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CREATIVITY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY PRO FESS OR SUSAN ACA M PORA SPRING 201 5

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CREATIV

ITY

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AUTOBIO

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CREATIVITY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

History of Autobiography

Everyone has a story, Everyone needs a voice.

“What makes people despair is that they try to find a universal meaning to the whole of life, and then end up by saying it is absurd, illogical, empty of meaning. There isnot one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” Anais Nin

We need not measure ourselves by the experience of others, but rather we need seek and speak our own unique truth.

ANAIS NIN

Born in France

Multicultural Family Upbringing

Self Taught

Abandoned by her father when very young

Distraught , she began a Diary as a letter to her estranged father

Became a famous 20th century writer of poetry and prose, a continuous novel exploring the inner lives of women.

Feminist

Most famous for her Diaries which spanned from childhood to the day she died.

CREATIVITY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN HISTORY 17,300 years ago 900 works of art embedded deep within

the earth.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lasc/hd_lasc.htm

Lascaux Cave Paintings a series of interconnected caves in southwest France

Pigments made from minerals and include red, yellow, black, brown, and violet.

Painting tools may have been made from strips of moss or hair or chalk-like chunks of stone or raw color.

“The surfaces appear to have been covered by paint blown directly from the mouth or through a tube; color-stained, hollowed-out bones have been found in the caves.”

http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/index.php?lng=en

ANCIENT HAND PRINTS

Mysterious and beautiful images embedded in dark caves reveal the attempts of humans to speak of their lives

THE HUNT

Mostly images of animals; may have been records of the hunt

WOUNDED MAN

Records of life and death

HORSES

Records the beauty of the creatures in their world

A CLIP FROM THE DOCUMENTARY "CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS" BY WERNER HERZOG.

PETROGLYPH NATIONAL MONUMENT NEW MEXICO

THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

NATIVE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

MYSTERIOUS SYMBOLS: WARRIORS?

CORN STALKS?

WHAT STORIES LIE BEHIND THESE IMAGES?

TRIBAL DRESS OR ALIENS?

DENSELY PACKED IMAGERY – PRACTICE DRAWING WALL OR RECORD OF EVENTS?

SHEEP?

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS

ANCIENT EGYPT

“ the furnishings for a rich man’s tomb included statues and pictures of himself, and a first person account of his life carved on tablets and walls. Tristine Rainer – Your Life as Story

Pharoh Narmer Menes

THE PALATTE OF NARMER MENES

CHRONICLES THE PHAROH’S TRIUMPH OF THE UNIFICATION OF UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT

“ In the era of the New Kingdom mummies were entombed with their autobiographies clutched to their breasts.” Tristine Rainer – Your Life as Story

Some mummies show tatoos. Are these part of their stories?

WENI THE ELDER TOMB ENSCRIPTION

Everyone who has studied ancient Egyptian history is familiar with the autobiography of Weni the Elder, an enterprising individual who lived during the 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2407-2260 BCE). His inscription, excavated in 1860 from his tomb in the low desert at Abydos in southern Egypt, enthusiastically describes his long service under three kings, culminating in his appointment as "True Governor of Upper Egypt."

http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Publications/spring2000/abydos.html

WENI THE ELDER’S TRANSLATION

EARLY CHRISTIAN MEMOIRS

The Confessions of St. Augustine – An “admission of his sins and his longing for God”

WENI THE ELDER’S TRANSLATION

Autobiographical writings of ancient Eqyptians were meant to accompany them to the afterworld as testaments of their good deeds to deem them worthy of entry into heaven.

EARLY CHRISTIAN MEMOIRSST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE

Born November 13, 354 AD within Roman Empire in Africa

– An “admission of his sins and his longing for God”

Shift from singing one’s praises to humbling oneself in the sight of God

But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error. (I.20.1)

SECULAR AUTOBIOGRAPHIES 16TH C

Benvenuto Celini Florence Renaissance

Goldsmith/Sculptor

Writing shifts to a focus on the exploits of the self with an ample

Sampling of bragadocio

Cellini’s stories are filled with

Swashbuckling stories

Adventure, and tales of ego.

This man who tells here the story of his life was a murderer and a braggart, insolent, sensual, inordinately proud and passionate…John A. Symonds Introduction

UNITED STATES – EX SLAVE NARRATIVES

Approximately four million Americans enslaved in the United States were freed at the conclusion of the American Civil War. The stories of a few thousand have been passed on to future generations through word of mouth, diaries, letters, records, or written transcripts of interviews.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/title.html

FEMINIST MEMOIRS

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Stanton (1815–1902)Feminist Abolitionist 1830s and 1840sChronicled in her autobiography her growing awareness and activism regarding civil and women’s rights.

ONE OF THE EARLIEST KNOWN AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY AN AFRICAN WOMANAUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AFRICAN PRINCESS

The book follows Massaquoi, born the daughter of the King of Gallinas of Southern Sierra Leone in 1904, to Liberia, Nazi Germany and the segregated American South, where she wrote her memoirs while enrolled at Tennessee's Fisk University.

FIRST AFRICAN FEMALE AUTOBIOGRAPHERBorn to an African king in colonial Sierra Leone at the

beginning of the twentieth century, Princess Fatima Massaquoi lived an extraordinary life that encapsulated the contradictions, upheavals, and unprecedented opportunities of her time.

Beginning with her lovingly recounted memories of growing up in Liberia, it follows her to Hamburg, Germany, where she pursued an education and forged friendships, but also experienced the racism, terror, and nationalistic fervor that accompanied the Nazis' rise to power.

In the face of these mounting dangers, Massaquoi traveled to the United States, where she furthered her studies, …embracing her newfound freedom even as she observed deteriorating conditions in the segregated American South in the early years of the civil rights movement.

Spanning continents and cultures, this narrative introduces us to a truly remarkable woman while offering a fascinating window into the complex history of the twentieth century.

VINCENT VAN GOGH – STARRY NIGHT

WHEAT FIELDS

LETTERS TO THEO VAN GOGH

Painting of Vincent and Theo by Uraguay Artist Jorge Sosa Campiglia

FROM CAVE PAINTINGS TO GRAFFITI AND STREET ART

KILROY WAS A GRAFFITI CHARACTER ASSOCIATED WITH THE GIS OF WWII

Engraving of Kilroy on the WWII Memorial in Washington DC

TAGS – REMEMBER MY NAME

MEMORIALS

SWOON AND THE SECRET

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5298KZuW_JE

“The Genesis of Possible Worlds”

…maybe there’s kind of a slightly different world existing right where we are and your just need to have a sort of perceptual shift in order to see it”

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Graffiti Artist

Street Artist

Book Artist

ARTICLE IN SUNDAY NY TIMES MARCH 9, 2015

POEM FROM RECENTLY DISCOVERED JOURNAL OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIATA narrative poem

from his journal alluding to the trials of addiction and the creative process

NEO-EXPRESSIONISM

Many Stories Many Roads to Speak Your Truth

- Creativity and autobiography go hand in hand

- Creativity is autobiographywhether the story is embedded in image or text

-Truth vs FictionBoth have their placeAutobiography draws from both fact and imagination

- In this course you are encouraged to approach autobiographical writing from many perspectives.

- As you explore your own stories you are welcome to explore your facts, your myths, your dreams, your imaginings…

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