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McCarthy, John

Page history last edited by Abigail Heiniger 9 years, 4 months ago

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JOHN MCCARTHY

CONTACT INFO: jmccarthy@ltu.edu

MAJOR: Architecture

 

 

JOURNALS:

 

MCCARTHY JOURNAL ONE

     1. Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale : My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon, 1986. Print.

               i. Summary: Goodreads Maus I: A Survivor's Tale : My Father Bleeds History summary.

     2. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Love in the Time of Cholera. New York: Vintage, 2007. Print.

               i. Summary: Bookrags Love in the Time of Cholera summary.

     3. Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. A Grain of Wheat. Rev. ed. London: Penguin Classics, 2012. Print.

               i. Summary: Bookrags A Grain of Wheat summary.

 

MCCARTHY JOURNAL TWO

 

 

One of the many pieces displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the American Art collection is Cotopaxi by Frederick Edwin Church. Cotopaxi, painted in 1862 during the height of the Civil War, depicts an Ecuadorean volcano erupting in the background. While the painting is not of a battle, it shows what people felt during the war. A river divides the land in half in the painting which can relate to how divided the nation was during that time. On the right side of the volcano, the sky is full of red and purple smoke. This can be associated with the smoke from fired canons and guns as well as how much blood was shed during the war. The setting sun in the background is slowly being covered by the smoke which can show that moral was low and that times were dark. If the volcano was not erupting, the Ecuadorian landscape looks like it would be a peaceful place. During the height of the Civil War, this is was most of the nation desired. 

 

MCCARTHY JOURNAL THREE

 

Color is the most noticeable element of visual rhetoric depicted in Cotopaxi. Upon viewing the painting, one’s eyes immediately gravitate towards the red and purple smoke flowing from the volcano in the background. As mentioned in Journal 2, Frederick Edwin Church utilized shades of red and purple to represent the blood shed during the Civil War. There is tension between the gloomy red smoke and the light blue sky behind it which symbolizes that life would be better for the nation without war. Usually, warm colors, such as red, are used to portray light and warmth. However, in this context those colors are presented to represent the darkness and horror of war time. The clouds are reflected in the body of water below which views more like a pool of blood. Church’s use of red plays such a significant role in Cotopaxi that if he had painted it in black and white instead, the piece would not be nearly as emotional. 

 

MCCARTHY JOURNAL FOUR

 

A topic that I am considering for the final paper is the representation of warfare in literature, specifically in Maus I & II, and art (Cotopaxi by Frederick Edwin Church.) How did the Holocaust affect the lives of Jewish survivors? How exactly is the Civil War represented in Cotopaxi and why is it that so effective? Also, how does the way Cotopaxi is displayed at the DIA affect the viewer and relate to war? 

 

MCCARTHY JOURNAL FIVE

 

Davis, John. "Frederic Church's "Sacred Geography." Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1.1 (1987): 78-96. JSTOR. The University of Chicago Press. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org>.

 

Niblett, Michael, and Kerstin Oloff, eds. Perspectives on the 'other America': Comparative Approaches to Caribbean and Latin American Culture. Illustrated ed. Vol. 60. Rodopi, 2009. 94-95. Print. 

 

Young, James. "The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman's "Maus" and the Afterimages of History." Critical Inquiry 24.3 (1998): 666-99. JSTOR. The University of Chicago Press. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.      <www.jstor.org>.

 

 

MCCARTHY JOURNAL SIX

The illustration and deflection of warfare in Maus I & II and Cotopaxi is as powerful as tales and artworks in which war is directly visually represented.

 

MCCARTHY JOURNAL SEVEN

 

In Maus, the Jewish people are depicted as mice while the Germans are cats. Similar to the cartoon Tom & Jerry where Tom is always chasing after Jerry and trying to get him, German Nazis hunted down Jews and exterminated them as if they were vermin ("Jerry" was actually slang for a German soldier and "Tommie" was slang for a British soldier. The "Tom & Jerry" cartoon, which debuted in 1939 as WWII began in Europe, has strong ethic/political implications. Just as the British won against the Germans in both World Wars, Tom always triumphs over Jerry in the cartoon. So... the cat/mouse metaphor already had symbolic significance when Spiegelman chose these cartoons.) . Art Spiegelman drew pictures of mice hiding in mouse holes to represent what the Jews were going through during their hiding. Art's father, Vladek had to get creative in his hiding places, like mice do, in order to not be found by the Nazis and be sent to concentration camps. At one point in the war, Vladek dug out the bottom of a coal container, placed a fake cover over it, and hid with his friends below. The drawing for the beginning of chapter six, is of Vladek and his wife, Anja, about to set off a mouse trap. Just when Vladek and Anja thought they were safe and on their way to Hungary, the Germans caught them and took them away to Auschwitz and Birkenau. The last two sentences seem to be disjunct.

 

Mostly, the mice's faces are completely visible and it helps understand the emotion that is expressed on their faces (except that their mouths are usually hidden). However, the German Nazis' faces are shadowed by their helmets and it is difficult to imagine what they are thinking or feeling. This is terrifying because it is hard to understand each of the Nazis motives (good visual analysis). Jews put their trust in the Nazis in exchange for things that they needed. Every single time, the Nazis betrayed the Jews and almost always killed those Jews when they thought they were safe. I don't understand these last two sentences.

 

MCCARTHY ROUGH DRAFT

ROUGH DRAFT.docx

McCarthy ROUGH DRAFT.docx

Comments (5)

Abigail Heiniger said

at 9:40 pm on Sep 3, 2014

Excellent titles and summaries.

Abigail Heiniger said

at 12:52 pm on Sep 12, 2014

I love this image! Nice commentary, too.

Abigail Heiniger said

at 8:36 pm on Oct 13, 2014

Cotopaxi is a great painting (I'm glad you saw it in person). And I really like the theme of warfare in Maus I&II and Cotopaxi. You may want to consider the way war is illustrated AND DEFLECTED in these artworks. For example, the eruption symbolizes the Civil War, but it is not a direct visual representation of the war (unlike the photographs of severed limbs after battles - that is a direct illustration of the horrors of war). Similarly, Maus is written by the child of Holocaust survivors (he never experienced WWII) and it deflects the horrors of war (and genocide) into mice and cats. Is this sort of symbolic representation more powerful (or less)?

Abigail Heiniger said

at 2:00 pm on Oct 18, 2014

Good secondary sources! Let me know if you have any trouble with these and I'll be happy to help you find more.

Abigail Heiniger said

at 11:12 pm on Nov 4, 2014

I like the thesis!

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