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tolkienekphrasisweekMandatory Art Form Prompt
Day 4 presents another new theme: tattooing, piercing, and other forms of body art. This is a broad and comprehensive umbrella category which spans from festival face-painting through ritual scarification to discreet earlobe piercings and avant-garde performance art in the style of Marina Abramović. Bodily adornment is central to culture and can be deeply normative or deeply deviant. Using the physical self as the proverbial canvas brings to mind themes of embodiment, control, individuality and conformity, and, of course, whether or not the Noldor would have invented vajazzling.
Optional Writing Method Theme
Today’s choice of method is collaborative authorship. Consider reaching out to a friend or stranger and writing together.
Optional Art Method Theme
Today’s optional artistic technique is illusionistic/trompe l’oeil. This is art that fools the eye: realistic enough for an observer to mistake what they are seeing for the real thing, in the case of trompe l’oeil, or perhaps simply trickery, in the case of other artistic illusions.
Optional Pain Theme
Your added pain for Day 4 is the fact that Art is Made in a Society. For that matter, it's Interpreted in a Society too. Sometimes, society's reasons for making and interpreting art are malicious, repressive, or authoritarian. One thinks of Fascist architecture, American anti-Japanese propaganda posters from WWII, and Bourbon Spain's racist and racializing casta paintings. Art is made for reasons, and sometimes those reasons are not freedom, beauty, and responsibility.
Optional Joy Theme
“Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech.‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.”
This quote, one of my favorite from LOTR, possesses many valences, including religious-redemptive and destiny-progression, but I appreciate it for its argument about the potential mutuality between human-made art and nature. That seems like a good theme for today, which is all about taking our bodies as we find them and making alteration for beauty, comfort, belonging, and agency.
Some examples for your inspiration.
Day 4 presents another new theme: tattooing, piercing, and other forms of body art. This is a broad and comprehensive umbrella category which spans from festival face-painting through ritual scarification to discreet earlobe piercings and avant-garde performance art in the style of Marina Abramović. Bodily adornment is central to culture and can be deeply normative or deeply deviant. Using the physical self as the proverbial canvas brings to mind themes of embodiment, control, individuality and conformity, and, of course, whether or not the Noldor would have invented vajazzling.
Optional Writing Method Theme
Today’s choice of method is collaborative authorship. Consider reaching out to a friend or stranger and writing together.
Optional Art Method Theme
Today’s optional artistic technique is illusionistic/trompe l’oeil. This is art that fools the eye: realistic enough for an observer to mistake what they are seeing for the real thing, in the case of trompe l’oeil, or perhaps simply trickery, in the case of other artistic illusions.
Optional Pain Theme
Your added pain for Day 4 is the fact that Art is Made in a Society. For that matter, it's Interpreted in a Society too. Sometimes, society's reasons for making and interpreting art are malicious, repressive, or authoritarian. One thinks of Fascist architecture, American anti-Japanese propaganda posters from WWII, and Bourbon Spain's racist and racializing casta paintings. Art is made for reasons, and sometimes those reasons are not freedom, beauty, and responsibility.
Optional Joy Theme
“Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech.‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.”
This quote, one of my favorite from LOTR, possesses many valences, including religious-redemptive and destiny-progression, but I appreciate it for its argument about the potential mutuality between human-made art and nature. That seems like a good theme for today, which is all about taking our bodies as we find them and making alteration for beauty, comfort, belonging, and agency.
Some examples for your inspiration.
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