related to stage performance but should not create a sense of the monstrous.
This document summarizes Aristotle's six elements of tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle. It explains that plot is the most important element and soul of tragedy, involving events arranged in a complex manner. It describes Aristotle's views on each element and how they contribute to an effective tragedy, such as realistic characters and appropriate language. The document concludes that Aristotle's theory provides a framework for analyzing fine art.
This document provides an overview of key concepts for an 8th grade web quest on turning the invisible visible. It defines tragic and tragedy, discusses symbolism in art and literature, and profiles author Edgar Allan Poe. It instructs students to read one of Poe's short stories, then write a 200-word tragic story and accompanying illustration about an unfortunate event of the year. Students must use at least two techniques studied in class and present their work on the deadline to be evaluated based on composition, illustration skills, explanation of ideas, and punctuality.
This document discusses how painting has evolved to belong to and visualize networks. It analyzes works by Jutta Koether, Stephen Prina, Cheyney Thompson, and Wade Guyton that demonstrate painting's "transitivity", or ability to circulate through and translate between different contexts. These artists actualize the behavior of objects within networks by showing painting's passage through time and translation between social and cultural spheres. Their work offers a way to move beyond critiques of painting's relation to commodification by demonstrating how artworks can circulate in networks rather than become permanently arrested objects.
This document discusses the use of metaphor and metonymy in the paintings of René Magritte. It draws on Roman Jakobson's work distinguishing metaphor, which relies on similarity, and metonymy, which relies on contiguity or association. The document analyzes several of Magritte's paintings like "La Trahison des Images" and "Les affinités electives" to show how they employ metaphor and metonymy through juxtaposition of objects and unusual contexts to evoke mystery. It asserts Magritte undermined reality through techniques of realism that subtly associated elements through similarity or contiguity.
Artist Jeff Scher has two major shows of his animated films coming up in the fall. His films use techniques like rotoscoping, in which live-action footage is traced and re-drawn frame by frame. This gives his narratives a fluid, unpredictable quality that invites personal interpretation. Rather than focusing on themes of despair, Scher's stories leave viewers with a sense of hope and wholeness. His busy fall highlights how he is an acclaimed, though somewhat removed, figure in the art world.
1. Aristotle analyzed tragedy and proposed its ideal form, which influenced later playwrights. He defined tragedy as imitating a serious action that arouses pity and fear and accomplishes catharsis of these emotions.
2. According to Aristotle, the six main elements of tragedy are plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. The most important elements are plot and character. The plot should be a unified action that involves reversal of fortune and discovery.
3. Aristotle stated that the tragic hero should not be entirely good or bad, but have a flaw that leads to their downfall from happiness to misery. This arouses pity and fear in the audience.
The document discusses various methods of presenting art, including realism, abstraction, symbolism, fauvism, dadaism, futurism, surrealism, and impressionism. Realism attempts to portray subjects truthfully without artistic conventions. Abstraction moves away from realistic representation and can include distortion, elongation, mangling, or cubism. Symbolism uses signs to represent ideas. Fauvism features bright colors and free form. Dadaism was a protest movement. Futurism aimed to depict speed and modern society. Surrealism reveals unconscious imagery. Impressionism emphasizes accurate depiction of light and movement.
This document summarizes Edgar Allan Poe's process for writing his famous poem "The Raven." It discusses how Poe first considered the length, tone, and refrain/repetition element. He chose a melancholy tone and the word "Nevermore" as the repetitive refrain. He then developed the plot of a lover lamenting the death of his beloved Lenore, with a raven answering "Nevermore" to the man's questions. Poe explains how he crafted each stanza to vary the questions and emotional impact, building to the climax question about being reunited with Lenore in the afterlife. The document provides insight into Poe's meticulous and mathematical approach to composition.
Running Head IMITATIVE ART1IMITATIVE ART3Imit.docxcowinhelen
Running Head: IMITATIVE ART 1
IMITATIVE ART 3
Imitation As the Specific Concept That Most Piqued My Interest in Art
Student’s Name:
Instructor’s Name:
Institution Affiliation:
Course Name and Number:
Date Submitted:
Imitation As the Specific Concept That Most Piqued My Interest in Art
The specific concept in the different art and poetry topics that most piqued my interest is “imitation”. As noted in Book X, Plato banishes the poets from his city simply because he says that they are imitators who cannot spread wisdom due to falsity of their pieces of art. Plato was unlike his ancient Greek counterparts who thought that drama, poetry, and other forms of fine art were imitations of reality, a reality that could be actual or potential. They in fact believed that fine art was imitative in nature and attached a great importance to poetry as an integral part of the Greek education. Further, the Greeks held art as an imitation of nature or reality. However, because Plato’s theory on nature and reality was widely different just like was his ideas on the mechanism of imitation from other theorists and poets, he banished the poets as liars (Plato 2015).
Similarly, Danto compares Socrates and Hamlet who describe art as a mirror meaning that art is an imitation of nature. From his point of view, the mirror perspective of both Socrates and Hamlet defining art as a mirror, makes art an imitation or mirror image that is meant to deceive because it is an imitation lacking reality or originality of craftsmanship. He therefore, demystifies Hamlet’s thinking of art as a mirror that shows people what we they cannot see for themselves, as well as Socrates thinking that art is like a mirror that reflects what people can already see (Danto 1964, 571-584). It is therefore evident that the topic of imitation in art is dominant in both Danto’s and Plato’s reading making it a topic that piques my interest in art.
