Ulysses Novel Influence on the Contemporary Art, Research Paper Example

James Joyce is the author of Ulysses, a novel that had a great impact on modern art. As a result of the influence, many contemporary artists emerged and came up with various artworks, and exhibits that this novel by the named author influenced contemporary art. The essay’s central argument will be on how modern art was influenced by the novel named above and the various artists. They came up with personal artworks influenced by Ulysses written by James Joyce. The novel can be recognized as a prominent landmark that greatly impacted today’s art. Various scholarly publications, books, and articles summarized how Ulysses influenced contemporary art (Hall, 2008).

Joyce applied symbols, overtones, ambiguities, and metaphors in the novel. These language tools were used in a manner that they were able to form a connections network that bound the whole work in the novel. The style of using these important tools influenced modern art as various modern artists learned the importance of applying these language tools in their artworks (Sicari, 2001). Modern arts implemented this idea from the novel. As a result, modern artwork was able to be bound together using these tools adopted from Ulysses (Tamura, 2012). There was an argument by a novel writer named Nabokov that the origin of the Ulysses novel was noble and had unique lucidity in the styles that were used and the main thoughts in the novel (Silva et al., 2020). As a result, the novel was regarded as a divine artwork. The divine nature of Ulysses’s novel was enough to prove that the novel influenced contemporary art. All modern artists need divine artwork. The divine nature of the artwork in the Ulysses novel greatly influenced modern art as it gave a good direction that all artists should come up with divine artworks (Wales, 1992). A specific article summarized the Ulysses novel by arguing that the artwork depicted various complexities of life with linguistic, unprecedented, and unequaled virtuosity. It was a good example of all the modern artworks (Karakaçi, 2013). It indicated that all contemporary artworks should depict various life complexities with similar basics. Various books and articles argue that James Joyce achieved an integral and coherent life interpretation (Lerm Hayes, 2007). Modern artworks aim at achieving the same interpretation of life. Ulysses’s artwork set out an important direction for other modern artists to ensure that their artworks stick to this modernity. Various scholarly publications argue that Ulysses’s novel deeply illustrated the interior monologue and enhanced a stream of consciousness for any reader. It was a technique that influenced contemporary art (Hutchins, 2016).

Various modern artists learned this technique from Ulysses’s novel and preferred to ensure that their artworks had a good representation of the best flow of feeling, thought, and the best reflection of the mind. They would ensure that their artworks illustrated the shifts in the mood. James Joyce portrayed an ordinary specific day as unfamiliar, strange, and special. It was a very ordinary day that talked about the life of Leopold Bloom, but it was portrayed as if it was a strange and ordinary day. It was a unique method of presenting artworks, and other artists have embarked on adopting the same method to bring out the main content in their artworks. Finally, there was a logical arrangement and flow of the key content in the novel. The events of the specific day in the life of Bloom were well illustrated in a well-arranged, logical flow. Modern artists have adopted the same content flows in their various artworks.

Various artists came up with various artwork and exhibits related to James Joyce’s novel – Ulysses. Some of the artists came up with artwork influenced by the novel. Joseph Kosuth was an artist who specialized in conceptual art (Frank, 1945). The artist came up with artwork related to the novel – Ulysses. The title of the work was 18 titles and hours. The work by this author focused mainly on the language which Ulysses used. In this new novel, Kosuth strictly followed the 18 episodes present in Bloomsday (Deming, 1970). All of the episodes used in the 18 titles had themes and each theme corresponded to the Greek classic used in the Ulysses novel (Hart, 1977). There was another artist named Lawrence Weiner. He came up with an artwork named Mural Opus # 843, which was in the form of a poem (Kimball, 1989). The artwork was a reflection of Ulysses’s novel. This artist used words as the central point of his art in the artwork. Mural Opus # 843 featured two main density phrases that we can present on the wanderings of the main characters in the Ulysses novel and the topographic mode of thought, which was applied in the Ulysses novel (Boone,1982). 1Thirdly, there was an artist known as Robert Motherwell. Various concepts influenced Ulysses’s novel to develop his artwork (Lerm-Hayes et al., 2004). One of his Abstract Expressionism artworks was titled – Ulysses Suite. The title was adopted from the novel by James Joyce. Ulysses Suite also took Obscure etchings from various parts of the novel – Ulysses (Crispi, 2015). In this artwork by Motherwell, there was alum-tawed pigskin which had been edited from the Ulysses novel.

