Post.Modern.Era. Asher.Period.1.Team.8

Sigmund Freud was a well-known and highly acclaimed Austrian neurologist, who discovered the basic ideals of psychoanalysis. Freud’s desire to discover and need of knowledge led him to actively pursue an education of microscopic neuro-anatomy. Freud’s research on the subconscious mind and repressions directly influenced the era of the time – The Post-Modern. This people of this era lived in constant apprehension, worry and discontent. Society has just witnessed World War II, and believed that another outbreak would likely occur. Because of this, the general mindset of this era was of indifference; that there was no crucial reason to live life. These nihilist-like ideals combined with Freud’s realistic disposition, spurred many feelings and influential notions in minds of writer James Joyce, Pollack, as well as Warhol. James Joyce’s writing style was predominantly of a stream of consciousness. He embodied textured symbolism throughout his novels and essays, all the while incorporating one key central theme throughout: the stages of one’s life through maturity, and the way in which each stage represents and affects’ one’s own identity. Artist Pollack painted depictions which represented his true emotions. He was well-known for his artistic style, identified as drip painting. This is type of painting is open to a plethora of interpretation; it is simply a scattering of paint onto an empty canvas. Freud was an advocator of open representation; Pollack embodied what Freud believed in. Pollack was also known to suffer from a severe mental illness, which further intensified his drip paintings. In “Eyes in the Heat,” Pollack infuses soft, pastel colors with sharp black tones to create a melodramatic ambiance. This cluttered painting is mostly in soft colors, with hints of black peaking underneath. This can depict how Pollack expressed his inner most thoughts, which he generally hid from the public, into his paintings. Andy Warhol, on the other hand, portrayed objects in a larger than life manner. His work is known to explore the relationship between self-expression, celebrity culture as well as advertisement. In his painting of the iconic Marilyn Monroe, he strategically created four boxes in which her face was painted and shaded a different color. He does this in a means of making an iconic woman appear nothing but ordinary. We as people are made the same; if we see an image many times - it becomes instilled, engrained into our minds. Similarly Freud believes that that which we see multiple times becomes engrained into our minds. Our association with that particular image then serves as a comforting method, to which we can always relate to.

Jessie Yen, Ruhi Sharma, Sidney Gerst, Rachel Clauss. TEAM.8.