How Art Imitation Is Analyzed By Plato and Danto
According Plato, art can never truly represent reality, for life itself, of which art is merely a copy, does not represent reality. This is why he says that the world, we experience it, is just an illusion or collection of mere appearances which are like reflections in a mirror or shadows on a wall (Muller, 1982, 229-247). Therefore, he believes that anything the artists produce is just an imitation that lacks reality. Further, any artistic representation is at best a third remove from reality according to Plato. He only asserts that only God is perfectly good, and therefore changeless and incapable of deceit, but artists are deceptive. On the other hand, Danto emphasizes the need for reality as opposed to imitation. He for instance explains that art is something that is original and distinguishable. Although it may look like the exact object it is however easily recognized and distinguished from all others.
Relevance of Imitation to Plato’s And Danto’s Overall Argument
Imitation is relevant to P ...
Cover Page
Subject
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Date
Favorite Artist:
Picture of your artist
Favorite Artist:
Biography of your artist
Image of the first artwork
Title, date if known, medium, size, current location
Description and analysis of the first artwork
Image of the second artwork
Title, date if known, medium, size, current location
Description and analysis of the second artwork
Image of the third artwork
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Description and analysis of the third artwork
Conclusion
Works cited
Pablo Picasso
(you can be creative to choose a title)
Art 100 Art Appreciation
Student’s name
Professsor’s name
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Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973)
Biography
Pablo Picasso is considered to be one of the most famous painters in the twentieth century. He was born in Malaga, Spain on October 20, 1881. In addition to painting, Picasso was also a printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright. He spent most of his adult life in France.
Early life
Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil". From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son's technique, the father felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him and vowed to give up painting.
Fame
Picasso grew up to become one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Picasso is now regarded as one of the artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century
Personal life and Death
Picasso had affairs with a lot of women and was married twice and had four children, Paulo, Maya, Claude and Paloma by three women. He died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. He was interred at the Chateau of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence, a property he had acquired in 1958 and occupied with Jacqueline between 1959 and 1962. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. Devastated and lonely after the death of Picasso, Jacqueline Roque killed herself by gunshot in 1986 when she was 59 years old.
The weeping woman
October 26, 1937
Oil on canvas
t has been in the collection of the Tate Modern in London since 1987 and is currently located there.
Analysis
The color scheme used in the painting seems like a mystery. Picasso frequently used a monochrome or even a grisaille ...
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MODULE 4 (Art and Philosophy- Imitationism and Representationism).pdfElenaGarcia581099
According to Plato's imitation theory of art, artworks are imitations that are twice removed from reality. Using the example of a couch, Plato believed the true artist was God who inspired the carpenter, who then inspired the painter. Art imitates ordinary objects and events in life, making it an imitation of things that already exist. Plato criticized art forms like poetry and painting as inferior copies, focusing on their representational quality rather than their value. He believed representation through art was inferior to ultimate truth.
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived from 1881-1973. He is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. The document provides biographical details about Picasso's early life and artistic development. It notes that from a very young age, Picasso was drawn to art and spent hours drawing. The document also summarizes Picasso's artistic periods from 1900-1914, the time when he was developing his unique style, including his Steinlenian, Stained Glass, Blue, Circus, Rose, and early Cubist periods. It analyzes how Picasso's art evolved through these periods as a reflection of his inner psychological growth and development as an artist.
Art can be defined in several ways including as a form of human expression and creativity, an imitation of beauty in the world, or as having its own intrinsic formal qualities. The most common forms of art are painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, film, music, and theater. Painting specifically involves applying pigments like oil, acrylic, or watercolor to a surface like canvas to create an artistic work that can depict various subjects and styles. Famous paintings discussed include the Mona Lisa, The Starry Night, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and Girl with a Pearl Earring, each notable for their artistic techniques and subjects.
This document provides an overview and analysis of the anti-realist documentary film "Not Reconciled" by Marcelo Expósito. The film combines experimental and testimonial elements in an attempt to bridge opposing aesthetic approaches from the 20th century left. It uses archival footage in a way that forces estrangement rather than naturalism. The film is structured in five acts that present non-linear testimonies and documentation of political experiences and movements in Argentina, such as the Siluetazo protest and escraches, through a montage approach. The analysis discusses how the film challenges conventions while seeking to represent new forms of politicization through affect and estrangement rather than a clear "us vs
This exhibit features 13 works related to Dadaism and Surrealism that explore themes of self-immolation, identity negation, semiotics, chance, and the uncanny. Key works included are Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau and Hans Bellmer's La Poupée, shown side by side to contrast their formal and conceptual relationships. Also featured are Marcel Duchamp's readymades Bottle Rack, Bicycle Wheel, and In Advance of a Broken Arm, which question notions of fixed meaning and objecthood. Duchamp's unfinished work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even is centered among the readymades to depict perpetual desire and contingency.
The group exhibition "May contain criticism" features works by 11 artists from ITB's 2016 master's class. The exhibition aims to show the diverse interests and media used by the artists while also highlighting some similarities, particularly a shared critical approach. The works cover a range of topics and media, with many offering subtle criticism of issues like news media biases, traditions of marriage, urban planning practices that restrict nature, industrialization's impacts on traditional crafts, extremist interpretations of religion, and societal views of subcultures. By exploring these artists' varied critical perspectives, the curator seeks to articulate how criticism can be extracted from the works while maintaining some coherent curatorial idea.