There was an artist who was known as Richard Hamilton. He came up with an artwork that had the title; Imaging Ulysses. As the name of the title states, this artwork was about the specific novel by artist James Joyce (Coppel, 1989). The pop artist had the ambition to ensure that he illustrated the entire Ulysses novel, which he loved. This artist completed eight accompaniments for 18 chapters in Ulysses’s novel. There is a clear illustration of how artist Hamilton loved the politics and various cultures of the Irish, which had been described in the James Joyce novel (Clay, 2015). There was an artist who was known as Charlene Matthews. She was a book artist who decided to handwrite the whole Ulysses novel by using the title of his artwork as – 38 Poles. She worked hard and covered the entire content of the Ulysses novel within two years (Brockman et al., 2015). She was able to cover all the 18 episodes of the novel, which consisted of 700 pages (Hogan, 2013). All the Intricate and technical work in the Ulysses novel was well covered in the handwritten artwork named 38 poles. Finally, there was an artist who was known as Rob Berry. He came up with an online book which was titled Ulysses Seen. It was an adaptation of the Ulysses novel (Benstock, 1980). The main objective of the adapted artwork was to cover up the artist’s humor in the Ulysses novel. Artist Berry aims to cover up the whole adaptation of the novel within ten years.

The above-explained summaries and arguments in the various sources have clearly described how James Joyce Ulysses’s novel influenced contemporary art. As explained in the essay, various artists learned various artwork presentation skills from the novel. The various artists who came up with various artworks and exhibits that discussed the Ulysses novel have been stated, and the contents of their related artwork. The artists influenced by the Ulysses novel in their artwork have also been stated.

References

Benstock, Shari. “The Double Image of Modernism: Matisse’s Etchings for” Ulysses. ” Contemporary Literature 21.3 (1980): 450-479. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208252

Boone, Joseph Allen. “A New Approach to Bloom as” Womanly Man”: The Mixed Middling’s Progress in” Ulysses. ” James Joyce Quarterly 20.1 (1982): 67-85. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25476481

Brockman, William S. “Current JJ Checklist (135).” James Joyce Quarterly 56.3 (2019): 381-398. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/749828/summary

Clay, Rebecca. “Making James Joyce Contemporary: Recreating Classical Fiction.” Journal of International Education and Leadership 5.1 (2015): n1. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1135496

Coppel, Stephen. “Richard Hamilton’s Ulysses Etchings An Examination of Work in Progress.” Print Quarterly 6.1 (1989): 10-42. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41824496

Crispi, Luca. Joyce’s Creative Process and the Construction of Characters in Ulysses: Becoming the Blooms. OUP Oxford, 2015. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Crispi%2C+Luca.+Joyce%27s+Creative+Process+and+the+Construction+of+Characters+in+Ulysses%3A+Becoming+the+Blooms.+OUP+Oxford%2C+2015.&btnG=

Deming, Robert H., ed. James Joyce. London: Routledge, 1970. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.874.5977&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Frank, Joseph. “Spatial Form in modern literature: An essay in two parts.” The Sewanee Review 53.2 (1945): 221-240. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27537575

Hall, Edith. “The return of Ulysses: a cultural history of Homer’s Odyssey.” (2008). https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Hall%2C+Edith.+%22The+return+of+Ulysses%3A+a+cultural+history+of+Homer%27s+Odyssey.%22+%282008%29.&btnG=

