WP3 prewrite 5

My sculpture, Pieta, is by a sculptor by the name of Bruno Lucchesi. Lucchesi was born in 1926 in Lucca, Itally. He would later study at the Art Institute of Lucca and afterward worked as an assistant professor at Florence University. He moved to New York in 1958 and since held several teaching jobs and currently travels the nation giving workshops.

His sculpture Pieta was completed in 1970. The title "Pieta," is also the title of a sculpture by the famous artist Michelangelo, located in Vatican City. This statue depicts the body of Jesus Christ on the lap of his mother Mary after the crucifixion.

I was unable to find too much information on the background behind Lucchesi's Pieta, but I do believe that Lucchesi's piece is directly influenced by the classic work of Michelangelo due to several key similarities. Both pieces include a man who appears to be dead. Both pieces also include a young woman in grief of this loss and in some way in body contact with the lost one. Both women also have their heads in a down position and both men appear unresponsive. Because of the fact that Lucchesi named his sculpture identically to this very famous piece, I am guessing he wanted the audience to draw conclusions about his work based on the similarities and differences between the two pieces. If Michelangelo's work reflects the death of Jesus Christ, then we should look at the relationship between Jesus and Mary to determine the possible relationship between the man and the woman in Lucchesi's sculpture. For example we can infer that since Jesus and Mary were family and that Mary loved Jesus very much, that perhaps the man and the woman in Lucchesi's sculpture are also family and loved ones. The fact that Jesus died due to the pain of a crucifixion could also mean that the man in Luccesi's sculpture in some way died in an agonizing way or had been suffering. If we look at who Jesus was as a person, one could say that he gave himself for the world, so Lucchesi could also have intended this man to appear in the same light, that he was a selfless and giving person till the end.

WP3 prewrite 4

My sculpture, Pieta, seems to have a very high focus on reprresenting another object. The sculpture creates a scene, that in high detail depicts one person, mourning the recent loss of a loved one, likely due to age. It is important to note that almost anyone can take this message from the piece without any in depth analysis. This means that the artist wanted to place a higher emphasis on the message this piece sends rather than the artistic values it possesses. Lucchesi uses several mechanics to accomplish this. First, he uses a high level of detail on both people, so the audience is not just able to tell they are people, but also that one is an old man, one is a young woman, that the old man is dead or dying, and that the woman is crying. Next, Lucchesi chooses to limit the number of elements included. There is only the old man, the woman, and the bed. which almost appear to be floating in space. This acts to isolate the scene and eliminate all destractions in the audience's mind. Finnaly, he chooses to use a solid, neutral colored material which does not draw much attention. This puts the focus on the items it forms rather than the material itself.

Pieta is succesful as an art object too as it manages to incorporate several artistic values. Firstly, the piece includes a high sense of balance as the man is located on one edge of the bed and the woman is located on the other. Contrast is another element and is accomplished between the old man, and the young woman. Thirdly, visual heiarchy is used as Pieta tells a story, bringing the audience's eye from one object to the next. Lastly, we can also see that there is a tension present, as the womans hand is frozen in an akward position, reaching towards the man.

The location of this piece is of particular interest. Prior to this project, I personally had never even seen this piece of artwork, as it is located on the side of the art museum, surrounded on three sides by six foot high shrubs. It is likely that this sculpture was placed here for several reaasons. The first thing is that Pieta does convey a quite depressing message and it is likely the University did not just want to stick it out in the middle of a courtyard. Next, the sculpture has a very unique shape and the shrubs surrounding it on three sides act to limit the viewing opportunity to only one side. This possibly is to ensure that the audience see in the sculpture what the artist had intended. Lastly, the shrubs surrounding the sculpture almost always keep it in the shade, possibly playing furture on the already "dark" mood of the piece.