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How to Build a Module in Odoo 17 Using the Scaffold Method
Cult staging identity
1. ● 65
Staging Identity
through Art
M A R G A R I TA VA R G A S
State University of New York at Buffalo
Cuando el arte imita al arte la imitación nunca es exacta, ocurre lo mismo
que cuando el arte imita a la vida y muy probablemente también cuando la
vida imita al arte. (García Ponce 1982a, 41)
Almost 20 years after his last production for the stage, Juan
García Ponce (1932–2003) returned to his first passion with Catálogo razo-
nado (1982a), a play he was commissioned to write by the Instituto Nacional
de Bellas Artes [The National Institute of Fine Arts] in 1979.1 Significantly,
he took an art term—“catálogo razonado,” commonly known as catalogue
raisonné—to title his play. In the art world, the French term is used to
describe a publication that lists the contents of an artist’s exhibition, along
with related descriptive or critical material, including titles of articles or
literary works.2 The chosen title is appropriate to the extent that García
Ponce inserts many of his favorite writers (including Xavier Villaurrutia,
Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Klossowski, and T. S. Eliot) and composes a play
that catalogues the five novels—La cabaña (1969), El gato (1974), Unión
2. (1974), Crónica de la intervención (1982), and De anima (1984)3—for which
the protagonist of Catálogo razonado served as model.4 In addition to scenes
from these novels, the play provides a list of artists whose paintings docu-
ment the existence of Michèle Alban,5 the woman who is the protagonist’s
referent, no matter how far removed she may be from the multiple copies
and repetitions made in her image. At the same time, García Ponce appears
to adopt Diderot’s aesthetics, which, according to Roland Barthes, “rests
on the identification of theatrical scene and pictorial tableau: the perfect
play is a succession of tableaux, that is, a gallery, an exhibition; the stage
offers the spectator ‘as many real tableaux as there are in the action
moments favorable to the painter’” (Barthes 1984, 70). This episodic struc-
ture, of course, is also reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht’s epic theater, which
expects criticism, not adherence from its spectators (71), that is, an intel-
lectual reaction to the play rather than an emotional one. It is important to
note, however, that the erotic scenes in the play do not allow for complete
detachment. Finally, Catálogo razonado has also been classified as a totaliz-
ing theatrical piece since it uses various types of technical, mechanical, and
audiovisual media to create a spectacle that impacts all the senses (Sotelo
1998, 80).
The entire action of the play—which begins as a dialogue between the
voices of the fictive author (First Voice) and the fictive director (Second
Voice) planning to stage the piece—takes place in the author’s imagination,
which is “habitada por las cosas que él pide aparezcan en el escenario”
[inhabited by the things that he will request appear on stage] (García Ponce
1982a, 10).6 The time period of the action is described as “el tiempo fuera
del tiempo en el que se desarrollan todas las obras de teatro” [the time out-
side time in which all plays unfold] (10). When the fictive author material-
izes on stage, he is identified as the “Actor en que encarna la voz primera”
[the Actor who incarnates the first voice], and the fictive director is
identified as the Actor who embodies the second voice. The main female
character in the play is simply “el Modelo” [the Model]; she reenacts scenes
from novels for which she presumably served as the original model and has
been summoned by the fictive author to play herself. The fictive author sug-
gests that the plot consists of proving that the model may be nothing more
Staging Identit y through Ar t66 ●
3. than the portrait for which she modeled because ultimately he invents her.
Even as she tries to show her independence, she continues to be his model
(12). At the same time, however, he admits to the director: “Me temo que
yo nunca he inventado nada. La que inventaba era ella, con la ligera difer-
encia de que ella sólo se inventaba a sí misma” [I admit that I have never
made anything up. She was the one who invented, with the slight difference
that she only invented herself] (21).
What interests me about this play is precisely the conundrum of the
possibility of the construction of identity in general, and of feminine iden-
tity in particular. This question is relevant to a feminist discourse that seeks
agency for women. Insofar as García Ponce makes women the center of his
work, albeit a center mediated and thus displaced by the male gaze, it is
obvious that the question of the representation of gender is a salient issue
in his works. Judith Butler alludes to the controversial quality of the term
“representation” when she states that, on the one hand, it “serves as the
operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility and
legitimacy to women as political subjects; on the other hand, representa-
tion is the normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or
to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women” (1999,
3–4). The double meaning Butler attributes to the term “representation,” in
its capacity to legitimize and essentialize women simultaneously, faithfully
reflects the action of Catálogo razonado. In the play, feminine agency is chan-
neled through the female character who chooses to be the artist’s model
and who enables the fictive author to invent her, yet, because the fictive
author fluctuates between his supreme role of creator and the recognition
that his creation has free will, the reader remains uncertain about the
degree of her subjectivity.
Perhaps the best example of characters exercising free will is
Pirandello’s Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921 [Six Characters in Search of
an Author]. Pirandello’s characters, unlike the Model, are looking for an
author who will put them in a play since the one who conceived them
(Pirandello, as fictive author) is no longer willing to include them in his
drama. In García Ponce’s play, the main character struggles against the role
the playwright has created for her and, at the same time, takes pleasure in
Margarita Vargas ● 67
4. serving as his model. Like Pirandello’s celebrated play, Catálogo razonado
begins as though it is yet to be conceived: while Pirandello’s characters
enter an empty stage, the instructions in García Ponce’s play indicate that
it all takes place in the author’s imagination. Moreover, the conversation
between the First and the Second Voices gives the impression that they are
in the middle of the construction of the play the audience will eventually
see. In both cases, what is important about the fluidity of the space is that
it mirrors the fluidity of the characters’ identity.
Identity has been traditionally understood as a force of domination that
is “always and inevitably based on a logic of opposition to and exclusion of
the Other” (Weir 1996, 4), yet in Catálogo razonado, the protagonist’s iden-
tity is produced as much by the character herself as by the fictive author.
Moreover, despite the fact that the fictive author is the creator of the text—
because García Ponce makes explicit the process through which identity
needs to exclude in order to exist—he disrupts the normative as well as the
binary process traditionally involved in the construction of identity. The
fictive author basically assumes the role of compiler: he composes his
fiction out of the raw material his model provides. He admits to her that
“Quizás al principio tú imitabas, aun sin darte cuenta, lo que yo imaginaba;
pero no podías suponer que si yo imaginaba algo era porque tú me lo habías
sugerido.” [Perhaps at the beginning, without realizing it, you imitated
what I imagined; but you couldn’t suppose that if I could imagine some-
thing it was because you had suggested it to me] (García Ponce 1982a, 12).
