Essays on Shadows

The Cave

Plato’s The Cave is an allegorical story which Socrates was telling one of his followers Glaucon to explain to him the difference between a philosopher who seeks wisdom and others who aim to remain in ignorance. In the story, Socrates tells of a group of people who have been chained facing an empty wall their entire lives. They are unable to look anywhere, except the wall. Right behind them is an assembly line of items that are constantly going by which are reflected onto the wall by the light which comes from the fire that is behind the ...

Man is classified as an animal together with thousands of other species in the animal kingdom. However, he has a superior position in the animal kingdom due to his high reasoning and logical powers including the capability to manipulate and even make meals out of other animals. Indeed, man and human beings depend on each other for among others food as both are part of the food chain of each other. However, man is the biggest beneficiary given that he obtains many products such as meat, fur, milk, skins, and other products from animals. This shows that man has ...

Responses

In Book VII of The Republic, now remembered as Plato’s greatest work, he talks of the benefits of an education and especially for those who are to govern a state. In this book, he relates most people to prisoners in a cave whose hands and legs are fettered. There’s no question that since they have been imprisoned in that cave since childhood, this is their interpretation of ‘reality’ and life which is not true if they get a chance to see the sun in broad daylight and in all its glory. Being able to see the light ...

Abstract

The birth of art had served humanity in a variety of purposes. And this purpose has changed throughout the course of human history. Humans use art to showcase their religious belief, to express emotions, to depict the beauty of an individual or a particular landscape, to record a significant event and for propaganda. Moreover, the way humans perceive art are constantly changing. Cultural art arises from the need to express emotions and the different aspects of cultures. On the other hand, modern-day contemporary art is inclined to make use of various objects and to combine genres which make the ...

STEM activities are able to teach us a special attitude towards knowledge and the approach to learning which could be interactive, interesting and integrated. With its child-centered learning structure and learning by doing technique the activities encourage and lead children to their new discoveries. STEM activities make a learning process easy and fun, treating the young learners as true scientists and thus cherishing their talents and capacities from the earliest age. A great example of a STEM activity can be the one called “Likes go together”. Judging from its title, we can presume that the activity is focused on ...

Walt Disney Pictures released the 3D animated Zootopia in 2016 (IMDb). Directed by Rick Moore and Byron Howard, the film takes place in a city occupied by animals that act and speak like humans. While directed toward children, the film also has adult humor; for instance, while doing a math problem, Judy Hopp states, “I mean, I am just a dumb bunny, but we are good at multiplying.” Regardless of the humor and juvenile presentation, the timely theme of Zootopia is racial prejudice. The plot of the movie is the partnership between a con artist red fox and a ...

Walt Disney Pictures released the 3D animated Zootopia in 2016 (IMDb). Directed by Rick Moore and Byron Howard, the film takes place in a city occupied by animals that act and speak like humans. While directed toward children, the film also has adult humor; for instance, while doing a math problem, Judy Hopp states, “I mean, I am just a dumb bunny, but we are good at multiplying.” Regardless of the humor and juvenile presentation, the timely theme of Zootopia is racial prejudice. The plot of the movie is the partnership between a con artist red fox and a ...

Rembrandt's, The Night Watch, is perhaps the most classic example of a Baroque painting and Leonardo Da Vinci's, The Mona Lisa, is one of the most famous paintings. Both paintings are oil- based and the artists made use of light and shadows to produce a greater effect. Da Vinci uses the sfumato technique to achieve a light and shadow effect. He makes the light bounce off the subject's skin in certain places while other parts of the painting are left in darker shadows (Gherardini). In comparison, Rembrandt is known as the master of light and shadows and made masterful ...

I. Introduction The Incredibles is a 2004 Superhero computer animation film produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was based on comic books and spy films from the director Brad Bird’s childhood. It tells the story of a superhero family forced to hide within society and try to blend in. Led by an altruistic father, they end up in a battle with the antagonist of the story, Syndrome, who appears at first as Mr. Incredible’s number one fan. The overall theme of the movie revolves around unity and family as being the two ...

The art of photography has appeared a few centuries ago, but it has evolved to unprecedented heights in a short period of time. The study of the evolution of pictures gives an insight that art has become the main base for the development of photography. The advent of new technical features gave rise to the new methods of artistic expression. Picture perfectly and accurately captures the reality. One should speak of styles and means of artistic expression, which have certain variations in different eras, based on the possibilities of this kind of art. In order to determine these differences, ...

