Kelly Vargas ENG 340-2 Professor Ramey Patch #3

The Luckman Gallery Exhibit: Nancy Popps Untitled (Street Performances) 2005-2010 The purpose of my review is to explain how Nancy Popps Untitled (Street Performances) 2005-2010 connects art to literature. The audience for my review are my classmates who will be able to understand through my explanatory essay how art connects to literature and the world around us. I picked this piece from the exhibit for two reasons: the first being as simple as a crumb, because Nancy Popps act of climbing up poles instantly brought up memories of my childhood, when I climbed trees and hung out in the branches for hours. This exhibit drew me in with a tiny crumb beckoning me to take a closer look. The second reason is because there are many questions raised such as, why did the artist pick three U.S. cities and four foreign cities? Do they somehow share a special tie to each other? If not, then what does the changing landscape mean? The three U.S. cities she selected must have some significance out of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. cities. Why did she pick Belgrade the largest city in Serbia and the well known cities of London, England, and Tijuana, Mexico? Could there be clues in how these foreign countries compare and contrast with each other? Is it the location itself or the socioeconomic factors of each location that tie them together in some way like a patchwork quilt? We all have heard of these places for sure even if we have not seen or been to them ourselves. As I said before, I was drawn to Popps artwork because I could relate it to my memories. Literary scholars also find themselves relating personal experiences to the texts they encounter. The questions I had about Popps work are almost the same types of questions I asked when I first read History Lesson by Natasha Trethewey. I found

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myself pondering which critical theories would I want to apply in my interpretation of the poem. Do I consider approaching it by cultural studies or historical Criticism or both? What elements of poetry standout? In Tretheweys use of diction in History Lesson led me to question why she said the flowered hips instead of my flowered hips (3). What underlying message was she conveying when she chose to use the word dart and the phrases glinting like switchblades and the sun cuts? (5. 6-7). Was she eluding to the racial undertones of our contemporary society that have survived desegregation? These questions I have mentioned are just the beginning of the many questions that Tretheweys poem raises with her eloquently layered form, diction, assonance, and enjambment. As I have explained, you can see that Nancy Popps artwork, as does many other pieces of art, effectually evoke questions for the viewer in the same way we as literary scholars do when we read a poem or any other genre of literature. Art comes in many different forms as does literature. We typically envision paintings and sculptures. However, poetry and the many genres of literature are likewise artistic expressions and have effectively referenced one form with the other. We can readily find illustrated novels where pictures are incorporated within the narrative to further enhance the understanding of the text. This is more often utilized in works geared to, but not limited to, younger readers. We often find a form of art incorporated within educational texts to facilitate the learning experience of the arbitrary concepts. For example, a biology textbook includes pictures of DNA which illustrates its corkscrew structure that is not viewable by the naked eye. History texts often incorporate artwork created from the era to show how the landscape and/or Indian

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tribes appeared to the newcomers, the English settlers for example. From incorporating art the scholar of today can read into the inferences implied to attempt to understand a point of view such as those of the English settlers when they first encountered America. Art and literature can go hand in hand, even if the artwork or literary piece was not created to invoke the creation of one or the other. We can learn from them individually and potentially enhance our learning of a subject by incorporating both forms. Art and Literature both call upon the individual to ask questions to further enhance ones lifelong journey of inquiry.

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Work Cited Popp, Nancy. Untitled (Street Performances) 2005-2010. The Luckman Gallery, California State University Los Angeles, California. Trethewey, Natasha. History Lesson. Literature, a portable Anthology. Third ed. Boston, NY: Bedford/St. Martins. 2013. 699