You each will summarize 1-2 pages of the text in the comment section below. The breakdown is as follows:
Dixon Anderson - page 53 from 'The Subject..' to 55 'cybernetic capabilities'
Lindsay Bird - 53 from 'The oddity' to 57 'Morris's ornament'
Jonathan Chun - 57 from 'By this stage' to 58 'Craft or Technology'
Ari Citron - 58 from "A suit of Armor' to 60 "machine body'
Charlene - 61 from 'To find an equivalent' to 64 "modelled elements'
Rene Garcia - 64 from 'In looking' to 64 'land forces'
Galen Herbst de Cortina - 64 from 'Throughout' to 66 'Excluded'
Douglas Hom - 66 from 'The psychic alternatives' to 70 'the skin'
Yunica - 70 from 'We can look' to 72 'torn loose'
Karen Molina - 72 from 'In The Rock of Doom' to 74 'woman's form"
Thi Nguyen - 74 from 'what can we conclude' to 76 'fail altogether'
Ryan Roschke - 76 from 'The discussions' to 77 'as effete'.
Molly Sandick - 77 from 'The amalgamation' to 79 'portion of his body'
Sisi Shan - 79 from 'The timeframe' to 82 'slippery process'
Andrew Shu - from 82 'The extreme' to 83 'the sandals'
David Tang - from 83 'Burne-Jones's historicism' to 84 '1895'
Carmen Plascencia - from 84 'When Wells's' to 84 'own artwork
Gina Su - from 84 'Burne-Jones' to 85 'time travel'
By now you should have all read the article to make sure that you understand how your section fits into the argument and how it connects to previous and following paragraphs. Look up any words or terms you don't know. Some of the passages are really tricky and hard, and I don't expect you to know certain things, but I want you to do your best to really try to figure out what is being stated and argued or described in your particular passage. It will be a little like "exquisite corpses".
Your explanation should be no shorter than 250 words and no longer than 400 words.
Leave your response in the "Comments" section, (accompanied by enough of your name to identify yourself to me) before 12:30pm Tuesday, 17 November 2009.
Dixon Anderson
In this article about the Burnes-Jones Perseus Series, the author argues that his depitction of armour and metal in his paintings is focused on the connection between the human body and its metal covering, rather than the opposition of the two substances. He also explains that his paintings of Perseus are a study in the battle between asthetic fixed nature of its figures and the threat of their explosion into violent, sexualized action. In particular, he points to the pasted-on qualities of the people in the paintings. The distinct outlines and strong shading of figures compared to that of the background gives them the quality of appearing raised off the surface of the painting. The author argues that this adds to their separation from the scene and their frozen appearance. He also analyzes the strangely bodily qualities of Perseus' armor. He explains that in his earlier paintings his obsession with knights and their armour was shown by the skin-like, living qualities of the armour. He points to the contours of the armour to the knights body, the leather-like feathery pieces of the armour's plates and the red undersides of the armour. To further Burnes-Jones examination of the importance of metal the author points to his painting of The Merciful Knight and explains the positioning of Jesus and, in particular, the nail sticking out of his head, which is tipped with a bright star. Beyond the focus on metal in Burnes-Jones paintings, the author suggests that the artist is also interested in the transition of other materials, such as the wood of the crucifix in The Merciful Knight, into the body and skin of Jesus.
Lindsay Bird
Critics of The Broadstone of Honor were skeptical about the way Burne-Jones repesented the people's faces in the painting. They argue that the expressions and composition are consistent with medieval art that focuses more on beauty than accuracy. Even Burne-Jones's friend Edward Clifford was not comfortable with the way the artist depicted the scene noting that it was "odd". Despite critic's distaste for the painting's percision, they did find them beautiful.