At the same time, however, he knows that he has artistic license to create a
new portrait, one that only resembles the model because, after all, he
invented her and she is a prisoner of that image that, in turn, “te hace mi
prisionera, puesto que siempre puedo usarte como modelo, sin que nadie
sepa que eres mi modelo, sin que ni siquiera tú puedas probar lo contrario,
en el instante que empiezo a imaginar” [makes you my prisoner given that
I can use you as a model without anyone knowing that you are my model
without even you being able to prove the contrary, the minute I begin to
imagine] (1982a, 12–13).
The play, then, continues by dramatizing the problem about whether
the Model has an identity of her own that she projects onto the fictive
Staging Identit y through Ar t68 ●
5. author and that allows him to recreate her, or whether the Model has
become nothing but a reflection of what he has created, as he claims: “Para
mí nunca dejarás de ser la imagen en el espejo donde yo te permitía
reflejarte, hacía que te reflejaras, y donde, para tu elevación o para tu des-
gracia, depende desde cuándo y cómo lo pienses, te enamorabas de ti
misma.” [For me you will never stop being the image in the mirror in which
I allowed you to be reflected, made you be reflected, and where, for your ele-
vation or your misfortune, it depends on when and how you think about it,
you fell in love with yourself] (García Ponce 1982a, 13). She vacillates
between an argument of herself as the original from which the fictive
author derives the portrait of his various novels and herself as the product
of his creation. She first asserts to be the original version of the fictive
author’s creations after a photo session in which she acquiesces to pose in
the nude for one of their male friends. The awareness of herself as more
than a model occurs once she is no longer in character and realizes that her
daughters may have witnessed the event. The possibility of an intervention
from the world outside the intimacy of their relationship disturbs her and
makes her ask for the negatives. The fictive author, however, begs to keep
the photographs, claiming that no one else will see them (which is, of
course, a lie). The Model argues that she, the original, should be all he
wants. He replies: “Me gusta verte repetida. Quiero poder verte siempre a
ti y mirarte al mismo tiempo desde afuera.” [I like to see you repeated. I
always want to be able to see you and to look at you at the same time from
the outside] (1982a, 27). The Second Voice yells out that ultimately the
fictive author achieved his voyeuristic goal, but the question still remains,
which is the portrait and which is the model (28)? While the play provides
an answer to this question, Judith Butler, in her discussion of the difference
between sex and gender, sheds further light on the issue: “if gender is some-
thing that one becomes—but can never be—then gender ought not to be
conceived as a noun or a substantial thing or a static cultural marker, but
rather as an incessant and repeated action of some sort” (1999, 143). It is
through the repetition of the image, then, that the author attempts to cap-
ture the essence of the original model, fully aware though, that like
Sisyphus, he is condemned to repeat the same action ad infinitum, or as the
Margarita Vargas ● 69
6. fictive author says in the text: “Escribir, después de todo, es como hacer el
amor: sólo se termina para empezar a esperar el momento en que se quiere
volver a empezar” [Writing, after all, is like making love: you finish only to
start waiting for the moment in which you desire to begin again] (García
Ponce 1982a, 64).
The Model addresses the ontological question posed by the Second
Voice when she discusses with the fictive author the female character in La
cabaña: “Es muy perturbador. Soy yo pero no soy yo. . . . De todos modos,
creo que me gusta lo que estás haciendo conmigo. Me veo a mí misma tal
como tú quieres que me vea” [It’s very disturbing. It is I but it’s not I. . . . In
any case, I think I like what you’re doing with me. I see myself the way you’d
like for me to see myself] (García Ponce 1982a, 17). Also, when she stands
back and watches a younger actress play her when she was between the ages
of 16 and 21, the Model comments: “No sé lo que estás haciendo. Me despo-
jas de mí y me entregas a mí. ¿Por qué, si yo no soy ésa, soy más yo en ésa?”
[I don’t know what you’re doing. You strip me of myself and give myself
backtome.Why,ifI’mnotthatcharacter,Iammoremyselfinher?](38–39).
Toward the end, though, she rebels and challenges the explanation that his
interest is to pay homage to her, when he states that “Cada repetición, cada
forma bajo la que apareces siendo tú misma y otra es un homenaje, muestra
mi imposibilidad de apartarme de tu imagen” [Every repetition, every form
under which you appear as yourself and as other is a homage, it shows my
inability to stay away from your image] (83). She retorts:
Pues el efecto es el contrario. Yo me siento condenada al perpetuo insulto
que son tus homenajes. No soy sólo tu modelo. Soy una persona, dueña de
mí misma, con responsabilidades, con obligaciones, con un sentido de la
justicia y de la decencia.7 Soy madre. Tengo una profesión decente. He tra-
bajado para poder ser libre y tú me has hecho la prisionera de tus inmundas
ensoñaciones.
