Currently, the entire top floor of the MoMA is dedicated to the works of art created by an artist of the 20^th century, Francis Picabia. Picabia is a fascinating artist whose style throughout his many years of painting ranges from Impressionism to photo-realism to cubism to Dadaism to abstraction. As you walk from room to room on the 6^th floor of the MoMA, you pass through different displays of each of his styles of painting.

One of my favorite styles was his abstraction paintings. Particularly, the I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie painting attached to this post. As I read the sign next to the painting, which states its name and a little background information, I learned that there was a story behind this painting. The painting was inspired by a professional Polish dancer that Picabia met abroad a ship on his way to New York. She brought him about to watch her performances in NY, which were so highly provocative at the time that she had gotten arrested. Leaving such an impression on him, he composed several paintings inspired by this woman for nearly two years after. This abstract painting shows some greyish and brown tones with light yellow and pinkish-red tones and figures in the center representing the woman. There also seems to be almost like a figure on the bottom left grasping the “woman.” Maybe the figure representing Picabia? This painting is not only fascinating, but relates to our consistent class theme of human connection. Through this painting, Picabia is creating a visual of the feelings, sensations, and connection he felt towards this promiscuous woman.

Sigmund Freud, a famous and controversial psychologist, had fascinating ideas on the mechanisms of family relations. He referred to the mix of these subconscious and suppressed fantasies between family members as the “family romance.” Freud states that, as children, we put our parents on a pedestal; they are the best, the smartest, and we want to be just like them when we grow up (leaning towards the parent of the same sex as us). We are highly dependent and attached to our parents as children. As we hit puberty, Freud believes that we begin to resent the parent of the same sex as us as we begin to subconsciously fall in love with the parent of the opposite sex as us; we want to get rid of and take the place of the parent of the same sex. As we get yet older, we have compared our parents to others and have realized that they may not be as perfect as we had previously thought.

In William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” Startoris’ relationship with his father displays many of the concepts composing Freud’s “Family Romance.” Startoris is a young boy who throughout most of the story is completely devoted to his father, Snopes, as Freud would have predicted. Although Snopes has done many destructive acts, Startoris still supports and defends his father as much as he possibly can. Statoris shows his support for his father as he states about his father’s enemy that he is “our enemy … ourn! mine and hisn both! He’s my father!” Ultimately, however, at the end of the story, when Snopes attempts to burn down another barn, Stratoris sees that his father isn’t the best person (parallel to Freuds beliefs) and actually rats on him, getting Snopes killed.

Ema said she was leaving. For, unlike her parents, she had to be at school bright and early that morning. She slipped on her shoes and walked out the heavy front door. She walked timidly and swiftly through the halls of her building, on her way to the subway.

How grown and mature she has become, Olivia Marcus thought of her; a quiet yet friendly young woman of the age of nineteen, with a touch of elegance in her stride. For having lived in the building – how many years now? About fifteen – her growth is always taken by surprise and shock to her neighbors, who remember her as the little kindergartner she was when she first moved there.

“Hi, how are you?” Olivia asked. Mindlessly, Ema smiled and nodded hello and resumed her walk to the train station. Was she going to make it in time? She covered the two block distance to the train station in no time. As she swiped her metrocard and passed through the turnstile a train approached the platform. What a delight! How perfect! It was only on rare occasions that Ema, or really any of her fellow commuters, did not have to wait at least 10 minutes for the R train, the most dreadfully running train line of the entire subway system. She took a seat and pulled out the book she was currently reading for English class, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and idly read it until she arrived at her stop: 23^rd street. Just in time.