WP3 prewrite 2

This sculpture is entitled pieta, and is by Bruno Lucchesi finished in 1970. The sculpture stands at its highest point about five feet high. It is around six feet long and three feet wide. With the exception of its concrete base, pieta appears to be completly molded out of some sort of metal. Its texture is relatively smooth and holds sort of an extreemly faded dark green color. It is located to the side of the art gallary and is surrounded on three sides by shrubs about six feet tall. The subject matter of the sculpture itself includes what appears to be an old, sickly looking man, possibly dead, lying in a bed with a woman draped over his legs, face down, possibly crying, with her hand up sort of reaching towards him. Based on what I saw, I would say that the pieta sculpture is telling a narative of someone loosing a loved one. If I had to make an assumption based on the detail, I would guess this was a father and daughter, due to the wrinkles on the sitting individual, and the long hair of the person laying over him. What leads me to believe they are related is the closeness this girl must feel that she is laying over this person. What leads me to believe that he might be dead is that he appears to be unresponsive to the girl on his legs. I get the feeling that the daughter is crying based on the fact that her face is down while her hand is reaching up, like she cant deal with the grief from her loss. Rhetoricly, I feel Lucchesi is trying to convey some sort of message about either grief or loss. I would say something to the effect of, "All things come to an end," or "We will eventually lose even those who we are closest to." Due to the way in which the girl seems uncontrolably upset, we might even assume that she wasnt prepared for this to happen and that she wishes she had more time with him. The rhetorical message could then be something like. "spend time with your familly while you can." There had to be some motivation for Lucchesi to want to convey this message, so I would assume this sculpture relates to a personal experience. For rhetorical strategies, I think that vectors of attention, location, body positions and texture play key roles in conveying the argument.

WP3 prewrite 1

As far as my past experience with art objects goes, I would have to say it has mostly been limited to elementary/middle school art classes and field trips to museums. Im done many small art projects throughout my school carrier just like everybody else, so I feel it is most important to try to identify what in particular most largly influences my outlook on art in general and to what style do I reference back to when judging the success of a particular piece. I am not too experienced with different styles of art, but there has been one that always stands out in my mind. While I lived in Australia, I was able to see many examples of Aborigine style artwork which to this day is my favorite in terms of both style and subject. I like this style of artwork so much because it is completely unique, visually engaging, reflects Australian culture, and often tells a story. A rough description of this style is the use of a large number of dots to form shapes, patterns and objects, which often reflect some aspect of Australian nature. There is also almost always some sort of story being told, even though many times it is hard to say exactly what that story is without talking to the artist. This leaves the interpretation completely up to the audience and I feel that this adds interest to the artwork itself. For example, the example to the right obviously portrays a kangaroo as the main vector of attention, but what the kangaroo is doing, and what the circles behind him represent is up to the audiences interpretation. Aboriginal art combines realistic art with abstract art as you can almost always tell what is in the piece, but it is represented by a large variety of dots instead of the actual lines.

With respect to my overall experience with art, I would then say that Aboriginal art has definitely had the largest influence on me in terms of how I view art universally. For example, if someone were to show me a painting, I would immediately try to identify the subject matter first, just as is a custom when viewing aboriginal artwork. I also am able to appreciate artwork much more that maintains a certain level of realism, similar to aboriginal art, where even though it may not be exact, my mind can still identify what I am looking at.