[Well, the effect is the opposite. I feel condemned to the perpetual insult of
your homage. I’m not your model. I am a person, owner of myself, with
responsibilities, with obligations, with a sense of justice and decency. I am a
Staging Identit y through Ar t70 ●
7. mother. I have a decent profession. I have worked to be able to be free and you
have made me a prisoner ofyour filthy fantasies.] (García Ponce 1982a, 83–84)
The question of originality is important only to the Model; the fictive
author and director are more concerned with the portrait that represents
the model. Only as the original version of a portrait created by the fictive
author can she claim to be a person, to own herself. She must fight her way
out of the author’s fictitious world in order to have “a sense of justice and
decency,” in order to assume her role of mother and professional. The
fictive author and director, however, would prefer to align themselves with
Jean Baudrillard’s line of reasoning around the existence of an original, a
model, and the copy, which he masterfully discusses in his book Simulacra
and Simulation. Baudrillard convincingly argues that “simulation is no
longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the gener-
ation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The terri-
tory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it” (Baudrillard 1994,
1). We are left with only a model and its representation, which keep us
safely within the realm of fiction and language and detached from any social
responsibility we may want to attribute to any text. Baudrillard also poses
another question that is pertinent to Catálogo razonado: he asks,
But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say can be reduced to
the signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless,
it is no longer itself anything but a gigantic simulacrum—not unreal, but a
simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for
itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference. (5–6)
This endless circle with no beginning and no end, this Borgesian labyrinth,
this prison without exits, is precisely what the Model fights against unsuc-
cessfully. In her role as Paloma in De anima, she realizes that she has not
achieved the life she had been dreaming of for years and interprets this
“como una prueba más de que una mujer nunca puede hacer lo que en ver-
dad desea” [as proof that a woman never gets to do what she really wants]
(García Ponce 1982a, 50–51). The Model can rebel and claim “Yo no sólo soy
Margarita Vargas ● 71
8. tu personaje. También soy dueña de mí misma” [I am not only your char-
acter. I also own myself] (49), and even tries to tell her side of the story, as
she does in De anima—the one novel in which the female character assumes
her own narrative voice—however, it is the author who ultimately controls
the narrative, as the following dialogue illustrates:
MODELO: Pero aun como personaje tuyo soy yo. Déjame escribir.
VOZ PRIMERA: Escribe. Al hacerlo te conviertes en otro personaje mío.
[MODEL: But even as your character I am I. Let me write.
FIRST VOICE: Go ahead, write. As you do it, you become another one of my
characters.] (García Ponce 1982a, 50)
The audience also gets to experience the disappearance of the Model from
the stage and see her represented twice removed from herself, through
slides of the photographs taken by a friend: “se han ido proyectando sobre
una gigantesca pantalla diapositivas de todas las fotografías . . . Asistimos
de ese modo a todo ese movimiento de desvestirse y vestirse, de adoptar
actitudes teatrales que progresivamente nos van llevando hasta la desnudez
del Modelo” [slides of all the photographs are projected on a gigantic
screen. . . . We thus witness that movement of dressing and undressing, of
the assuming of theatrical attitudes that progressively lead us to the
Model’s nudity] (García Ponce 1982a, 29). The fictive author explains that
during the creative process, he establishes an even greater distance from
the original by departing from a picture of her to her as model in order to
turn her into something, which, though perhaps not identical, is at least
very close to the original photograph (39). This explanation of the act of
creation makes very clear the impossibility of ever finding the original, for
as the Model admits when talking about the character Nicole: ¿Por qué, si
yo no soy ésa, soy más yo en ésa?” [Why, if I’m not that character, I am more
myself in her?] (38–39).
Despite the heightened self-awareness of the play and the progressive
attitudes of the fictive author and the fictive director, at times they fall into
the social traps of sexism, possessiveness, and chauvinism. Early on in the
Staging Identit y through Ar t72 ●
9. play, the First Voice tells the Second Voice: “Recuerdo que me turbó mucho
al esrcribirla [la escena de una de sus novelas] suponer que con toda seguri-
dad iba a leerla y quizás se reconocería; pero también el placer de estarla
convirtiendo en otra de la que era sin que dejara de ser ella misma no podía
compararse a nada y la afirmaba a través de esa aparente negación y
confirmaba mi amor por ella” [I remember it disturbed me a lot when writ-
ing it (a particular scene in one of his novels) to imagine that surely she
would read it and perhaps would recognize herself in it; but also the pleas-
ure of turning her into someone else different from who she was without
ceasing to be herself could not compare to anything else and it affirmed her
through that apparent negation and confirmed my love for her] (García
Ponce 1982a, 14). Moreover, at the end, when the Model and the Actors that
embody the first and second voices are at an exhibit of drawings by Pierre
Klossowski, the Actor that embodies the second voice says to the other:
“Asi habría que manipular a las mujeres.” And the first one responds: “Asi
habría que hacerlo” [This is how one should be able to manipulate
women. . . . This is how one should do it] (86). Their desire to manipulate
women and the pleasure of turning them into someone different from who
they are brings to mind the mythic Pygmalion, that talented Greek sculptor
who chiseled himself a wife out of “a large, beautiful piece of ivory,”
although it was Aphrodite who gave the statue life, not insignificantly
because it resembled her (Encyclopedia Mythica).8 But it is perhaps George
Bernard Shaw’s rendition of the myth that more closely approximates the
plot of Catálogo razonado, since Shaw’s work oscillates between the instinc-
tual desire to reconstruct a woman and the rational counterargument that
women have feelings and minds of their own and, therefore, do not need to
be reformed. In Shaw’s Pygmalion, the character Henry Higgins, author of
Higgin’s Universal Alphabet, decides to transform the street flower girl Liza
(or Eliza, as he calls her) by improving her linguistic skills. He proclaims:
“You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will
keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I
could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. I could
even get her a place as lady’s maid or shop assistant, which requires better
English” (Shaw 1916, 124). When Higgins takes his raw material home,
Margarita Vargas ● 73
10. however, he discovers that he got a lot more than what he had bargained
for. Mrs. Pearce, Higgins’s housekeeper, gives him a list of alterations he
must make to his own personality in order to serve as a good model for his
new project and thus insure success. First of all, Mrs. Pearce recommends
that he stop swearing in front of the girl (142). About his personal cleanli-
ness and table manners, she suggests: “might I ask you not to come down
to breakfast in your dressing-gown, or at any rate not to use it as a napkin
to the extent you do, sir. And if you would be so good as not to eat every-
thing off the same plate, and to remember not to put the porridge saucepan
out of your hand on the clean tablecloth, it would be a better example to the
girl” (143–44). Moreover, his partner, Colonel Pickering, brings to his atten-
tion that the girl has feelings with which he must contend. Finally, once
Liza attains the degree of sophistication and linguistic ability that Higgins
expected, she rebels, like García Ponce’s Model.9 Her complaint is that no
matter how much she tries to please him, he does not show any kindness
toward her. He responds:
You call me a brute because you couldn’t buy a claim on me by fetching my
slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman fetch-
ing a man’s slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch your slippers? I
think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving
for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you
come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; . . . and if you dare to
set upyour little dog’s tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my cre-
ation of a Duchess Eliza, I’ll slam the door in your silly face. (Shaw 203)
Realizing that asking for his kindness is not effective, she resorts to com-
plaining about how he stole the independence she had as a flower vendor.
