Paintings and Clocks

I’m a bit disappointed that I chose to spend last week’s blog talking about analyzing the book object as an artifact, as it would have applied perfectly to this week’s question!  But there are certainly plenty of other artifacts and texts that would be interesting to study.  Like Prof. Galey’s example of the Joseph Wright painting in the Bond film, I think it would be interesting to conduct a study of a number of famous artworks that can be seen in the background of popular movies over the past, say, 40 years.  This would likely lend itself to a fun analysis of referential, implicit and symptomatic readings of the individual films, and might also paint a broader picture (yes, pun intended) of the development and changes of background composition and aesthetic tastes over the decades. 

As I’m writing this post, I’m scanning the living room of my house for other artifacts that could be studied, and I’m surprised (and a bit delighted) by the number of objects within ten feet of me that I would seriously consider researching.  A close reading of a clock would be interesting, as one could extrapolate the mechanics of the individual clock into an analysis of the changes in clock design and use over time.  This could perhaps parallel an analysis of humanity’s notions of and relationship to time, and could also delve into literary representations of watches, clocks, ticking time bombs, and so on.  I’m reminded, for example, of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) constantly checking his watch as noted in his diaries, or the use of temporal constraints used in the literary experiments of the Oulipo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo). 

Works Cited

Pepys, S. (1932). Samuel Pepys’ diary. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.