Absalom, Absalom! And All the King's Men Essay

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Absalom, Absalom! And All the King's Men represent a less traditional, more subversive version of history, and how they are also clearly male representations of history

From Duchamp's analogies between humans and machines, to the traumatized bodies of dadaism and surrealism, to the gendered politics of horizontal sculptures, the body figures have had a prominent position in the art of the teens and postwar decades. The purpose of the present paper is to discuss the context, cultural meanings and aesthetics of the modernist body, now gendered male, female or androgynous. In order to do that, we will concentrate our attention on two statues made by Giacometti and Epstein respectively, called "Woman with her throat cut" and "Woman possessed."

The choice is motivated for the important changes in aesthetics and the philosophical thought they reflect. The choice of a female gender is not a casual one and in the following paragraphs we will show why. One of the most relevant aspects that must be discussed is the absence of the pedestal.

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The pedestal represents the context, the environment in which the piece of art is situated and which allows the viewers to recognize it as such. If the artwork tells a story, then it is the pedestal which orientates its direction. In addition, the pedestal implies a distinct separation between the environment of the viewer and the environment of the contemplated piece. The absence of the pedestal annuls this separation, with some important consequences.

One of these consequences is the passage from verticality to horizontality. Art critics have suggested that even in the case of a sculpture represented in a horizontal position, the presence of a pedestal gives it attributes which care associated with verticality. If the sculpture is….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/absalom-absalom-king-men-5869
   

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