While he is arguing that independence is a “middle class blasphemy,” it
dawns on her that the one thing she can do is teach, and she says: “I’ll go
and be a teacher. . . . Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I
was not to think of it before! You cant [sic] take away the knowledge you
gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil and kind to
people, which is more than you can” (Shaw 207).
Staging Identit y through Ar t74 ●
11. Higgins, however, dons his Pygmalion outfit and appropriates her newly
acquired freedom, claiming that the sense of independence she would
acquirewaspartofhispremeditatedplan,aswesooftenseethefictiveauthor
do in Catálogo razonado:10 “You damned impudent slut, you! But it’s better
than sniveling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles, isnt [sic]
it? [Rising] By George, Eliza, I said I’d make a woman ofyou; and I have. I like
you like this” (Shaw 1916, 208). By denying her agency, Higgins will be able to
keep her under his tutelage and to enjoy the care and attention she is so will-
ing to dispense, and to which he has grown accustomed. Evidence that the
Model in Catálogo razonado finds herself in a similar situation appears every
time she mentions that no matter how disturbing it may be, she likes what
the fictive author does to her and that she enjoys seeing herself the way he
would like her to see herself (García Ponce 1982a, 17). She also enjoys floating
adrift and letting him be in complete control, as the following evinces: “No
sé a dónde quieres llevarme. Pero me gusta” [I don’t know where you want to
take me. But I like it] (1982a, 28). When discussing how the fictive author will
portray her in the scene from the novel Unión, the Model demonstrates a per-
verse pleasure in his idiosyncrasies. To his revelation that he enjoys watching
her ex-husband draw her while she imitates the poses of Balthus’s erotic
paintings, she comments: “Todo esto es anormal. Pero me gusta” [All this is
abnormal. But I like it] (1982a, 39). Her final submission to his perverse
desires occurs at the end of the play when she agrees to have the fictive direc-
tor visit them. Although it becomes apparent that she wants to be reassured
that the fictive director likes her, she tells the fictive author, when he asks if
she needs to be liked, that she agreed to see their friend principally because
“a ti te daría gusto que le gustara” [it would please you if he liked me] (1982a,
74). Because both the Model and Liza derive pleasure from pleasing the men
they love, they simultaneously assume positions of power and submission,
power because they derive pleasure from their desire to be desired, and sub-
mission because their sexual pleasure “can only be constructed around
[their] objectification” (Kaplan 2000, 126). In his need to subdue women and
recreate them, García Ponce finds himself in the company of many other
men who share the same male fantasy. There are numerous variations in lit-
erature as well as in cinema of the Pygmalion syndrome, including El Conde
Margarita Vargas ● 75
12. Lucanor’s “De lo que aconteció a un mancebo que casó con una mujer brava,”
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, and the films Educating Rita, The Stepford
Wives (based on Ira Levin’s novel), and Almodóvar’s Hable con ella (Talk to
Her).11 While some use violence and others technology, others use language
to subdue and recreate the objects of their desire. While the fictive author in
Catálogo razonado does not hold onto a normative ideal of the role women
should play, like Higgins, he does lay claim to his authorial role and, thus, the
right to his unlimited use of the Model.
In addition to depicting the Model through the various characters in the
novels, her identity is also construed in the play according to the few
clothes she wears. Judith Butler’s ideas concerning the performative nature
of gendered identity are relevant to a further understanding of how identity
is represented in Catálogo razonado. According to Butler, “acts, gestures,
and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce
this on the surface of the body [and] are performative in the sense that the
essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications
manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive
means” (1999, 173). The discursive means used by García Ponce to reveal
the “internal core or substance” of his female character consists of her
transparent garments either within or in front of paintings used as back-
drops. What her clothes or lack of reveal is her desire to be desired or to
expose herself, as the fictive author recognizes: “Y luego fui descubriendo
hasta qué extremo hacía más intenso nuestro placer el descubrimiento de
que ella era alguien a quien le gustaba exhibirse . . .” [And little by little I dis-
covered the extreme to which the knowledge that she was someone who
liked to expose herself intensified our pleasure . . .] (García Ponce 1982a,
63–64). The Model first appears inside one of Arnaldo Coen’s cubes—which
evokes the series of two-dimensional cubes he painted in the mid to late
1970s—wearing “un amplio transparente camisón que debe permitir entre-
ver, pero no ver por completo, su cuerpo desnudo” [an ample, transparent
nightgown that should reveal, but not completely, her naked body] (1982a,
11). The rest of her wardrobe consists of a bikini whose straps she unfastens
in order to show a bare back (1982a, 14–15); an old black-lace dress that
belonged to her grandmother and later a cape that reveals her panties (22,
Staging Identit y through Ar t76 ●
13. 24); boots, a grey skirt and a black turtleneck sweater (26); and flowing
veils that expose her nudity (32). Her last outfit is a bikini, which she wears
with boots (78). The multiple variations of the Model either naked or semi-
naked can all be read as the repetitions necessary to create her identity,
which Butler considers part of performativity, which does not consist of a
singular act, but rather, “a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects
through its naturalization in the context of a body, understood, in part, as a
culturally sustained temporal duration” (1999, xv). That the fictive author
is aware of his use of art and attire in the performance of the Model’s iden-
tity becomes evident when he tells the Second Voice:
la acción que te acabo de mostrar es la que mejor la define—si puede
definírsele—como la fuerza que me mueve. Desvestirse, vestirse, adoptar
actitudes teatrales para que todo sea como una representación y . . . para
poder verla sin mí, como si fuera su creador, como si yo la hubiera puesto en
el mundo para solaz de los demásy del mundo. Pero es verdad que la creación
no sería posible sin el modelo. Nunca sabré exactamente qué fue primero:
ella o mi necesidad. Lo imaginario necesita lo real en la misma medida en
que a lo real le es indispensable lo imaginario para poder contemplarse en la
imagen que la imaginación crea a partir de la posibilidad de lo real.
