Composition 152

1. Composition 152 McHenry County College Instructor: Mark Andel Week Two

2. This week’s topics • STATUS REPORT: Evaluation Paper • Evaluation Criteria • How to analyze various works: • Poetry – “My Last Duchess” • Restaurants – Phil Vettel – “Grace” • Painting – Breughel (Two works) • Music – Springsteen (“The Rising”) • Movie – Roger Ebert (“Shrek”) • Text Work: Research Papers: Chapter Two

3. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning

4. My Last Duchess(Ferrara)Robert BrowningThat's my last duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Fra Pandolf" by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,That depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain drawn for you, but I) [10]And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was notHer husband's presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhapsFra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle lapsOver my lady's wrist too much" or "PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enough [20]For calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,Too easily impressed: she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace -all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush,at least. She thanked men - good! but thanked somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech - (which I have not) - to make your willQuite clear to such a one, and say, "Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you missOr there exceed the mark"- and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly set [40]Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretence [50]Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting is my object. Nay, we'll goTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

5. “Find a Subject You Can Work With” Interest yourself first….

6. “Find a Subject You Can Work With” • Your topic must interest your audience • Your topic must lend itself to detail • Your topic must be able to be covered in the prescribed number of pages • What do you know and care about? • What do you find yourself talking about? (This is good grist for the mill)

7. Guidelines • Audience – Who’s reading this and who do you want to read it? • Make your experience relevant to your reader – be respectful of your reader’s time commitment. Make it worthwhile. • Present research in a conversational way – let the reader hear your voice.

8. Guidelines • Make your experience your reader’s experience with well-chosen detail • Make your reader “see” • Make your reader “feel” • Involve senses – ALL of them • Research papers can be heartfelt, too

9. Reading Strategies • Scan – don’t read entire book first • Ask yourself some questions • Answer the 5 journalism questions • Make marginal notes in text (annotate)

10. Annotate what you read

11. Evaluation Paper Write a clear, concise, well-thought-out evaluation of a painting, a music CD, a restaurant, a college course, a film, a play, a television program, a job performance, or a web site. Use the criteria of evaluation, including an overall claim about what you are evaluating, a description, statistics to support your claim, testimony from a third party source, and examples. Your final paper should present a convincing, balanced, supported, fair evaluation that is backed up by more than opinion and personal biases. Format/Length considerations: Title (centered) Last name/page # in upper right-hand corner Stapled – upper left Keep margins at 1” default Double-spaced text Indented paragraphs Normal font, 12-point 2-5 pages, which means a minimum of 2 full pages

12. Evaluating Criteria • Make an overall claim about what you are evaluating • Include a description of the object, place, or event • Include statistics to support your claim • Include testimony from a third party source • Offer relevant examples to illuminate your meaning.

13. Restaurant Evaluation Amazing GraceRandolph's newest face hears the call of the wild By Phil Vettel, Chicago Tribune (Handout)

14. Evaluating Criteria • Make an overall claim about what you are evaluating: “Chef/owner Ted Cizma proves he's a master with game meats.”

15. Evaluating Criteria • Include a description of the object, place, or event “Both have an austere elegance in their decor; Grace, with fewer and better-spaced tables, is the more comfortable of the two. A principal difference is light. Where Blackbird is all brightness and reflective surfaces, Grace is romantically dim, to the point that the votive candle at your table will come in handy when you peruse the menu. Hard brick surfaces are softened, at least to the eye, by silky sheer curtains. Soft glows emanate from planetlike lamps (whose rings subtly echo the halo in Grace's logo) and a gaggle of frosted globe bulbs that decorate the eastern wall.”

16. Evaluating Criteria • Include statistics to support your claim “(I've been here four times and the herbs look garden-fresh every time; there are restaurants that don't change the oil in their fryers as often as Cizma changes the oil at his tables.)” “The wine list is nicely varied and thorough. By-the-glass pours are generous; I wish a few more bottles were available this way. There are eight half-bottles available, however, and that is suitable compensation.”

