A house that made me look twice!

So, I was in my Spanish class today. We looked at an artist named Antoni Gaudi. He was most known for his modernist art as an architect; however, as I looked at his work I couldn't help but think about Shklovsky. If the purpose of art is to "shock" us out of everyday life and to see things again as for the first time, take a look at this!!! Talk about a whole new way to look at a house! Again, as I have thought about this site and the direction that I want to take it, I feel like I am being drawn more and more to collecting different objects (whether that be architecture, literature, film, television, or attire) within our culture that should be considered art due to the fact that they are consistent with Shklovsky's idea that the purpose of art is to make us unfamiliar to those objects and ideas that we have become habitualized to throughout our lives. Anyways, I feel like this is a great example of a piece of architecture that should be considered art due to the aesthetic beauty of the piee itself and the way that it causes its viewers to look at it for a prolonged period of time in order to become familiar with it. All in all, it is a great example of an object that has a defamiliarizing effect on us as viewers. Everything about the structure does this, especially when compared to the houses that are next to it. What ya think?

Something interesting....

Look at this: The Case of Allusion

So, I was looking through journals and articles on the database called Project MUSE (great source for info btw), and I came across a very interesting article discussing defamiliarization within Biblical passages. Within the particular article, the author presents evidence of the distinction between prose and poetry using Biblical narratives and Homer's "oral epics" (quoted from the article). He makes the claim that Robert Alter's study, The Art of Biblical Narrative, shows that the Bible is consistent with Shklovsky's idea of defamiliarization while Homer's tales are consistent with the aesthetic principle of familiarity. It seems very interesting to me and may be a stepping stone for me to begin looking at more evidence of this thought that the Bible is loaded with passages containing defamiliarization. However, I do not know yet if this will be the ultimate direction of my blog.

(Certain language from the above passage was paraphrased from the article I found on project MUSE. (The link is located at the top of the post!!!)

Basis for the Site

So, after my last post, I got to thinking about this idea of defamiliarization and felt like I needed to familiarize myself with it to be honest. So follow this link and check out what Shklovsky himself said about defamiliarization. In this piece of literary criticism, he basically lays out his view of what art is and what the purpose of art is in society. It is his famous essay about defamiliarization itself.

Father of Estrangement

Viktor Shklovsky has been referred to as the theorist who founded the literary idea of "art as defamiliarization." He was a Russian theorist who lived after Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. As a theorist and writer, he had intellectual giants to compete with. While living in Russia for the early parts of his life, he was forced into exile and eventually had to flee to Berlin. After many years, he was able to return to his motherland. While this blog will predominantly focus on Shklovsky's theory of art existing in order to defamiliarize or estrange us. In fact, he refers to the purpose of art in his piece, "Art as Technique" by saying: And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important.
This is a profound idea about the purpose of art. Therefore, what I hope to do on this blogsite is both accumulate certain artforms that do this in our culture, as well as critique certain aspects of those forms of art by showing how they make objects or ideas unfamiliar to us today.Prior to getting into that; however, you may be interested in learning a little bit about the man who termed the phrase. For biographical information and interesting history about his life and way of life, look here: "Viktor Shklovsky" and "Estrangement as a Lifestyle"

First Post

So, this is my first post ever. My first blog ever. Basically, I am experiencing what Shklovsky termed defamiliarization (the idea that art is supposed make us experience and look at things as though we had never looked at them before.) Think about how you would describe a computer if it was the first time you had ever seen it!! Tolstoy is one of the writers that did this best. Anyways, hopefully this page will challenge you to think about this idea. I am hoping to learn a lot about it myself. Before I get background info regarding this concept and ways it has been applied and is currently applied in culture, I want to hit you all with something to start. I love hip hop music. Personally, I have stopped listening to a lot of secular hip hop, but one song that recently came out made me think about this art form. You may have heard of it. It is by a guy named Eminem. The song is called "Love the Way You Lie." Check it out. It was totally a new way to look at a domestic abusive relationship. Definitely not the prettiest form of art, but still relevant. Look at the video and see if the lyrics make you think about the relationship in a different way than you ever have before.

Watch the video here.