Alice Dunbar-Nelson: Wilmington's Most Famous Writer

 

Many people in Wilmington don't know about the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Her Wikipedia page describes her time teaching at Howard High School. Here is a link to an online exhibition of her work and writing curated by the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia. We're going to read a short story of hers from the collection, The Goodness of St. Rocques, and other stories, that features a musical artist and his trials, tribulations, and triumphs. 

This is your reading assignment for next Tuesday, September 12. Go to the Lessons tab on our Populi page to get the links. 

Pavement Art Now!

 Pavement artists still exist today. Sometimes they work the sidewalks for donations, kind of like a street musician. The same places in central London that Dickens mentions in 1862 are still in active use by pavement artists just trying to make a meager living.

And then there are street artists who make commissioned art on sidewalks, roads, parking lots, and other flat public places. Jeff Huntington is a DC-based mural artist who assembled a big team of volunteers to paint a portrait of Breonna Taylor and Black Lives Matter over two basketball courts in Annapolis, MD. Check out the video.

 

Kate Flint on Dickens, Pavement Art, and the Visual Imagination

 

The day concluded with a final keynote presentation by Kate Flint on the subject of “Pavement Art”. Flint began with a short story by Dickens, “His Brown Paper Parcel” (“Somebody’s Luggage”; All the Year Round, 1862 Christmas edition), in which the narrator is a pavement artist: why, Flint asked, would such a figure be so interesting to Dickens? In what followed, Flint offered a wonderfully rich exploration of pavement artists in the nineteenth century and explored the questions raised through this unique form of visual culture. Pavement art occupies an interesting, often contradictory, space: it is ephemeral yet immobile/immoveable; outside of institutions and the marketplace, yet necessarily public and invites the viewer to participate in a form of artistic patronage; often produces a copied image but never produces a definitive replica and depends upon being constantly reproduced; creates delight amongst its audience through the process of its creation more than in existing as a finished product. Pavement art troubles and challenges the definition of art and artist, and in turn raises complex questions about the relationship between author and art work, raising issues of ownership and authorship, creation and performance, and the position of art in the public sphere- all especially important to Dickens at a time when he was touring the country performing extracts of his own work in his final years. Ideas were raised here too about the mobility of the artist and the circulation of art, resonating with the rise in print circulation throughout the nineteenth century and Flint picked up on this relationship, as well as questions around the legitimacy of wandering and loitering.

Illustration of a pavement artist from The Graphic, September 1874

Flint’s talk provided a stimulating end to the day, and in its analysis of a different form of culture also spoke to some of the issues that Lynda Nead had raised in questioning the idea of the visual imagination: there was here an idea about how we might define the visual imagination as being, like pavement art, something transient, ephemeral and almost impossible to truly grasp, something forged and re-forged in different contexts and places, resisting (or defeated by) the permanence of the art forms that it tries to get a hold of, and always part of a process of creative transformation that evolves, adapts, and opens up new possibilities for interpretation.

Pavement Artists: A Real Thing

The authorities have always tried to regulate pavement art by any means possible; today, the high street is in danger of dying through lack of trade, and still, the artists, and buskers who bring life and vitality to our streets are having a hard time of it.

It was no different back in 1871, as this little article proves:

The wayfarer in London has doubtless occasionally noticed on the pavement some highly-coloured work of art—a mackerel, somehow or other, usually being a stock subject with the artist; and a beautifully chalked inscription, involved in some very complicated flourishes, has informed the looker-on that the accomplished artist, who crouches down behind his chef-d’oeuvre, is out of work, and has a wife and seven children; or something of that sort.

Poor fellow, the pavement artists’ occupation is gone, or going. The Metropolitan Board of Works has no feeling for such art, or for the artist; and the former is now declared a penal offence and the latter liable to punishment.

SUSPICION: Punch cartoon from 1872

At first glance this may be regretted; but if it be true, as I have heard, that man behind the pavement drawing was seldom the real artist, and that some other mendicant “did it for the trade,” why that lessens one’s regret. As for the advertisers who are henceforth forbidden to stencil their announcements on the pavement, one has no pity for them. This is not legitimate advertising. Moreover, it must be very annoying for a tradesman to have plastered all over the pavement in front of his shop the advertisements of a rival in the same trade—very!

Published in the Alnwick Mercury (Saturday 18th March 1871)

Dalziel's Illustration for "His Brown Paper-Parcel"

 

https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/dalziel/57.html 

Caption Contest!

 

Write your own caption for this cartoon:

 

The New Yorker magazine runs a weekly cartoon caption contest. 

Check it out. 

Welcome to Class, Welcome to DCAD

This is our class blog. Please bookmark it on your browser's toolbar. Our "official" site for readings and assignments is our Populi page, but this blog will feature related information about art and writing.  

Whenever we write something, we are (almost) always writing for an audience that has certain expectations. For instance, a writer could accurately depict an event in two totally different ways, yet keep faithful to what happened in that event. Case in point: You go to a really fun party. You might send a text to your best friend. You might tweet about it. You might post an Insta. You might make a FaceBook post (no, only old people use FaceBook). You might write a Snap (that's probably old-fashioned too by now). You might write a standard email message. You might write a postcard. You might write a traditional, old-fashioned letter. All of these different formats bring with them their own "rules" or expectations. These are called genre conventions.

Academic writing has a shifting set of genre conventions. Literary writing also has a shifting set of genre conventions. 

Let's take a look at a short story, "The Last Leaf," written by the American author "O. Henry." It has been adapted in countless ways. Here are a few:

Here's an article about Genre Conventions to get us started. 

Links Below to 15 Versions of "The Last Leaf" 

First Appearance, 1906, page 198

Original Story

Film Version

Longer Film Version

Mormon Film Version

Children's Animation

Learning English

Audiobook

Japanese Anime Version

1963 Pop Song

Tom Waits & Keith Richards Version

Storyboard Comic Version

Quasi-Documentary Version

Reader's Digest Version

I did not include a link to the version by heavy-metal band, Monolord. Curious students can easily find it with a Google search, but it's too disturbing for general consumption.