The first activity I did this semester was go to the Frick Collection on the Upper East Side. It is a museum with lots of art from a number of generations from a vast array of cultures. There are multiple rooms that have different themes that are made to evoke different emotions in people as they make their way around. I found that my visit to The Frick Collection helped me most with gaining better techniques to implement into my writing in English class. The way that the paintings’ portrayal of those depicted in them are definitely very different from the people that they were in life. By utilizing certain colors and designs in the decor, they could make the subjects of the paintings seem nicer or more serious. The same can be applied to the creation of a character in a story or a personal essay. Words with certain connotations can be used to create subtext and depth within the traits of a character or the overall piece, much like the museum did with its paintings.
The Frick Collection also gave me a new perspective and inspiration for not only my future art projects but writing as well. The museum also incorporated personal possessions of infamous global figures from a variety of different eras, such as Marie Antoinette. This further helped to humanize her as through film and book portrayals of her, she has become a mystical character to most. This same thing tends to happen in writing. The genre of personal essay, which we’re studying, emphasizes greatly on the identity of a character and what humanizes them. Although I can’t make artifacts for fictional characters, this helped me realize that by mixing in a different type of art the museum had in turn added a sort of anecdote to Marie Antoinette’s exhibition. I could use this to my advantage in my own writing by adding tiny anecdotes to humanize my fictional characters.