Hello All,
Today will be a group blog done in class.
First, view Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz's photography.
Then, in groups of two or three, analyze one photograph.
What is the theme/message of this artwork?
How do the artists use symbols/archetypes to convey this theme/message?
Your response must use three different quotes from Ariadne's Clue:
1. simple introduction
2. independent clause: quote
3. fragments of the quote in your own sentence
Traveler 155
ReplyDeleteThe artists Martin and Muños use the symbols/ archetypes of connecting hands and the color white to convey the theme of love. The photograph includes two figures of a male and female, who are both surrounded by snow. The female figure is standing off a cliff, holding on to the male figure who is upside down, floating in the air. According to Stevens, “as a species we are predisposed to form bond of attachment to crucial figures in our lives” (p. 48). We see this in the photograph, in which the people represented are a couple, because the female risking sacrifices to hang on to her significant other. The white of the snow symbolizes the beginning of the couple’s relationship and purity: “associated with…perfection and innocence… worn at weddings it represents death to the old single unmarried life and birth into the new” (p. 148). With them holding hands, it symbolizes their intentions to hold on to one another, which is the “brain manifests its intentions” (p. 407). In conclusion, the archetype of love is strongly seen in the couple’s profound love that cannot be obtained in their grasping of hands.
Vicky Aguirre
Rosio Sanchez
Cassie Marchman
The archetype in Walter Martin's and Paloma Munoz Traveler 78 at night is love, which is symbolized by the two people hugging on a cliff. According to Stevens(1998), "it is our capacity to form bonds of attachment and to display loyalty, affection, and alturism towards one antoher that makes it possible for us to love in cohesive, coioperative groups" (p. 48). Love is an aspect of life that everyone searches for and wants: "we have all been seeking to be reuinted with our 'other half', [... and] once the other half has been found, it follows that to lose her or him again is a recapitulation of the origional anguish of division, and a primordial longing to be reunited in rekindled in our hearts"(Stevens, 1998, p.49). Anthony Stevens(1998) argues that the "renewal of an attatchment bond" after being separated from one's partner "can be experienced as a source of profound joy"(p. 48). In the end, when someone finds love, it is a bond between two people that is virturally unbreakable.
ReplyDelete--Rachel Sterling, Timeshia Womack, Sara De La Torre
Brittany Stevens, Priscilla Caraballo, and Fatima Lucio
ReplyDeleteThe Walter Martin and Paluma Munoz snowglobe created in 2006 represents the theme of airing out your dirty laundry. The artists Martin and Munoz use the symbols/archetypes of the color white, a ladder and nudity to the convey the theme of repentence. In the picture of the snowglobe, the individual is experiecing repenting for his sins: "Paradoxically, white can be associated with death as well as life..." (Stevens 148). Also, within the globe the individual is climbing a latter that is attached to a tree. According to Stevens, a ladder symbolizes " an elevation of the spirit" (248). The individual standing on the ladder is naked and his or her clothes are hanging on the tree, making it seem as if he or she is shameful. Stevens writes, " Nudity may by associated with shame and embarrasssment or with feelings of being socially inept and inadequately prepared" (399). This photograph shows that an individual, who has repented, has cleansed his soul of all his sins and is able to get a fresh start again.
“Low Tide” by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz in 2008 illustrates opposing opposites in this piece of art, elevation. According to Stevens,“Vertical projections from the horizontal carry the eye upwards to the top” (Stevens 103). Here, there is a stack of rocks and a tree on top that extends even further upwards towards the sky. Also in this picture they are on a voyage of life and have encountered problems along the way: “A boat is a symbol of the body carrying the soul on its voyage through life” (Stevens 292). The clothes represent “social significance” and a “defining gender and status,” and through this picture, we see that they have lost these qualities (Stevens 397).
ReplyDelete***Joel Padron
***Tracy Slegers
***Sean Collier
The artist Martin and Munoz use the symbols/archetypes of the lonely, the journey, and the forest to convey the theme of a human's life in the portrait Cold Front. Every human being is ultimately a free standing individual who travels through the pathway of life not clearly knowing what's ahead. According to Stevens, "We still have to orientate ourselves to the physical environment, obey the archetypal imperative to explore our surroundings and construct inner cognitive maps; we have to assess lurking threats and dangers as well as to locate promising resources, and afterwards we have to find our way safely home again" (101). This is depicted in the picture's surrounding environment/ conditions in which the woman finds her self. Anthony Stevens argues that "the journey is the great allegory of life," which is depicted in this picture by having the woman "leaving the familiar past behind and progressing into the unknown future" (155). The woman in this picture is walking through the insensible forest trying to find her way home: "It is an appropriate synonym for the unconscious... Trees, like fishes in the water, represent the living content of the unconscious" (Stevens, 106). Overall, the use of archetypes of loneliness, journey, and the forest is a significant method of portraying the theme of the human life.
ReplyDelete~Kenneth Clark, Nicole Parker, Mustafa Tuysuzogle, Ali Zanial
Traveler 79 at Night
ReplyDeleteAccording to Stevens, “the oldest and most sophisticated division between masculine and feminine principles, conceived an everlasting struggle to achieve balance in relation to one another” (49). The marriage is struggling to balance their home during insecure hardships. A marriage is a guaranteed union, for when either person is in need of help, the other is there to support and maintain balance: “Home is the centre is ones existence, ones security, ones bolt hole: Home is the place where, when you have to go there/They have to take you in’ (Frost, qtd. in Stevens 153). The marriage symbolizes“ascent to a higher level spiritually, morally, socially, or consciously” in order to meet a resolution or peace in marriage (109).In order to reach this resolution, team work and determination is required.