17. Evaluating Criteria • Include testimony from a third party source “Chef and owner is Ted Cizma, last spotted cooking interesting global dishes for The Outpost in Wrigleyville. His cooking at Grace can be considered a more mature, more locally focused version of his Outpost food.” NOTE: Food critics are “lone wolves,” by and large, and rarely include the thoughts and feelings of other critics in their work.

18. Evaluating Criteria • Offer relevant examples to illuminate your meaning. “First to the table is a basket of bread, where you'll find soft, inviting focaccia with a parmesan crust, perhaps studded with tomato; a mini-baguette flavored with toasted cumin; and a few parmesan-thyme breadsticks. …” “The grilled wild boar tenderloin is a bit more assertive, the meat richly gamy. …” “Starters with star power are earthy lamb sweetbreads, served with a refreshing watercress-peppercress mixture and dabs of blue goat cheese; skillet-seared Maine scallops, perched over a fragrant lobster-anise broth; and risotto with smoked pheasant, aged Edam cheese and toasted hazelnuts.”

19. Painting Evaluation Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (2003) Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

20. Painting Evaluation Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (2003)Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria The beauty of Pieter Brueghel the Elder's (1525-1569) beloved painting, "Hunters in the Snow," (1565) is extraordinary, and can be enjoyed on many levels...just by looking at and absorbing the totality of the work, then letting the eye and mind range over it from area to area, object to object...the beautifully painted hunters, their dogs, the trees and village houses scattered in the snow, the distant valley ponds with skaters, the birds and expressively thrusting distant peaks.When we begin to think about the painting and what the artist has done to accomplish his vision, we find the beauty lies in its vital design pattern of contrasting lights and darks, its clarity of realistic, poetic observation and the profundity of meaning he has instilled in a scene that lesser artists would make into mere anecdote, story-telling.  Brueghel creates not only a painting of 16th Century country life in Flanders, but a universal statement of the beauty of life and nature, and the aspirations of mankind.   While the dark foreground hunters, their dogs and the trees contrast beautifully, in terms of aesthetics, with the snowy hill they trudge upon, the white rooftops of houses and the distant white vista, the darkness of the hunters also suggests a downcast psychological, spiritual and emotional state of being as well.   The painter's skill and clarity of observation create forms that are both very real and, at the same time, abstract in their simple directness, merging three-dimensional form with two-dimensional pattern.  The artist is able to distill reality, capturing its elemental essence devoid of any extraneous detail (every great artist has their personal understanding and manifestation of the essentials of realistic form). The basic design movement of the composition is strongly diagonal from the hunters in the lower left to the upper right corner and its distant snowy crags, toward which the hunters seem to walk with a certain head-down weariness.  This diagonal movement is strongly supported by the diminishing perspective of the four foreground trees.  A diagonal counter-movement from lower right to middle and upper left cannot deflect the hunters' progress toward the goal of the crags, though it clearly creates the demarcation line between the everyday, earthly life of the foreground and the visionary distance.

21. Painting Evaluation Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (2003)Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria For this is the ultimate purpose and meaning of the painting, and what raises it to the level of a universal statement.  It expresses the poetry of life; man's quest for meaning and purpose by means of, and beyond, the everyday struggle for existence.   Because they are deeply involved in their quest, the hunters and their dogs are oblivious of the three small figures they pass on their left, working around a fire in front of the largest house.  The difference between the hunters and the fire-tenders is that the latter are unaware of any higher purpose or quest beyond their daily tasks, while the hunters doggedly pursue greater meaning, symbolized by the distant, craggy peaks (they are "hunters," after all, men who "hunt," look for, seek to find...not game in this instance...but truth).   The hunters may be dispirited at the moment, doubting, wondering if they will ever reach their goal – carrying their darkness with them -- but they are aware that the goal exists, and continue to plod forward despite their weariness and doubt. Four dark birds in the twiggy tops of the trees, and one in flight – the latter seeming to aim directly at the crags, and certainly providing a compositional link between the hunters and the peaks – create a directional line of perspective convergence toward the crags in conjunction with the tree trunks where they enter the snow.  The flying dark bird, overlapping the lower slopes of the peaks like an airborne cross, seems symbolic of the spiritual aspirations of the hunters as they seek to reach the abode of deity in the snowy peaks. by Don Gray