Burne-Jones sought to create a ten painting series telling the story of Perseus, though only four were finsihed. The series was aimed at chronoligically depicting Perseus's journey as he and Minerva set out to slay Medusa. The four completed paintings are joined by two unfinished canvases at Stuttgart while ten watercolor images hang in the Southampson City Art Gallery. A series of cartoon drawings at Tate tell a slightly different story of Perseus that developed into the canvases as they are now. They also make use of William Morris's acanthus border design that were supposed to link all of the final canvases together.
Jonathan Chun
Burne Jones had mastered drawn the human body by the time he took the Perseus commission. He demonstrated such mastery by making many sketches to figure out how he wanted to compose each scene. Some of these sketches are on display in museums. Burne Jones also did an extensive study on armor, researching armor in the British Museum and sketched pieces from the Coutts Lindsay collection of armor. From this study he conceived his own idea of armor and asked his family to help him make 3-D models of it. His armor ideas strived to not be associated with any particular time period. Rather they were an amalgamation of disparate materials which as it turns out is helpful in forming an analogy for Burne Jones’ concept of a body in action. Specifically this concept posits the idea that a body in action is not a single pure crystal but actually several different things grafted together with technology. In relation to the previous paragraph this paragraph continues with the preparatory aspects Jones’ took upon accepting the Perseus commission. This paragraph sets up the next paragraph for a discussion of the many different materials and composite nature of armor and its relation to robots and cyborg. This paragraph describes how Burne Jones was already an expert in the human form and with his studies of armor he noted their composite nature. To the mix of materials in armor he added flesh and thus created this skin tight feathery armor we see in The Baleful Head. This armor of skin is explained in the author’s discussion of a pathological condition where the skin becomes the location of fantasy in narcissism. In narcissism the skin doubles and provides the narcissistic personality a false sense of invulnerability just like the thin gap ridden armor provides against a raging sea monster.
Ari Citron
In my section of the article, Caroline Arscott touches upon a “suit of armour” and what the true meaning behind it is. She states that when the suit of armour stands by itself it acts as a body double, like a “life-size puppet or robot.” Once a man puts on the armour then the figure can become many more possibilities, like a fictional or hypothetical person whose physical capabilities are much more than the normal human. She relates this form of a man to that of a splendid machine, in that one is able to fine tone the machine “and make as many knobs and joints and muscles about him” as one whishes. This body is made in terms of a man who is ready for war, having the presentation of a “hard, smooth and muscled” body. This male type of armour also exaggerates the male, emphasizing masculine traits of the body. The shield emphasizes the need to fight, by creating a body that can withstand anything. The shield also protects against castration, something that would take away a man’s dignity. Introduced to the reading is a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger that is muscular and masculine. The picture is dark, exposes his muscles and violence. The author states how this picture represents the pervasiveness of the hyper-male body in modern American culture. This is our modern day “machine body” which is very similar to the past suit of armour used in war.
Charlene
Perseus is equivalent to the modern representation of a “machine-like” body of Shwarzenegger. In Perseus the Gorgon Slayer by W.J. Gordon, T.R. Spence illustrates Perseus as an adolescent. His figure is slender and not heavily built. However, the text promises the reader that Perseus will grow in strength and will posses characteristics of a champion: sturdy, truthful, brave, and bright.
Perseus’ strength is reflective of his accomplishments. Throughout the journey of Perseus, his appearance became more mighty as he defeats Medusa and the monster that threatened Andromeda. He is provided with tools that allows him to become more powerful. Athena gave Perseus a sword and a mirror to defeat Medusa and the sea nymphs gave him the helmet of invisibility, winged sandals, and a special pouch to hold Medusa's head. The equipment provided by Athena and the sea nymphs intensifies Perseus' strength and ability. Although Perseus is fully armored, his presence is not showing a combative and militaristic force. His armor is integrated to his figure and appears like a natural extension of his body. Burne-Jones depicts his heroes differently than the typical imperial hero with impregnable armors. He provides his heroes with an external protection that doesn't seem impregnable. The armor can be damaged and repaired and is flexible for daily use. Burne-Jones' depiction of the armor is beautified, removing its intended purpose. Burne-Jones focuses more on "pictorial space and setting and greater integration of the painting and modelled elements"(64). When the viewer looks at the painting, there is no indication of the armor’s usage, but rather the armor seems to only serve as an ornamentation of the body. He separates the idea of vision and touch. However, the viewer has to go beyond vision, and realize how the armor would feel if touched.