Kari-lyn Doria
Sarina Flores
The overall theme or message of Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's artwork, Experiment with Red, is strength, power, and life. According to Anthony Stevens, author of Ariadne's Clue, "the power and uncontrollable violence of the bull made it a ready subject for hierophantic reverence, and it is not surprising that it became the sacred embodiment of these qualities" (354). From the artwork, Experiment with Red by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz, the presence of blood depicts the sacrifices one makes in their life: “to give one’s blood is the most significant sacrifice we can make” (402). Martin and Muñoz utilize the symbol of the tree in Experiment with Red to represent life’s “cycles of generation and regeneration” (379) to show our relationship with life and death.
ReplyDelete~Elvira Alvarez, Nancy Sanchez, Cindy Astorga
"Traveler 53 at Night"
ReplyDeleteThe theme of the image is to try to remain united even while facing death. The artists use a dancing couple to symbolize unity, while the cemetery symbolizes a place of death and grief. The dead tree in the foreground represents the cycle of life, death, and resurrection. Stevens states trees "symbolize the triumph of life over death" (Stevens, 380). The use of contrast between the colors of black and white symbolizes the contrast of life to death: black “symbolizes the ‘shadow’ aspect of the unconscious psyche” while white “represents birth into the new life beyond the grave” (Stevens 147-8). The relationship between the dancing couple is symbolic as Stevens argues for the “powerful social bonding” (416) that is exhibited subconsciously through dancing.
-Sergio Espain, Michael Adamson, Ricardo Razo
In Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz’s artwork “The Cliff,” they portray life coming to an end and the approach of a new beginning. The people in the piece of artwork are dancing on the cliff creating a “powerful social bonding effect,” according to (Stevens 416). As for other, they are jumping off the cliff ending their lives. Although death is upon them, they are celebrating a new life though a higher power. The sky in the artwork is the “residence of gods” and symbolizes the “heavens,” which indicates the people’s spiritual beliefs in life after death, which ultimately, explains their acceptance of death (Stevens 135). The idea of death is portrayed through the color black: “Black is universally associated with darkness, death, sickness, and evil” (Stevens 147). The artist Martin and Munoz use the symbolism of the color black, the sky, dancing, and suicide to explore one’s spiritual beliefs of life after death.
ReplyDeleteJenna Ortiz Cory Brown and Camila Ramirez
In the painting by the artists Walter Martin and Paloma use the symbols and archetypes of dancing, falling, and ocean to convey the theme of death and coping with death.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Stevens “Dancing mobilizes energy and produces transformation the dancer turns into god, demon, healer, hunter, warrior, preparing him for certain activities of crucial importance to the community” (416). The people dancing on the cliff are transforming from a human body to a spiritual being. The fall represents a human transformation: “Symbolically, it represents loss of social, spiritual, or moral status” (Stevens 418). Anthony Stevens claims that “Because they are so vast in comparison with the puny human frame, seas and oceans symbolize the primal undifferentiated state” (113), humans are born into chaos and after death experience communion with god, earth or the universe.
At the painting Cold Front, Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz draw a picture of an old woman walking far away in the snow. The artists use archetypes of forest, snow, and woman.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Jung "... the fairytale mentions the forest as the place of the magic happening." (106) The woman is walking through the dark forest in a hope of magic.
The contrast of white color of a snow and black color of the forest in the painting is crucial. White color represents "birth into the new life beyond the grave" (148), while black represents "darkness, death, sickness, and evil"(147). Probably the artists want to say that the woman does not know what is waiting for her at the end of the forest. It may be life or death.
_Nigina Boltaeva
"Traveler 78 @ Night
ReplyDeleteThe message in the artwork by Martin and Munoz, is that love is an archetype of a symbol of affection and loyalty. The message is that love is greater than anything in the world and that the couple is looking at the world ready to take it on because they are together. According to Anthony Stevens (1998), " The Oldest and most sophisticated division between masculine and feminine principles, conceived as an everlasting struggle to achieve balance in relation to one another...", this means that humans have a bond between one another which comes from religious believes of trust, loyalty, and affection towards relations between human beings.
Sarahi Veloz
The artist Martin and Munoz use the symbols/archetypes of white, the journey, and the bonding to convey the theme of a human's life in the portrait Cold Front. The holding of the couple’s hands to be united is a symbol of bonding. According Anthony Stevens (1998) he explains that the unity of hands has a symbolic relationship with bonding when he writes, The archetypal system involved in bonding between partners or parents and children from the crucial group of archetypes which govern the life of human beings and guarantee the survival of the species (p.316). Another archetype used was the color white in the snow. The white snow becomes a symbol when we invest it with significance: “Associated with the light, sun, air, holiness, perfection, and innocence” (Stevens, 1998, p.81). The unity of the couple can have a symbolic meaning of a passage. Anthony Stevens (1998) argues that “the symbolism of the way of transcendence” gives us access to “ the sacred, to higher states of consciousness transcending the pairs of opposites, the path of the Paradise Regained” (p.251)
ReplyDeleteRobert De Anda