22. Painting Evaluation Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (2003)Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria “Because of its unforgettably inventive form and colouring, the closing (not opening) painting of Bruegels series of the seasons is the most well-known and most popular of the pictures in this cycle. The hunters are making their way back to the low-lying village with their meagre bounty, a pack of hounds at their heels. Their backs are turned towards us. That, along with the perspective of the row of trees, draws the observer down into the distance, on to the remote, icy mountains on the horizon, and at the same time out of the whole cycle. What was then understood as an illustration of seasonal labour a pig being singed in front of an inn comes across only as a secondary scene at the left edge of the painting. The winter idyll is completed by a busy swarm of small figures in the distant plain.” From: Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna catalog

23. Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), The Fall of Icarus Painting Evaluation

24. Painting Evaluation Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), The Fall of Icarus Musee Des Beaux Artes – W.H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

25. Painting Evaluation Pieter Brueghel (Bruegel), The Fall of Icarus background info: Icarus was a Greek mythological figure, also known as the son of Daedalus (famous for the Labyrinth of Crete). Now Icarus and his dad were stuck in Crete, because the King of Crete wouldn't let them leave. Daedalus made some wings for the both of them and gave his son instruction on how to fly (not too close to the sea, the water will soak the wings, and not too close to the sky, the sun will melt them). Icarus, however, appeared to be obstinate and did fly to close to the sun. This caused the wax that held his wings to his body to melt. Icarus crashed into the sea and died.

26. Painting Evaluation

27. Painting Evaluation Jackson Pollock, “Blue Poles” Jackson Pollock, An American Saga, by Steven Naifeh

28. Painting Evaluation Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952On loan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the National Gallery of Australia Painted relatively late in Jackson Pollock’s career, this painting conveys the unique skill that Pollock had by now achieved with his infamous ‘drip’ technique. Executed on unstretched canvas laid flat on the floor, both the artist’s dripping, splashing and pouring of paint onto the work’s surface and the scale of the painting itself, clearly reveals the highly physical aspect of Pollock’s technique. It could equally be regarded as a performance. Pollock believed that his abandonment of traditional painting tools (he preferred to use sticks, cooking basters or pour directly from the paint can) and the paintings he produced reflected the realms of unconscious experience but also responded to contemporary life. As he stated: “The modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any past culture”. In marked contrast to the artist’s classic works of 1947–50, the electric colours of Blue Poles in no way reflect the palette of nature as earlier paintings had done. Blue Poles is for Pollock an ambitious transitional work where not only colour, but the artist’s handling of composition, mark a conscious move away from previous work. While in many ways continuing his now trademark ‘all-over’ composition, Pollock pushed his endeavours in abstraction further by introducing the bold presence of the eight blue ‘poles’ that intersect the canvas. Pollock uses the prominent slashes of Blue Poles to reintroduce the conventional notion of figure and ground into his work, but without making any concession to traditional concepts of perspective.

29. Painting Evaluation Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952On loan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the National Gallery of Australia So what is the point of this painting? It's a big ("heroic" in the rhetoric of the time) canvas, covered with tangled lines of multicoloured oil paint. These lines weren't brushed on, they were dripped or flung onto the canvas with sticks or crappy old dried-up brushes.Pollock wanted his paintings to express big, universal themes - without resorting to the use of actual imagery, (very uncool in avant-garde circles immediately after the war.) He got some ideas from the Surrealists, particularly their idea of abstract drawing as a means for exploring the subconscious mind, and checked himself into Jungian therapy. - Craig Schuftan The “Wal-Marting” of Jackson Pollock: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=2227131&cat=20491&type=3&dept=3920&path=0%3A3920%3A58294%3A18716%3A18723