Rene Garcia
One’s understanding of Burne-Jones’s representation of the armored-body should expand beyond the observations of Theweleit; armors are more than representations of shields “against the troubling flow of internal desire, or of extend threats, or the filth associated with women.” Rather, armors can also be viewed in terms of its relation to war. The author states that “as long as armors serve a practical function, its development was governed by technological considerations and not fashion.” The author emphasizes Charles Boutell’s observations that the development and change of the armor as a practical function in war was dependent on the improvements of the offensive war arms. Furthermore, as the development of offensive arms increasingly improved to become weapons too powerful to rely solely on arms men and women could wear, so did the development of the defensive armor. Body armors ceased to become simple extensions of someone’s body, or as the author states: armors expanded beyond what “men are able to wear and endure,” but rather became a matching power of the offensive arms to protect against the fire power of new artillery equipment; such new innovations in destructive war machines and artillery spurred the development of a new subset of armors that expanded beyond the extensions of someone’s body; these new set of armors have come to include shielded armor vessels in sea and land. In essence, we are made aware that an armor is dynamic, constantly changing, made of multiple parts in order to suit different needs of protection, and is always the focus of intense technological effort and political attention.
Galen Herbst de Cortina
In my section of the reading, pages 64 to 66 from “throughout” to “excluded” Caroline Arscott describes Perseus’s armor in the painting The Baleful Head by Edward Burnes-Jones, 1866-1867. Previously Arscott described the function of armor throughout history, and explained that armor had been an important tool of war, a tool locked in a perennial arms race with offensive weaponry. Arscott informs the reader that armor had always been a symbol of masculinity, a second body and hard casing meant to match a well muscled body. She then goes on to contrast that ideal with how Burnes-Jones portrays Perseus’s armor. Arscott notes that Persues’s armor seems to be an amalgamation of many types of armor, potentially incorporating plate metal, chain armor, leather, and even linens. The armor has many gaps around the joints and seems to be either poorly designed or designed for maximum agility instead of defense. Arscott contrasts Perseus’s flimsy armor and his slight frame with the extremely solid background of the painting. The apple tree occupies much of the background and there is no space between the characters due to the three faces overlapping one another. Arscott points out that the initial criticism of the painting was how the painting was “claustrophobic” and that “air was excluded”.
Douglas Hom
Many people represent the Perseus myth with a focus on castration or fetishism. For example, in Freud’s essay on fetishism, he mentions the phallic dreadlocks on Medusa’s head and her stiffening gaze. The myth has also been interpreted as saving civilization from impending doom. Athena’s shield helps Perseus fend off Medusa’s gaze, and it represents a state of order. Similarly, the picture plane in The Baleful Head “protects” the viewer from her petrifying gaze. Thus, the Perseus myth can also be viewed as a struggle between civilized order and deadly chaos.
Burne-Jones, however, does not put much emphasis on Athena’s shield, but rather on Perseus’s sword and the other gifts. All of these objects are kept near his body, but are weakly held together, much like his metal armor. The physical armor, according to Theweleit, can be a metaphor for the ego. Anzieu, in The Skin Ego, studies the skin as a shield for the psyche. The skin has two “layers”, the external, protective layer, and the internal, vulnerable layer. Some psychological problems arise from confusion between these layers. For example, in narcissism, the person pretends that the two layers exist as a single impenetrable skin, which leads to vanity and an overblown ego. In contrast, masochism is the destruction of the skin.
