Art Quotes --Gabriel Molina

I chose the quote by Amy Lowell as the one that expresses a belief about art most similar to mine. She says,

"Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in."

I explained in an earlier blog post that I believe part of the role of an artist in to be honest in his/her expression. Art has the potential to communicate an idea/belief/message in a deeper way than in plain statement.

Claude McKay's "The Harlem Dancer" is a good example of what Lowell says about art. The speaker of the poem observes the scene of a Harlem nightclub, and to borrow Lowell's words, "record[ed] the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in." We know that the words of the poem are from the author's own personal reaction because of how he distances himself from the other people present in the scene. Throughout the poem he contrasts his perspective with that of the boys and girls watching the dancer. He writes that the boys and girls "devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze," but he claims that he "knew her self was not in that strange place." He distances himself by not providing his gender or age as he does the others. This is how we know that the expressions of the poem are solely his, therefore being consistent with what Amy Lowell says about art.