[the action I just showed you is the one that best defines her—if she can be
defined—as the force that moves me. To undress, dress, adopt theatrical
attitudes so that everything can be like a representation . . . so that I can see
her without me, as if I were her creator, as if I had placed her in the world
for everyone’s solace. But it is true that the creation would be impossible
without the model. I will never know exactly what came first: she or my
necessity. The imaginary needs the real to the same extent that the real is
indispensable to the imaginary so that it can contemplate itself in the image
that the imagination creates through the possibility of the real.] (García
Ponce 1982a, 28)
The naked body in exhibition is considered an object of the gaze because its
primary function is to serve for the pleasure of an other, yet in Catálogo
Margarita Vargas ● 77
14. razonado, the Model both derives pleasure from exhibiting herself and has
the authority to stop the action at will. In the first scene, inside the cube, her
transparent nightgown and her hand movements suggest that she is mas-
turbating. Her public onanism alludes both to her ability to please herself
and the need of an audience that validates her action. Aware, however, that
she is merely following a script, she interrupts herself shortly before
orgasm and yells “No!” as she exits the cube, the artwork that contains her
(García Ponce 1982a, 14). One could argue that it is the author who allows
her to escape, yet within the play, the fictive author cannot control her
actions. In the scene where she wears her grandmother’s black lace dress
and is photographed by their friend, she refuses to take off her panties, a
decision which the fictive author appears to respect and which recalls
Higgins’s comment that no one cares for a slave.
As we all know, proper names are a major marker of identity, and in
Catálogo razonado, the author has dispensed with them. However, the
Model and the fictive author engage in conversations about the names he
has chosen to give her in his novels. In reference to the name “Nicole,”
which the author gave his protagonist in Unión, the Model comments:
“Siempre he querido llamarme así. ¿Cómo pudiste adivinarlo?” [That’s
what I always wanted to be called. How did you guess?]. And he answers:
“Es el amor” [It is love] (García Ponce 1982a, 35). Nevertheless, when
they’re playing the scene from La cabaña and the character asks her lover,
“What am I?” (after having suggested that she must look like an iguana)
and he answers “Claudia,” the First Voice yells out, “¡Es lo único que no
eres! ¡Eres mi modelo! [It is the only thing you aren’t! You are my model!]”
(19). The discussion of the protagonist’s name from El gato occurs while the
fictive director is telling the Model how to play herself as Alma: “Recuerda
que te llamas Alma. Un Alma debe tener un cuerpo verdaderamente
cachondo para hacerse visible.” [Remember your name is Alma. A Soul
needs to have a truly lustful body to make herself visible] (66). The last
character mentioned by name is Paloma, from De anima. Even though the
significance of her name is never discussed by any of the characters in the
play, it is important to note that the word means “dove,” which conjures
images of wings and freedom and perhaps even refers to the symbol of
Staging Identit y through Ar t78 ●
15. peace and of the holy spirit, as the title of the novel suggest. Most impor-
tant, however is the lack of proper names in Catálogo razonado, which
emphasizes the issue Pirandello raises in Così è, se vi pare (1917, translated
Right You Are (If You Think So), 1922). The play addresses the problem of the
relativity of identity as well as the impossibility of determining exactly who
someone might be (Bassnett-Mcguire 1983, 6). The dramatization of this
ontological question is developed through the conflicting versions of a
Signora Ponza’s identity. While her husband, Signor Ponza, claims that his
wife’s mother, Signora Frola, lost her mind when her daughter died and
lives convinced that his second wife, Julia, is her daughter Lena, Signora
Frola explains that her son-in-law remarried but fantasizes that the new
wife (her daughter) is his old wife. Because Ponza’s wife never goes out and
never visits her mother, the town is curious about her identity. The town
attempts to find out who she is by examining the village records, only to
discover that they were lost in an earthquake. Their research efforts
thwarted, their only recourse is Ponza’s wife, whose existence they begin to
doubt (Pirandello 1922, 122). To verify her existence and find out who is
right about her identity, the town asks the prefect to talk to her. What she
reveals as the truth is that she is the second wife of Signor Ponza and the
daughter of Signora Frola and for herself, nobody. At the prefect’s insis-
tence that she must be one or the other, Signora Ponza replies: “No! I am
she whom you believe me to be” (138). Because the world “is in continuous
flux, and within that flux the individual seeks a fugitive coherence by nam-
ing,” as Anthony Caputi points out, communities need to classify individu-
als according to their own value systems, but they need a basic truth from
which to depart. Therefore, it is imperative that the town now know who
Signora Ponza really is. Caputi also mentions that Pirandello continuously
repeated that “the world itself has no reality unless we ourselves confer it,”
thus the necessity to create fixed identities (Caputi 1988, 84).
