Word After Word

In order to explain how one uses the self as a subject and a focus for one’s work, fabulous art writer Peter Schjeldahl quotes T. S. Eliot in his 11/5/07 New Yorker piece on Frida Kahlo and the quote is so wonderful–I want all my nonfiction students to read it. Here’s Schjeldahl:

“Kahlo’s self-portraits are about her gaze, as subject matter, technique, and content. They dramatize sheer attentiveness. They tell us exactly what it’s like to be Frida Kahlo, with, I believe, a superbly indifferent confidence that we will not understand. She confides, but she won’t plead. She makes eye contact not with the viewer but with herself–watching herself watch herself, in an extended but closed loop. T. S. Eliot articulated the truth, regarding all successful art, of a dissociation of “the man who suffers and the mind which creates.”

Hey spring semester students — this is what we are going to try to do.