Sarcophagus with the triumph of Dionysos is one of the most important specimens of the sculptural art of the Roman era. There are many other unique items of the Late Antiquity, which were dedicated to Dionysus; however, the sarcophagi represent a particular elegance and high quality. In 1972, the sarcophagus was bought out and is now exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was made of marble in AD 190– 210 in the Roman Empire (Hägele, 2013, p. 107). In addition, it has a large size: 77.5 x 208cm (Hägele, 2013, p. 107). Most likely ...

Play has been recognized as an activity that helps parents to engage with their children as well as offering an opportunity for physical, cognitive, emotional and social well-being of the youth and children. The benefits derived by parents and children from play are enormous despite the reduced amount of time play often available to families (Barab, Gresalfi & Ingram-Goble, 2010). This paper addresses varied activities that my family can use to participate in as a family and thus make family time better. The purpose of this play quest is to describe each of the play activities and how the time ...

Space/ Scale/ Territory

Millennium Park is a 24.5-acre park that has several venues for performance, art, architecture, sculpture, and landscape architecture. It is located centrally in Chicago’s central business district and the lakefront. The Millennium Park emerged from a dilapidated ground-level parking space and rail yard into perhaps what may be regarded as the world’s biggest “green roof,” spanning two multi-level parking spaces with a total of over 4,000 cars and one commuter rail line. In Millennium Park, space is created in various ways. For example, there is the illusion of space created through structures and activities that allow ...

Sibyl Vane is a talented actress and singer, who is at the same time a poor girl falling in love with Dorian Gray. This love destroys her talent of acting, since she can no longer find pleasure in creating fictional love, when real love has entered her life. After learning that Dorian doesn’t love her anymore and trying to escape the world of illusions, she kills herself. Sibyl Vane is a very important and interesting character of the novel. First of all, Dorian Gray falls in love with her, because she resembles himself with one significant difference – she ...

The entire world has changed and there are no more slaves or servants, each person has a right to life, freedom, liberty, education, food and others. The notion of equal human rights makes one believe that the world is homogeneous at least in this sense, because freedom of choice must be never violated. But social stratification of society still exists and there are people, who live in affluence and can afford people caring their children and cleaning their houses. And on the other side there are those, who can do this job in order to get at least some ...

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There is no denying the fact that Ancient Greek’s philosophers brought a lot of useful and sufficient ideas, thoughts, and decisions to the people’s society. Plato was one of the brightest mind of that time. His works inspire people from all over the world. Moreover, his scientific approach and writing manner help many students to understand the core of philosophy, the structure, and basics of our society. Therefore, in order to see and evaluate several important issues such as good and justice, the Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is presented in this paper. ...

The essay discusses three artworks by a contemporary artist who is living today and compares them to classic Surrealist artworks. The contemporary artist chosen for this essay and carrying elements of the surreal in his work is Mohammad Zaza, who is a Syrian artist. Three artworks of Zaza are chosen for analysis in the paper, namely, “The shell”, “Face of the Machine” and “Mind”. Surrealism as another art form that embraced chaos and the irrational. The Surrealists tried to unlock the imagination of the mind, rejecting rationalism and realism. The focus here was to tap the unconscious mind. It ...

Introduction

The restoration of the Sistine Chapel, perhaps one of the most famous examples of western art by Michelangelo began in 1965 as an initiative by Deoclecio Redig de Campos, who would later become the Vatican Museums’ general director in 1971. The scientific aspects arising in this project would be handled by Fabrizio Mancinelli as well as Gianluigi Colalucci, Maurizio Rossi, Bruno Baratti and Giorgio Bonetti master restorers. The cleaning of these frescoes would include only the depictions of the scenes with Jesus and Moses in the fifteenth-century paintings. At this time, the two 16th century frescoes located at the ...

I can feel the stage being set, as if something in the air awakens me to it. Among the ear-piercing drumming and shredding, the singer’s vocal cords fleeing from his throat screaming “NIGHTMARE,” the raven-black crowd starts backing away from one another as they create a semi-perfect circle. Everyone is stalking their prey across the circle as they wait for the chorus to start. Suddenly, I feel a sweaty grip pulling my left hand into the crowd away from the circle to the front rows. Startled, I tilt my head to see who is pulling me – it is ...