Burne-Jones’s The Baleful Head examines the connection between the metal armor (representing the outer layer) and the soft skin. His depiction of Perseus wearing an organic-looking armor suggests that the two layers fused together to produce an invulnerable hero. However, the fragility and brokenness in the armor pieces seem to point in the other direction. He combines both of these elements in his painting.
Yunica
Caroline Arscott discusses how Perseus is depicted in the painting The Rock of Doom and The Doom Fulfilled by focusing on Perseus's armor. The metal of the leg guards have roughly hacked edges, such that the whole armor seems to have elasticity and stretchiness like lead, silver or tin does rather than iron or steel, and to form a layer and hug over the body. The wallet containing Medusa’s head that Perseus carries has clearly been cut with a knife and seems to be all-leather or partly cloth, but when it shields the Gorgon's head, it also appears to be hardened like a breastplate. The comparison between the armor and the wallet leaves the viewer uncertainty about which is, or was, the top layer, that the dark mounds and segments of the armor present to us the overlapping muscle pads of a more fully anatomized specimen. These paintings are depiction of a heroic male of strength and bravery. The armors serves as defense against internal desire or external threats. In The Rock of Doom and The Doom Fulfilled, the armor and the wallet appears to be flexible in hardness. The armor can either be as hard as steel or as soft as silver. This kind of flexibility convinces us the armor is not just an appendage on the surface of the male body, but rather a part of the body. The armor is like the skin over the body and Perseus is presented as the subcutaneous muscle.
Karen Molina
In the section from page 72 from 'In The Rock of Doom' to page 74 'woman's form,’ Arscott mainly describes the how Perseus and Andromeda’s body are reconfigurable in “The Rock of Doom,” “The Death of Medusa,” and “The Doom Fufilled.” According to Arscott, Perseus’ armor is very tight against his skin, almost like his armor is his own flesh. Because of this, his armor has a quality of elasticity and can be reconfigured.
Also, Arscott makes a reference to Andromeda, Perseus, and the serpent as layers of the skin and body. Andromeda is the intact skin, Perseus is the subcutaneous muscle, and the serpent is the viscera and organs. This is characteristic of Burne-Jones’ imagination and how he was able to paint Perseus and Andromeda the way he did.
In the two paintings, Andromeda is painted to be “seamless.” Arscott argues that Andromeda’s body is reconfigurable and that her “seamlessness” attributes to her internal power of the characterization of women as a flow of desire for men. In “The Death of Medusa,” Andromeda’s torso is twisted, but the viewer does not see the same fractures like the armor or Perseus because her skin is flexible. Andromeda’s type of reconfiguration contrasts Perseus’ reconfiguration.
There was also a dilemma over the woman form and armor. It was said by William Morris that a woman’s body can be found in a man’s armor. Breastplates of men’s armor looked like they were made for women. The motif behind this is that women are reconfigurable through metal, and through flesh.
In all paintings, Arscott argues that the overall idea in the paintings is reconfiguration. There is a difference between the reconfiguration between man and woman. For men, mainly Perseus, reconfiguration is seen through armor. For women, like Andromeda, reconfiguration is seen through the rearrangement of the woman fleshy body.
Thi Nguyen - 74 from 'what can we conclude' to 76 'fail altogether'
Ryan Roschke
Caroline Arscott begins this passage by identifying each metal's possession of a unique hardness, malleability, ductility, toughness, etc. Arscott then describes different tests conducted on these metals, such as the ability of a projectile to puncture or crack any single metal. These tests varied differently based on the metal used for the armor and how the armor was constructed. In the 1860s, armor was made by sandwiching wood between two plates of metal, usually wrought iron. This was considered soft armor compared to the armor later made with steel plates, called hard armor.
According to Arscott, it is also worth noting that the speed, rotation, lightness of figure is just as important as impenetrability. However, in the present day, armor such as this does not project the heroic masculinity it used to. As armor grew more obsolete in the modern culture, Arscott states that "the metaphors and adjectives that are applied to the new guns and projectiles can indeed be used to summon up a hero's body for the modern day. The armed body that is intimated in this writing is composite, complex, fragile, [and] possibly dead in its effectiveness" (77). In this quote Arscott shows how the heroic figure never dies, but modes to describe it do. In this instance, the heroic figure can no longer be applied to an armored person, but instead a gun used by a powerful, masculine figure in warfare.