30. Painting Evaluation Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952On loan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the National Gallery of Australia Now what is remarkable about Blue Poles is the amount of movement within the painting. There are several factors contributing to this and all of them relate to the music I've composed. First, there is the shape of the canvas itself. Because it is wide, like "cinemascope", it invites you to read it from left to right. Most paintings do not. And because it is a large canvas, it also invites you to take it in by walking past it from left to right. In this, Pollock's painting approaches the condition of music, revealing itself in stages. The famous poles themselves help this approach. On the most obvious level they divide the painting into sections so that the eye passes from one to the next, adding to that sense of movement. And because the poles are neither straight nor vertical, but jagged and evidently about to topple forwards, they contribute to the painting's internal momentum. For me, they have a further function. Those blue poles remind me of crooked bar lines, with complex and brightly coloured melodic strands cavorting across them. There's a sense in which this painting seems to dance. It's a characteristic that Blue Poles shares with plenty of Pollock's other work. The artist moved quickly across the canvas as he dripped his paint. The paint moved more quickly still, Pollock controlling it with the dexterity of a puppeteer manipulating his puppets. The painting is the result of those movements; but unlike most other paintings, Pollock's art makes us continually aware of the act of creation - of the action of creation. - Andrew Ford

31. Music Evaluation • CRITERIA: • Lyrics, Social Significance • Sound/Melody • Statement/Meaning • Emotion/Delivery • Comparison/Standard • Historical Context/Value • Will it “hold up?”

32. Music Evaluation “Springsteen’s songs are usually character studies. It’s the little details in his songs, the indirect way of approaching something as big as Sept. 11, that makes him so effective. Listened to separately, the songs could be about almost any loss. Taken in sum 11 months later, it’s obvious. It works. We need that perspective he gives us. “Any criticism that Springsteen is simply cashing in on this tragedy (and there has been some) is unfounded. He’s spent the last 30 years writing and recording songs that deal with such topics as policemen firing 41 shots into an unarmed man, a gay man with AIDS, and young male illegal immigrants selling their bodies on the streets of San Diego—why should his music be any different now because “it’s too soon.” It is never too soon to start trying to understand, cope, and heal.” - Zach Everson Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising”

33. Movie Evaluation • CRITERIA: • Writing • Acting Performances • Directing • Societal Value • Statement/Meaning • Comparison/Standard • “Human Condition”

34. Movie Evaluation: “Shrek” SHREK **** (PG) BY ROGER EBERT There is a moment in "Shrek" when the despicable Lord Farquaad has the Gingerbread Man tortured by dipping him into milk. (VIDEO) This prepares us for another moment when Princess Fiona's singing voice is so piercing it causes jolly little bluebirds to explode; making the best of a bad situation, she fries their eggs. This is not your average family cartoon. "Shrek" is jolly and wicked, filled with sly in-jokes and yet somehow possessing a heart. The movie has been so long in the making at DreamWorks that the late Chris Farley was originally intended to voice the jolly green ogre in the title role. All that work has paid off: The movie is an astonishing visual delight, with animation techniques that seem lifelike and fantastical, both at once. No animated being has ever moved, breathed or had its skin crawl quite as convincingly as Shrek, and yet the movie doesn't look like a reprocessed version of the real world; it's all made up, right down to, or up to, Shrek's trumpet-shaped ears. Shrek's voice is now performed by Mike Myers, with a voice that's an echo of his Fat Bastard (the Scotsman with a molasses brogue in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me"). Shrek is an ogre who lives in a swamp surrounded by "Keep Out" and "Beware the Ogre!" signs. He wants only to be left alone, perhaps because he is not such an ogre after all but merely a lonely creature with an inferiority complex because of his ugliness. He is horrified when the solitude of his swamp is disturbed by a sudden invasion of cartoon creatures, who have been banished from Lord Farquaad's kingdom. Many of these creatures bear a curious correspondence to Disney characters who are in the public domain: The Three Little Pigs turn up, along with the Three Bears, the Three Blind Mice, Tinkerbell, the Big Bad Wolf

