Winged Inspiration

A Bee and a Butterfly in My Garden

Winged Inspiration

Today

a bee flies wistfully

nectar gathering for the hive.

Today

a butterfly shares the space

of time and floral beauty,

collecting heavenly nourishment.

Today

The lavender grows more alluring

in service

to its insect guests.

Today

As my eyes are permitted to view

this treasured scene

of serenity and industry,

I am compelled

to make a difference

for Tomorrow.

© Jeanne I. Lakatos

Vincent Van Gogh and Iconic Realism (Click onto title to hear Don McLean sing "Vincent" with accompanying Van Gogh paintings.)

Vincent Van Gogh

Painting by William Rock

Poetry by Huang Xiang

Translation of Huang Xiang's poetry, written in Chinese calligraphy on painting:

The painting holds high like torches 

Sunflowers turning high-heaven's blazing

SUN

To burn up the magnificent painting spirit 

stopped by a bullet

To burn down the temple of golden yellow

Opaque color -

dabs like clots of Blood

Gush fiery tears

Struggling lines feverishly erupt, 

twitching like raw nerves

The back view of a giant

Reappears

~ Huang Xiang

Starry Night 

by Vincent Van Gogh

An example of using a visual image to enhance meaning through the collective memory of a community exists within Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night. He places iconic, celestial figures: moon, sun, stars, as the focal point, disproportionate to the small, darkened village. With wide, brush strokes, he creates a memory in the form of movement that transcends the primary source of his painting, that of the cosmic link between the silent structures of society and the dichotomy of chaos and structure found in nature. 

He paints contrasts of light and dark, structure and non-structure, illuminating his audience of the need to consider his idea of the bleak constraints in many organized religions. Thus, he paints a challenge for the members of his society to consider personal enlightenment as an action that illumines the darkness of the soul. 

Through actively engaging in a positive response to our daily struggles, we become enlightened and aware of the chaos as seen in the brilliant, night sky. Once enlightened (or saved), we can attempt to make positive choices to help this world become more balanced and orderly, following the precepts set before us through our foundational beliefs. In this painting, Van Gogh illustrates his personal connection with the vast beauty of nature and many possibilities through spiritual enlightenment. 

Bostonian, Mercy Otis Warren, "Muse of the American Revolution"

Mercy Otis Warren, photo from cover of book:

Mercy Otis Warren: The Muse of the American Revolution

Mercy Otis Warren was born in 1728 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a successful businessman and an acquaintance of John Adams and his family and circle of friends. Warren observed the intensity with which her contemporaries had to live in order to receive the dignified respect that any human being would rightly expect to receive. Within her plays and essays, she included the concept of human rights advocacy and relevant themes of independence, juxtaposed with iconic characters and structures to bring awareness to her audience of the need for social and political transformation.

For example, in her 1773 play, The Adulateur, Warren described the issue of individual rights through the speech of her main character, Brutus:

            The change how drear! The sullen ghost of bondage

            Stalks full in view—already with her pinions,

            She shades the affrighted land—the insulting soldiers

            Tread down our choicest rights; while hoodwinked justice

            Drops her scales, and totters from her basis.

            Thus torn with nameless wounds, my bleeding country
            Demands a tear – that tear I’ll freely give her. 


[1] Mercy Otis Warren, The Adulateur, Act I, Scene I, Boston: New Printing Office, 1773.

        

Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite: Music and Iconic Realism

Click HERE to view a rendition of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite Number I, Opus 46

         A delicate melody flows from a flute. One by one, the oboe, then strings, echo this melody until the orchestra swells with the soft, yet intensely resonating melody. Eventually, every section of the orchestra sings this song of peaceful resolve, as the audience awakens to Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite Number 1, Opus 46.  Grieg introduces the gentlest instruments of the orchestra and gradually blends in the strength of the entire string and brass sections with a calm resonance a listening audience could associate with morning sunrise. Grieg’s opus illustrates iconic realism as each member of the audience attends to this aural depiction of the dawn of something within its consciousness, interpreting possibility in variation with a theme.

       Iconic structures in music include those resonating mechanisms that represent a specific sound source recognized by a community. These aural sources could include human made instruments, the human voice or natural sounds common within a specific environment. For example, the oboe is a wind instrument that produces sounds very close in frequency and intensity to the human voice. In many baroque pieces of music, which were composed during the enlightenment of human culture, the oboe is a featured instrument, which establishes the iconic nature of the oboe within a musical piece constructed of other wind instruments.

         Since the human voice would not naturally be situated in a musical ensemble, the placement of this icon for the human voice provides the listener an opportunity to attend to this iconic realism within the musical genre of artistic expression and feel the dissonant harmonics that naturally resolve to consonance when the oboe blends with the instrumentation. This aural exercise incorporates resonating sound waves with the listener’s memory, which leads to an interpretation of the sound and thus, the association of significant meaning to the specific sound. 

(from my book, The Theory of Iconic Realism: Understanding the Arts through Cultural Context)

The Great Escape movie and Iconic Realism

The Great Escape movie poster from 'Duck Duck Go' Images

Once, I was channel surfing and landed on The Great Escape, a 1963 film directed by John Sturges. I couldn't help but notice that this film illustrates the semiotic theory of iconic realism in that the audience perceives icons of both freedom and constraint through the character representations of the Allied prisoners of WWII and the German gestapo. 

As the film progresses with bucolic settings that also provide a perception of freedom, only to be constrained by the Nazi forces, the viewer becomes poignantly aware of freedom and its multiple forms. In the end, those characters who are still alive, question their need for physical freedom from the p.o.w. camp as they learn to appreciate their spiritual, intellectual, and emotional autonomy. 

To hear me read this, please click HERE.