WP2: Final Draft / Author's Note

Authors Note:
In the first revision, in my opening paragraph, I chose to add an explanation as to why Johnson's background as a blogger is relevent to the argument of his comic. I also decided to slightly reword my thesis statement/argument to say, "Rhetorically, these mechanics contradict the subject matter within the comic strip and argue that discrimination is never toward just one group and often has an effect on evrybody, regaurdless of the target," because I fealt that my origional thesis was too much of an assumption and didnt really hold any meaning to investigate. I added a separate conclusion paragraph which I had been missing where I attempt to offer possible rational as to why Johnson chose to make his argument in the form of a comic. For my final draft, I first added alittle more to my thesis, specificly outlining the mechanics of the comic that I planned to analyze. In my paragraph analyzing johnsons use of frames, I chose to re summarize what effect Johnsons choice of background color had on the rhetorical meaning. It now reads, "If we go back to the topic of dicrimination and the re-examine this scenario with respect to background representing mood, this comic now appears to be showing that the invisible man, although not directly disciminated against, may in fact be just as unhappy as the some of the other monsters who are." In that same paragraph, I also added a couple sentences stating how johnsons use of phrames describes space, as opposed to time. Next I chose to pretty much rewrite the second half of my paragraph about the location of the quotation bubbles. I feelt that it was unorganized origionally so I tried to rewrite it in a manner that better tied all of the ideas together. Next I chose to add a small analysis to the signifigance of the invisible man charactor himself, as I fealt he held specific imortance to the argument about those who are not discriminated against. Lastly, I added multiple hyperlinks to help bring understanding to some of my wordchoice as well as a couple in-text citations.
WP2: Rough Draft 2
WP2: Rough Draft 1
Statement of Purpose

WP2: Final Draft-

Aaron Johnson, has made himself well known through his ongoing series of daily comics featuring a main cartoon named W.T. Duck, a photographer. He began making comics just as a blog filler, but has largely grown in popularity. His comics are published daily in many newspapers as well as several websites including the yahoo news section which is where I first saw it. Johnson's personal website, whattheduck.net, contains fan commentary as well as every wt duck comic he has ever published. Johnson also openly takes criticism and suggestions via twitter and email on his website which I found interesting. The fact that Johnson did begin his career as a blogger is important because we then know he is the type of person that likes to get his ideas out there for the world to see. We should remember that this is his motivation for creating the comics while we analyze them. The comic above is the one I am choosing to analyze for for this second project. It is part of Aaron Johnsons WT Duck series and was published a few days before Halloween of this year. The scene has the photographer, wt duck, telling five monsters that he charges extra for Ugly. Frankenstien responds by yelling "That's Discrimination," followed by the next three monsters swearing. Lastly the invisible man says, "sweet." The reason this comic stood out to me was because I found the dialogue really funny. One thing that is important to notice about this comic though is that Johnson chooses to act against several standard mechanics that one would find in a standard comic strip. These include use of framing, location of quotes, and levels of detail. Rhetorically, these mechanics contradict the subject matter within the comic strip and argue that discrimination is never toward just one group and often has an effect on evrybody, regaurdless of the target. If one looks at the WT Duck comic and then the comic above, they first appear very similar in style. They both include three frames, illustrated cartoons and dialougue bubbles. The key to the argument of Johnsons comic though is where he chosses to diferentiate his style from that of a more traditional comic. The first difference I noticed was Johnsons use of frames. In a traditional comic, you will see each frame present either a different scene of timeframe. On the other hand, Johnsons three frames all apear to be responding to the same event at the same moment in time, and even appear to be located sequentially. For example the whiches broom crosses over from one frame to the next and the grey foreground is persistant throughout. These three frames now appear to be a tool for describing the organization of space, instead of time. I beieve this choice was made largely due to Johnsons desire to remain consistant in terms of ethos almost all of his other comics are structured with the three frame style. However it is also important to look at why then he choose to only portrey one scene to represent this situation. The comic can be divided into two elements. The photographer(duck), and the monsters all responding to him. They appear to be in a line waiting for his service and it is suggested that all but the invisible man will be charged extra. The effect the three frames has on me is it devides the second element, the monsters, apart from each other who I would otherwise have in my mind grouped together as just all monsters. So, it is possible that Johnsons strategy was to use the frames to create a division in the charactors that the audience otherwise would not have picked up on, yet still keep the scene together as one whole. Nextly, Johnson furthur divides these three frames by making the backgrounds distinctly different colors. In a traditional comic, like the one above, you will normally only see one consistant background color. These colors not only make the divison in frames more visible, but also act to set a mood, distinct to each frame. For example, in the first frame, Orange is used, which is a bright, intense color, and could be assosiated with the intense reaction from the Frankenstien monster to the duck. The second frame is white which could suggest indifference and the last frame is purple and could represent sadness. These different moods are important because although all of the monsters appear to be reacting the same, it is possible that the backgrounds reflect their true emotions on the situation. This become particularly important with the invisible man in the back because although it appears he is getting what he wants, the fact that he is at the back of the line and in the purple depressing background could suggest that he is unhappy. If we go back to the topic of dicrimination and the re-examine this scenario with respect to background representing mood, this comic now appears to be showing that the invisible man, although not directly disciminated against, may in fact be just as unhappy as the some of the other monsters who are. It is important to recognize that the invisible man himself could easilly be referencing the novel "Invisible Man."(Ralph Ellison) This book in particular expressed the social issues facing african americans during the early twentieth century and largely played to this idea of how being "invisible" was the only way to avoid discrimination.(Wikipedia)