Within this context, then, it appears that by choosing not to name his
characters, by creating female characters who write their own stories, and
by writing a self-reflective play, García Ponce reaffirms the importance of
living life through art and recognizing that others decide who we are.
Ultimately, though, Catálogo razonado, like all other works by García Ponce,
Margarita Vargas ● 79
16. is in search of relationships in which subjectivity disappears in order to
achieve that objectivity only possible within the realm of literature.12
I
N O T E S
I thank David E. Johnson and Carine Mardorossian for their careful reading of the essay and
their insightful comments and suggestions.
1. According to Juan Bruce-Novoa, Mexico’s INBA, during the government of President
José López Portillo (1976–1982), strongly supported the arts. INBA set out to stimulate
the theater by commissioning leading authors to write plays (Bruce-Novoa 1983, 5 and
note 3 on p. 13).
2. This definition can be found at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/catalogue+raisonne.
Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a systematic annotated catalog; especially : a crit-
ical bibliography.” http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=cata-
logue+ raisonne&x=17&y=12.
3. Even though De anima was published two years after Catálogo razonado, it was already
in process at the time García Ponce agreed to write the play.
4. García Ponce also includes a scene from what he calls Vida de los santos [St. Gregory’s
dialogues] by San Gregorio Magno in which he recounts Saint Benedict’s fortitude.
Unlike the saint, the fictive author says he couldn’t resist the temptation of including
that scene because he is not as strong as Saint Benedict.
5. Michèle Alban, a teacher and translator of French descent, was first married to poet
Tomás Segovia with whom she had a son, Rafael Segovia. Her second husband was
author Salvador Elizondo, with whom she had two daughters. She was involved with
Juan García Ponce from the late 1960s until the late 1970s.
6. I take the term “fictive author” from Robert Spires’s study of Miguel de Unamuno’s
Niebla (1914). Spires calls the Unamuno within the novel the fictive author. According
to Spires, “by the act of electing to answer his own character the fictive author has all
but destroyed the distinction between author and character; they exist on the same
narrative level, and consequently the illusion of the fictive author’s power over his
character vanishes” (36). The idea is that “the fictive author and the character alter-
nately create and are created by one another; each is but a sign system generating and
then being generated by the other” (37).
7. For a detailed discussion of self-possession and exposure to the other, which ques-
tions the character’s ability to “own herself,” see David E. Johnson’s “La promesa de
la disponibilidad,” a paper presented in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, in August 2004 and
published on the Juan García Ponce website: http://www.garciaponce.com/lecturas/
pag03.html.
8. Encyclopedia Mythica, s.v. “Pygmalion myth.” www.pantheon.org/articles.
Staging Identit y through Ar t80 ●
17. 9. The act of deviating from the assigned or fixed role dreamed up by the author evokes
the first line of Lezama Lima’s famous poem “A que tú escapes”: “A que tú escapes en
el instante en el que ya habías alcanzado tu definición mejor,” which García Ponce uses
as an epigraph in his novel La presencia lejana. This poem, as well as the works by Shaw
and García Ponce, begs one to ask questions regarding the identity, hidden desires,
and ideological position of authors interested in defining their subjects.
10. For example, the fictive author, directing himself to the Model, asserts: “Después de
todo yo te invento y aun para demostrarme tu independencia tienes que prestarte a
seguir siendo el modelo.” [After all, I invent you and even to demonstrate your inde-
pendence to me you have to agree to continue being my model](12).
11. Bryan Forbes’s adaptation of Ira Levin’s 1972 novel was produced in 1975, while Paul
Rudnick’s version came out in 2004.
12. On the question of the object, see pp. 2–3 of David E. Johnson’s essay “La promesa de
la disponibilidad.”
R E F E R E N C E S
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Bassnett-Mcguire, Susan. 1983. Luigi Pirandello. London: McMillan Press.
Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan.
Bruce-Novoa, Juan. 1983. “Drama to Fiction and Back: Juan García Ponce’s Intratext.” Latin
American Theatre Review 16, no. 1 (Spring): 5-13.
Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2d ed. New York:
Routledge.
Caputi, Anthony. 1988. Pirandello and the Crisis of Modern Consciousness. Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press.
García Ponce, Juan. 1968. La presencia lejana. Montevideo: Arca.
———. 1969. La cabaña. Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz.
———. 1974a. El gato. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.
———. 1974b. Unión. Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz.
———. 1982a. Catálogo razonado. Mexico City: Premiá Editora.
———. 1982b. Crónica de la intervención. Barcelona: Bruguera.
———. 1984. De anima. Barcelona: Montesinos.
Johnson, David E. La promesa de la disponibilidad. Paper presented as part of Veladas
Literarias lectures, August 2004, in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. http://www.garci-
aponce.com/lecturas/pag03.html.
Kaplan, E. Ann. 2000. “Is the Gaze Male?” In Feminism and Film, edited by E. Ann Kaplan, 119-
38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pirandello, Luigi. 1922. Three Plays by Luigi Pirandello. Translated by Arthur Livingston. New
York: Dutton.
Shaw, George Bernard. 1916. Androcles and the Lion; Overruled; Pygmalion. 107–224. New York:
Brentano’s.
Margarita Vargas ● 81
18. Sotelo, Cesar Antonio. 1998. Catálogo razonado, de Juan García Ponce: El texto dramático como
una propuesta de teatro total. Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea 3.8
(May–August): 80–84.
Spires, Robert. 1984. Beyond the Metafictional Mode: Directions in the Modern Spanish Novel.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Weir, Allison. 1996. Sacrificial Logic: Feminist Theory and the Critique of Identity. New York and
London: Routledge.
Staging Identit y through Ar t82 ●