Fauvism flourished in France during the early part of twentieth century and the Fauve painters were known to break away with Impressionism. The Fauves were known to known for their use vibrant colors and bold brushstrokes and how they sought new picture space with the movement of color planes. The exuberant Fauve artworks style carried highly intense color and has often been compared to German Expressionism because of the spontaneous brushwork with brilliant colors. The short lived phase of the early twentieth-century, Fauvism brought stronger color values over the realistic values of Impressionism. Henri Matisse and André Derain are ...

Adoration of the Magi

The artwork form a certain era or period says a lot about the culture the art comes from. By studying the symbolism, colors, and materials used in the art, it is easy to understand the culture that thrived during that time. Decoding the artistic elements in the portraits can help one learn as to what was necessary to the civilization of that era and how they wanted to be remembered. “Adoration of The Magi” by Giotto di Bondone, when studied speaks a lot about the culture and the features of the artistic movement in social, historical and artistic context. ...

The shift towards the Modernist Period from the decadence of the Baroque happened as a result of the outrage and disapproval towards lavishness in creating works of art, a trend once dominant and fashionable amongst the wealthy circles. What emerged as a result of this isolation was a new artistic movement that focused more on inspiring awe and sublime rather than theatrical presentation of the iconography. The term Modernist period has been debated throughout the centuries by the scholars since this period holds accountable of the changes in government and the people’s way of thinking. In this genre ...

My Name

It is known that America from the very inception was a country of immigrants. In the postwar years, the number of immigrants to the United States was increasing from year to year. In 50’s, it was about two and a half million people and in the next decade it has increased to three million and continued to rise in the last decade of the last century. Overall, in the twentieth century, the number of immigrants to the United States was about forty million people. Thousands of people from different countries try in different ways to get to US ...

Are most relationships nothing more than mere momentary impulses that fade with time? In everyday life, relationships are complex interactions that require nurturing, protection and consistency. In this respect, they are so much more than just about fiery first encounters. The literary work discussed for this paper was Katherine Mansfield’s short story entitled “Something Childish but Very Natural,” a literary piece published in 1914 about two characters, Henry and Edna, who meet each other randomly in a train station. In telling this story, Mansfield utilizes a lot figurative language and symbolism to tell the story of Henry and ...

The movie “Birdman”, filmed by the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2014, created a furor in the cinematography. This film uses a lot of unusual cinematic techniques, which we are going to analyze in our paper.      Let us start with the camera work done by Emmanuel Lubezki, who used quite interesting techniques when shooting. First of all, you need to say about the angles of the shots. Emmanuel Lubezki filmed shots from low angles. These pictures give the impression that the subject is of great importance, and has certain strength. These shots make the viewers feel ...

The purpose of the paper is to write Feldman art critic on the three art works, describing them in detail, analyzing the visual elements and the principles of design. An interpretation of each artwork would be made in order to understand what the artist is trying to say.

Jacob Lawrence’s The Card Game Description

“The Card Game” shows two men and two women playing cards and are seated around a bright red table. They are deeply engrossed in their game and the indigo blue of the background contrast with the white ivory curtains. One can recognize the women with their colorful clothing and embellishments in ...

The black and white photographs selected for evaluation in the essay is from the Howard Greenberg Gallery, 41 East 57th street Suite 1406, New York and Yosso Milo Gallery, 45th Tenth Avenue, New York. The photographers are Willis Hartshorn Howard and Ken Schles. The objective of the paper is to evaluate how successful is black and white photography in making an impact on the audience, despite the lack of colors. There are some excellent examples of black-and-white photography regarding composition, lighting, and perspective.

Sleeping Passengers in the Terminal Waiting Room, 1947

The work is a part of an exhibition - A Democracy of Imagery, which is a ...

Bierstadt used light and shadow in a masterly fashion, which made his painting an extremely dramatic. Incredible contrasts reveal magnificent natural environment and its immense beauty made Bierstadt’s pictures popular. The viewer can easily determine three spaces of the artwork: The foreground is the nearest area to the viewer on the right part of the picture. This part shows a hunting scene of the Indians pursuing deer with horses and dogs. Still nearer on the right the mountain spring is visible, next to which a carcass of deer and some human items were left. At some distance three ...

Appreciation of Art - Hamlet

Artist: - Angel PlanellsNationality: SpanishDate: 1938 Title: Hamlet Genre: Surrealism Medium: Oil paint on canvas Size: 39 3/4 x 37 3/8 in. (101 x 95 cm) About Angel Planells Angel Planells was born in 1901 in Cadaqués en and lived the majority of his life in Barcelona where he lived all of his life. He was an introverted man who was motivated by his dreams and imagination. He was a close friend of Salvador Dalí. He participated in a number of Surrealist Exhibitions with fellow artists such as Miró, Spaniards Dalí, and Oscar Domínguez. He died in ...