A creation is a reflection of the creator’s image. “The Tyger” by William Blake delineates how such a creator or God would design a beast with physically hidden and hideous traits of aggression and wrath. The first and last stanzas within the poem describe the bright orange skin largely covering the animal’s body. Seeing it during the night within a jungle would strike immediate fear into a person’s eyes and hearts, and the poet clearly states this fear in the third stanza. Why would a supernatural entity or intellectual creator conjure up a beast such as the tiger? This question is inextricably linked with why Victor Frankenstein creates “the Creature” in the story. Both the creature and the tiger share common traits of exhibiting neural trepidation of death due to their menacing looks. The creature is also easily conspicuous such as the tiger’s brightness since they are both considered dangerous living things and when seen strike adrenaline alert. Victor’s creation of a hideous creature can be akin to why God would also design a jungle animal that slaughters preys on sight, it is this terror explained in the fourth stanza that Blake continually questions as to why God created this animal. Both living things are complexly designed by their own creators and indicate creation as an art of designing feet, hearts, hands, and shoulders. The outcome of the creature to be good or bad does not matter. The process of just creating something is itself an art.

Although towards the end of the novel Frankenstein’s creature becomes violent and dangerous as the tiger, in the beginning, and even at the very end, the Creature can be seen as most resembling William Blake’s lamb. Blake states that the lamb is “called by his [creator’s] name” and, therefore, can be seen as sharing its creator’s characteristics for both are “meek” and “mild.”  At the beginning of the Creature’s life, he too is for a while meek and mild. He is brought into a new and unknown world and abandoned. This forced the Creature to explore and discover the world on his own. In doing so, he came across a little shack attached to a family’s cottage. In that shack, he took shelter for several months. He found a little hole in which he can watch and observe the family on who’s property he was unknowingly staying on. He watched the family interact with, care for, and love each other, and this aroused many positive emotions in the Creature. He was feeling happy and compassionate and longed to be a part of such a loving environment.  He came to care for this family, who did not even know that he existed, so much that he began to do some of their chores at night in order to surprise and delight them in the mornings. Even after his later violent episodes the Creature still resembled the lamb, for when Frankenstein had passed away on the ship the Creature confessed to Walton that he felt bad for what he had done to Frankenstein, but that all he ever wanted was to be accepted, loved, and happy.

The sublime is something that evokes great emotion. In class, we discussed several different interpretations of the sublime. One in which the sublime is described as something that evokes both terror and the sense of beauty. Another in which the sublime is something that elicits great questioning within us without the yearning for fact or reason (also known as negative capability). The sublime, however you may personally interpret it, is all around us.

If we look at the picture I have attached, we will see my father crouching before the ocean on a trip to Fire Island in mid-January; one of many trips we take on those long, non-eventful weekends.  In this picture, he is a small, dark creature faced with the vastness of the sea and of the sky. What formed the waves tumbling towards him? How did this enormous mass of water get there? How can a sun so far away heat our tiny planet? How do we have the capacity to see all this? To think? Those are some of the questions that the open ocean and the bright sky of this photo may stimulate. We spent nearly an hour on this beach, my parents and I, staring out to the ocean, watching the waves roll in and out, and in silence, each deep in their own thoughts. Soon after, with no new answers or knowledge, we all walked away, resuming our regular lives. None of us having expected to learn anything new, we left content in allowing our minds to ramble and absorbing the moment. The sublime, in this photo, is generated as John Keat’s idea of negative capability.

The Enlightenment Period is one in which people began to think outside of the bounds of the bible and religion. God was beginning to be thought of as more of a watcher from above of the complex world he created, rather than an active engager and controller of this world. Descartes’ famous phrase “cogito ergo sum” translates to “I think therefore I am,” and emphasizes the idea that many philosophers had developed: we are beings who are capable of thinking and making moral decisions on our own; we are guided by reason rather than the hand of God.

“I think therefore I am” is a phrase condensing the idea that because we can form thoughts about ourselves and our surroundings, the known and the unknown, we are conscious and self-aware beings. This was an important discovery because, since each human being held and practiced the ability to think, it put us all on a relatively equal ground; no one was above anyone else. Royalty no longer held a deity status and the application of gender roles and of racial status was to be seen as a suppression of one’s right to think and be as all other humans. Revolutions broke out during this period in which those in power, such as Kings, were slaughtered or overthrown. Due to the engagement of thought and a certain level of open-mindedness among people brought about by the Enlightenment Period, women and people of different races have been able to advance in society.