At the end of this section, Arscott talks about Armstrong's description of these weapons as delicate, and an anonymous commentator's assertion that these descriptions aren't accurate at all because it is "the most beautiful thing" (77).
Molly Sandick
This section starts off by explaining the technique by Edward Burne-Jones made the armor appear metallic. This technique is called gesso and involves applying plaster directly to the wooden surface and the gilded. Burne-Jones also used to gesso technique in other works of art for things like acanthus leaves. This technique makes it appear as though the armor is fused with Perseus’ skin. A satirist compared the aesthetic of the technique to that of contemporary toy theatre characters to which children could affix tinsel and sequins. Arscott draws lots of parallels between the toy theatre characters, real actor, she image in the painting and the substance of the painting itself. The next part is about how even flimsy toy artillery or armor are still involve a skill of assembly. The writer continues to make parallels between the hero’s body, armor and artillery; however these metaphors are often convoluted. Weapons can tear apart flesh in the same ways that they tear apart buildings and ships. The mechanism of function of a gun is not so different than that of the person or object which it is destroying. An equilibrium exists; the gun is a body already pierced by a bullet, it then expels this bullet so another body can take the bullet in. The gun is preemptively scarred by the bullets. Arscott asserts that this is like the cyborg in the Terminator because he has to cut through-destroy- his flesh in order to repair his mechanic parts. The terminator is pieced together and torn apart in the same way that the relationship between man and artillery involves a constant piecing together and tearing apart on both side. Thus weapons are an extension of us.
Sisi Shan
There is an idea or theme of a body that is pieced together. In the previous passage, Arscott discusses the idea of metals bending, contorting, and being pieced together to function as a whole, specifically through the example of a gun. However, if the metal pieces were to malfunction, they would fly apart disastrously. This idea is also explored in the nineteenth-century culture. The body is compared to the gun; there is a reversed process of coming apart, instead the body includes torn fragments that are reassembled, which makes the soldier not an unspoiled living body but a dead-alive body. If we look at the Perseus series by Burne-Jones, we can notice that the series is made up of many parts that conform to the idea of a reassembled body. The surface of the painting is literally built up of distinct segments. Philip Burne-Jones reveals that his father would lump up brighter portions of the painting first, patting it on and ragging it over to completely cover the warp and woof of the canvas to form very physical surfaces that would be dried before final glazes were applied. The finished product gives the viewer a sense of the constructional emphasis in building up substance in the picture. Burne-Jones even contemplated placing thin sheets of metal onto the canvas to represent armour and be painted over, though the idea was not successful. Burne Jones incpororated metallic paint in his paintings to accent some parts of the surface. Not only would the just the soldier be dead-alive, but the picture itself would be grafted together. A passage from Georgiana Burne-Jonse’s Memorials records Burne-Jones’s sorry over the surface of his oil paint in 1873 when he was painting Merlin and Nimue. He explained to his patron that he would have to start the painting again after finding out paint was flaking off in patches. Burne-Jones incorporates the theme of a secured body into many of his paintings, primarily with armor. The coming apart of the paint is analogous to the disintegration of the humane body, particularly his own. He discusses the building of a body, from bones to flesh, from flesh to skin, from skin to another skin. After the correct procedural building of this body, he would comb its hair and send it off in the world. If the order is reversed, the outcome would not be wanted.