The oil on canvas “Rocks at Belle -Isle” by Claude Monet is currently featured in the online catalog in the Art Institute of Chicago. The Institute keeps on featuring different artists time to time displaying a variety of art forms (Rocks at Port-Goulphar, Belle-Île 188). Claude Monet, the famous impressionist painter, was born in Paris on November 14 in the year 1840. Monet was the founder of French Impressionist paintings; the term was taken from his painting Titled “Impression, Sunrise”. The paper will discuss and analyze the magnificent and strikingly beautiful artwork “Rocks at Belle –Isle” by him ...

Introduction

Before the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, though, the field of inquiry was completely different than it would be afterward. There was only one religious establishment during that time period, and that establishment had the power of eternal fear over everyone and everything. The fact that the Roman Catholic Church had the power to ban someone not just from church but from any chance of salvation radically altered the calculus of anyone interested in pursuing any sort of intellectual endeavor. Remember, this is the same institution that sought to excommunicate Galileo and Copernicus because of their claims that the ...

Introduction

In contemporary society, the term “lament” is used in everyday conversations, yet it is an old method of expression with a wide-ranging history in biblical and cultural contexts. In the Bible and ancient culture, lamentation was a specific practice used in written lyrical texts. In the Bible, the lament is applied as a prayerful plea to the creator or a dirge regarding the death of destruction of someone or something. In literary culture, lament has been used in poetry as well as prose writing for a long time. The Biblical book of Job provides a vivid example of lament. ...

I would like to talk about the Soviet movie “Ballad of a Soldier”, filmed in 1959 ("Ballad Of A Soldier (1959)"). This film is not so much about the war – the movie is about human relations during the war and love. The film is simple and naive, the character named Alyosha is a simple Russian soldier, who aims to help everyone and everything, sacrificing himself, his desires and his time. He was released on a vacation to his native village for a few days to his mother, but he could see her only a few minutes. Because he helped ...

The art piece selected for discussion is called “Midwestern States” by artist Elizabeth Ayers. It is a glazed ceramic piece of pottery that is clearly a jug that would be used for pouring drinks. The piece appears to be from 1900, yet looks like something that could be used in the 21st century. The ceramic jug is a freestanding piece that is somewhat skinny with a thin handle and a smooth finish overall. The glaze brings forth the shiny surface of the piece as it sits up against the white surface. One could assume that the image of the ...

According to Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living”, which does reflect philosopher’s vision he adhered to throughout his life. The Matrix and Philosophy essay draws connections between the movie The Matrix and philosopher’s own life story. As Socrates stated, his mission was to “wake up” the people of Athens, which was his hometown. He commenced this mission by applying the Socratic Method, which is the “process of asking questions until the person either contradicts himself or makes a mistake”. According to the Oracle at Delphi, Socrates was the wisest man in the whole world, and ...

The film Skyfall was screened in 2012. At the beginning of the movie the director continues the tradition of the title sequences, which has been introduced by Maurice Binder, the author of the famous gun barrel shot, the iconic image of James Bond (Yamato). One of the main themes of the Skyfall opening titles is death. The sequence opens with the shot of Daniel Craig as he falls to the bottom of the riverbed. A woman’s hand is taking him deeper and deeper. It is clearly seen that Bond is wounded and unconscious. The main colors of the ...

Over view of the concert The concert I choose to attend was “Ben Ottewell of Gomez / David McMillin of Fort Frances” at Berkley College of Music. Berkeley hosts more than 1,500 concerts and events at different venues on campus. The venue was Red Room, Cafe 939, Berkley College of Music I went to the event with a group of friends and the tickets cost just $15. The performance was to begin at 8.p.m. and we were all excited to see Ben Ottewell live on stage. Ben Ottewell is the lead vocalist and guitarist for the rock band ...

Nothing is eternal. Everything is subject to extinction. Nevertheless, the ruining effect of time pays particular merci to those items, which represent art in its transparent implication. A reasonable question flows out of it: what do we call “the real art”? What does it look or feelfeels like? In my own consideration, the “real art” is marked out for eternity, which stems from the immortal and everlasting character of the ideas objectified in artistic items. Therefore, art itselfthis is just a dainty imagethe power of eternityidea which makes artistic items live on through centuries. Within the frameworks of ...