35. Movie Evaluation: “Shrek” and Pinocchio. Later, when Farquaad seeks a bride, the Magic Mirror gives him three choices: Cinderella, Snow White ("She lives with seven men, but she's not easy") and Princess Fiona. He chooses the beauty who has not had the title role in a Disney animated feature. No doubt all of this, and a little dig at DisneyWorld, were inspired by feelings DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg has nourished since his painful departure from Disney--but the elbow in the ribs is more playful than serious. (Farquaad is said to be inspired by Disney chief Michael Eisner, but I don't see a resemblance, and his short stature corresponds not to the tall Eisner but, well, to the diminutive Katzenberg.) The plot involves Lord Farquaad's desire to wed the Princess Fiona, and his reluctance to slay the dragon that stands between her and would-be suitors. He hires Shrek to attempt the mission, which Shrek is happy to do, providing the loathsome fairy-tale creatures are banished and his swamp returned to its dismal solitude. On his mission, Shrek is joined by a donkey named the Donkey, whose running commentary, voiced by Eddie Murphy, provides some of the movie's best laughs. (The trick isn't that he talks, Shrek observes; "the trick is to get him to shut up.") The expedition to the castle of the Princess involves a suspension bridge above a flaming abyss, and the castle's interior is piled high with the bones of the dragon's previous challengers. When Shrek and the Donkey get inside, there are exuberant action scenes that whirl madly through interior spaces, and revelations about the dragon no one could have guessed. And all along the way, asides and puns, in-jokes and contemporary references, and countless references to other movies. Voice-overs for animated movies were once, except for the annual Disney classic, quickie jobs that actors took if they were out of work. Now they are starring roles with fat paychecks, and the ads for "Shrek" use big letters to trumpet the names of Myers, Murphy, Cameron Diaz (Fiona) and John Lithgow (Farquaad). Their vocal performances are nicely suited to the characters, although Myers' infatuation with his Scottish brogue reportedly had to be toned down. Murphy in particular has emerged as a star of the voice-over genre.

36. Movie Evaluation: “Shrek” Much will be written about the movie's technical expertise, and indeed every summer seems to bring another breakthrough on the animation front. After the three-dimensional modeling and shading of "Toy Story," the even more evolved "Toy Story 2," "A Bug's Life" and "Antz," and the amazing effects in "Dinosaur," "Shrek" unveils creatures who have been designed from the inside out, so that their skin, muscles and fat move upon their bones instead of seeming like a single unit. They aren't "realistic," but they're curiously real. The artistry of the locations and setting is equally skilled--not lifelike, but beyond lifelike, in a merry, stylized way. Still, all the craft in the world would not have made "Shrek" work if the story hadn't been fun and the ogre so lovable. Shrek is not handsome but he isn't as ugly as he thinks; he's a guy we want as our friend, and he doesn't frighten us but stir our sympathy. He's so immensely likable that I suspect he may emerge as an enduring character, populating sequels and spinoffs. One movie cannot contain him.

37. Research Papers: Chapter 3 • “Finding a Subject and Narrowing to a Topic” (p. 74) • “Subject” vs. “Topic” • Brainstorming, Clustering (p. 75) • EXERCISE (p. 291) – The Titanic • Choosing a Topic within a Subject

38. Research Papers: Chapter 3 • Going from general to specific (p. 78) • PRACTICE Narrowing subjects (p. 79) • Forming a Research Question (p. 83) • Exploring Point of View (p. 85) • What Makes a Good Question? (p. 88) • Writing a Research Proposal (p. 96)

39. Evaluation Paper Write a clear, concise, well-thought-out evaluation of a painting, a music CD, a restaurant, a college course, a film, a play, a television program, a job performance, or a web site. Use the criteria of evaluation, including an overall claim about what you are evaluating, a description, statistics to support your claim, testimony from a third party source, and examples. Your final paper should present a convincing, balanced, supported, fair evaluation that is backed up by more than opinion and personal biases. Format/Length considerations: Title (centered) Last name/page # in upper right-hand corner Stapled – upper left Keep margins at 1” default Double-spaced text Indented paragraphs Normal font, 12-point 2-5 pages, which means a minimum of 2 full pages

40. Assignments • Continue working on Evaluation paper • Quotation Quiz next week