Hart, Clive, and David Hayman, eds. James Joyce’s Ulysses: critical essays. Vol. 382. Univ of California Press, 1977. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dIYv8pP8pJQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Hart,+Clive,+and+David+Hayman,+eds.+James+Joyce%27s+Ulysses:+critical+essays.+Vol.+382.+Univ+of+California+Press,+1977.&ots=EpnDqbGbSe&sig=JsWi4gAHNd0RRMTJOFjtdypPolc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition. Routledge, 2013. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203762165/ulysses-poetics-cognition-patrick-colm-hogan

Hutchins, Patricia. James Joyce’s World (Routledge Revivals). Routledge, 2016. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315624884/james-joyce-world-routledge-revivals-patricia-hutchins

Karakaçi, Dalila, and Rregjina Gokaj. “Analyzing Elements of Modernism and Modern Androgyny in James Joyce “Ulysses” and William Faulkner “The Sound and the Fury. ” Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 2.4 (2013): 107. https://www.mcser.org/journal/index.php/ajis/article/view/112

Kimball, Jean. “Autobiography as Epic: Freud’s Three-Time Scheme in Ulysses.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language (1989): 475-496. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40754905

Lerm Hayes, Christa-Maria. “Re-inventing the Literary Exhibition: Exhibiting (Dialogical and Subversive) Art on (James Joyce’s) Literature.’.” Working Papers on Design 2 (2007). https://www.herts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/12324/WPD_vol2_lermhayes.pdf

Lerm-Hayes, Christa-Maria, James Elkins, and Patrick T. Murphy. Joyce in Art: Visual Art Inspired by James Joyce. Lilliput Press, 2004. https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/en/publications/joyce-in-art-visual-art-inspired-by-james-joyce-3

Sicari, Stephen. Joyce’s modernist allegory: Ulysses and the history of the novel. Univ of South Carolina Press, 2001. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=V24nYd9s5O8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Sicari,+Stephen.+Joyce%27s+modernist+allegory:+Ulysses+and+the+history+of+the+novel.+Univ+of+South+Carolina+Press,+2001.&ots=mxAkusu6FY&sig=bnLGtGJKYPMFXSRYNlhZCC3wBBo&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Sicari%2C%20Stephen.%20Joyce’s%20modernist%20allegory%3A%20Ulysses%20and%20the%20history%20of%20the%20novel.%20Univ%20of%20South%20Carolina%20Press%2C%202001.&f=false

Silva, Emma-Louise, Sam Slote, and Dirk Van Hulle. James Joyce and the Arts. BRILL, 2020. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=egTeDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=Silva,+Emma-Louise,+Sam+Slote,+and+Dirk+Van+Hulle.+James+Joyce+and+the+Arts.+BRILL,+2020.&ots=TLxSse9Ed9&sig=F0RBFijBh_7tKn4wQzzxc5jpY_E&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Silva%2C%20Emma-Louise%2C%20Sam%20Slote%2C%20and%20Dirk%20Van%20Hulle.%20James%20Joyce%20and%20the%20Arts.%20BRILL%2C%202020.&f=false

Tamura, Akira. “Ulysses and the Visual Arts: Irish Painting, Impressionism, and Modernism.” Treatises and studies by the Faculty of Kinjo Gakuin College 8.2 (2012): 76-91. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Tamura%2C+Akira.+%22Ulysses+and+the+Visual+Arts%3A+Irish+Painting%2C+Impressionism%2C+and+Modernism.%22+Treatises+and+studies+by+the+Faculty+of+Kinjo+Gakuin+College+8.2+%282012%29%3A+76-91.&btnG=

Wales, Katie. The Language of James Joyce. Macmillan International Higher Education, 1992. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XEhdDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=Wales,+Katie.+The+Language+of+James+Joyce.+Macmillan+International+Higher+Education,+1992.&ots=KdJ55Tqi3W&sig=92BfIKf75Rix76M49VxKFbJHep4&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Wales%2C%20Katie.%20The%20Language%20of%20James%20Joyce.%20Macmillan%20International%20Higher%20Education%2C%201992.&f=false