Next I would like to focus on Johnsons choice of positioning for his quotation bubbles. It you look at the second comic I posted, you can see that traditionally, quotations are read from top to bottom, left to right, and never cover the characters face. If you examine Johnsons comic, first you will see that the sequence of quotes starts at the bottom left instead of the top left. This naturally causes the audience to see the quote, "Thats Discrimination!" before the first quote in the conversation. This automaticly sets the topic of discussion and mindset of the audience to discrimination before they even know whats going on in the rest of the situation. This could serve several puposes. For example, Johnson could be trying to make a point that this is how people act in society today, that people jump to conclusions before analyzing situations. Johnson could have also chosen to do this to bring the topic of discimination to the mindset of the audience first, before the comedy in the rest of the strip was able to take over. The second interesting choice Johnson makes in terms of the quotation positioning is that several of the quotes actually cover the faces of the charactors. When the face of a charactor is not shown, their identity becomes much less of a focal point. One could conclude that johnson chose to do this to represent the lack of importance that the actual identity of the discriminated against holds. The fact that the mosters face is covered represents that the duck dosnt really even care who they are, he instead just see's them swearing at him, and moves on. We an also assume this because when a charactor says something, but you cant see their face, it conveys a feeling that they are being ignored or not listened to. It is also important to note that this comic provides no sort of response on the part of the duck to what the monsters are saying, which could furthur argure the point that he doesnt really care. In terms of the rhetorical argument, I feel this adds to the discrimination scenario being created as people who are being discriminated against often feel like they dont have a voice. The people discriminating often don't care what there victims think or who they are, and often just continue doing it.

A third major difference between this WT Duck comic and most other comics is that there is an apparent difference in level of detail illustrated between charactors. This goes back to the two elements I discribed earlier. First we have the duck, who in reality dosnt really resemble a duck at all, and only includes details such as a bill and dots for eyes. The second element, the monsters in contrast poses a relatively high level of detail all the way down to creases in clothing and skin. The effect this creates is a widened separation between the photographer, and discriminator from the monsters. The high level of detail in the monsters make them seem much more "real" in the eyes of the audience than the simplified duck, even though in reality ducks exist and monsters dont. Johnsons strategy was likely to make the monsters be the element in the comic in which the audience related, causing them, in a way, to feel the same "discrimination" which the monsters are going through. This apeals to the overall Pathos of the comic, bringing out an emotional response from the audience with respect to the argument.

In the end, the majority of people who saw this comic just got a quick laugh and then moved on, so what then is the signifigance of these rhetorical strategies? Often time texts can influence our thoughts, feelings and attitudes without us being consiously aware. While we may not know exactly what Johnsons feelings are on certain topics, we can assume that his work is a direct reflection and with this comic in particular, we for sure know the topic of discrimination was what he wanted to draw to attention based on his particular mechanics he chose. \When the audience sees this comic, the topic of discrimination is brought up in their minds and then the rest of the comic acts as a medium to possibly redirect their thoughts on the issue.