Andrew Shu
The passage begins at the end of a description of how Burne-Jones paid a great deal of attention to the surface of his painting. In particular, he paid attention to how well the materials attach to the canvas, and how the materials represent the varying textures he is interested in. After realizing the painting would not last, he "constructed [the] replica painstakingly, this time in oil paint which would be more robust". The author then describes the wide political spectrum that Burne-Jones is connected to: The Perseus series is created for a key conservative (Arthur Balfour) who is responsible for rearming Britain for World War 1. And yet, around this same time, he also collaborated with those at the liberal opposite to Arthur. Then finally, he describes the ways the winged sandals and helmet of invisibility are portrayed in an unconventional manner which makes this this series an unconventional historical series. The passage was basically at a transition point between two sections: the first associates the interest in powerful modern military tools that were prevalent in his time period with the sort of fantastic variety of textures found surrounding Perseus' gear. He discusses his experimental techniques in different painting medium. The beginning of the passage supports this claim that he is interested in material and texture by describing his distress at the disentigrating paint. Then, he briefly discusses political influence. His final paragraph goes on to describe how his portrayal of textures and other techniques introduce the concept of time travel in his historical paintings.
David Tang
The previous paragraph mentions how Burne-Jones’s art takes the viewer into the mythic past. His style was a form of time travel, and the author uses the first two films of the Terminator series as a way to help compare and explain Burne-Jones’s artwork. “The film dramatizes the distinction between the Schwarzenegger android, the T-800 who works mechanically, and the T-1,000 which works digitally” (83). This is highly reminiscent of some of the ideas presented earlier, with the new weapons and guns coming in. Arscott continues the comparisons to the guns and the artwork by talking about how “Schwarzenegger can be disassembled and repaired or modified, like a puppet, but the T-1,000 can be reconfigure electronically like a piece of computer graphics”. Earlier the author mentioned that the many new parts to a gun were related to how Burne-Jones painted the parts of Perseus’s armor. Then, Arscott continues by paralleling the two androids to Perseus and Andromeda. Perseus and Andromeda also represent the current state of technology at that time. Perseus represents more of the current technologies, and he is perhaps a bit like the T-800. Andromeda, on the other hand, represents the shift that electrical power and electronics will soon bring. Again, the author mentions guns and other arms by informing the reader that “William Armstrong, the arms manufacturer, was the first individual to install hydroelectric power in his house”. He also “set up a hydroelectric system to run an arc light”, where he connected up a “mechanical, water-driven system to an electrical one”. The union of these two is like putting together Perseus, Andromeda, and the monster together. The paragraph then transitions by introducing H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, which would fully allow the viewers to view the picture as traveling through time.
Carmen Plascencia - from 84 'When Wells's' to 84 'own artwork
Gina Su
Burne-Jones's is praised for his mastery at creating intricate detail, especially in armor and bodily contour. Though he is able to depict a body in action fairly accurately, Burne-Jones's work also tells a story with an "unfamiliar version of narrative."
For example, Burne-Jones would work while in the presence of being told a story by his studio assistance Thomas Rooke. However, Burne-Jones would not require him to read directly from a book, but instead requires Rooke to tell the story as he remembered. In this fashion, Burne-Jones would receive an "imperfect form of recollection" which he then renders in his work. This technique enables Burne-Jones to mirror the natural process of story telling which includes a distortion of interpretations over time. Similar to the children's game "telephone," Burne-Jones' finished artwork is a collaboration of the past and the present.
Burne-Jones’ creative process closely resembles the novel, “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells, in that time and space exist in conjunction. The main character in the story stays within a small area in space, but travels to great lengths in time. In his painting, The Doom Fulfilled, Perseus is frozen delicately in space and time, though what happens before or after is based on the viewer.
Burne-Jones’ received much criticism on his painting, The Doom Fulfilled, for its lack of representation of violence and action. However, others argue that the painting is more of an ode to detail, craftsmanship, and an overall decorative aesthetic vision.
With his unrealistic depiction of intense action, Burne-Jones creates a "cybernetic fantasy" that allows viewers to appreciate separate elements, such as, counter f the bodies, the scene of a story, and of course, the beauty of decorative ornaments in the hero's armor.
