#art persuasion

[seren-dipitous-art]

Jason, edgelord since day one. Who also happens to read classic literature. Wearing leather even in medieval times because of course he is. Don’t ask me how he got those soles on his boots.

Still to come are yet more bats who can’t sit straight.

[thatcerealkiller]

[PERSUASION] Distract her with your lust for…

Thank you so much to @toytle for this fun art showing how Angelus and Astarion would handle Disciple Z’rell 🤣

[bigfatbreak]

In the changeling au, what does “keeping” mean? I know there’s the whole thing about faeries tricking people into “giving” them their names, but what actually happens in this au? Like what would the actual consequences be in a practical sense?

(And I assume nothing happens if Adrien just learns the names through other means bc they have to “give” it to him?)

it means that people who's names he has are susceptible to his illusions and persuasions, even if neither party knows it

they can't perceive what he doesn't want them to, and they're more likely to agree with what he asks, even if its wildly out of character for them. he doesn't know he has this power, he just thinks his friends are really nice to him

and yeah, if he learns someone's name secondhand, it doesn't count. it has to be a direct interaction, and it has to be comprehensible

[aredpainting]

A Thousand Years by Damien Hirst: How Does Mortality Persuade Us?

EJS, UNLV

UNDER SUPERVISION OF DR DONOVAN CONLEY

2022

The perpetuating cycle of life and death is the last, stubborn nail in our coffin. It digs through our oak wood exterior, eager to imprint its inevitability into our consciousness. The light at the end of the tunnel beckons for us to come closer; as we progress through our years, we abide. Our society is fascinated with life and death: its natural order gives us a set deadline of how we should perform our roles as individuals. The morbid curiosity that breeds from our inescapable fascination with death inspires many artists. Damien Hirst, a British contemporary, is consumed by our mortal Sisyphean cycle. He designed his exhibit in 1990, A Thousand Years, to showcase his compulsion towards our impermanence. A Thousand Years persuades the audience in the three following ways; our mortality is mirrored in the box, our death is unavoidable, and we should feed on satisfaction when we are allowed. In this essay, I will outline three persuasive techniques that emphasize Hirst’s purpose in A Thousand Years. I will use Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is The Message”, Helena Bilandzic and Rick Busselle’s “Narrative Persuasion” and Kenneth Burke’s “Psychology and Form” to examine the persuasiveness of this exhibit; the criteria I will follow is the effectiveness, impact and cultural response to A Thousand Years. Finally, I will offer recommendations to A Thousand Years to increase its persuasiveness.

Damien Hirst is a staple in the contemporary art scene. When A Thousand Years initially exhibited at the Young British Artists exhibition, Francis Bacon called Hirst personally to tell him of his admiration for A Thousand Years. Hirst, at his highest degree, enchants his viewers with his grotesque performances. Similar to A Thousand Years and exhibited a year after its release, Hirst launched The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. The title itself is an indicator of Hirst’s obsession with death; it tells the story of how death plagues our every day thoughts and behavior. It shows a tiger shark cloaked in formaldehyde encased in a steel-structured, glass cube. Hirst makes an example of living animals and often captures their mortality in formaldehyde; in a way, he is making them immortal. However, A Thousand Years is slightly more complicated than its predecessor. A Thousand Years is a large cube; inside the cube there are two sides. On one side lay a cow head, or in some recent renditions of the exhibit, a slab of meat. Above the deceased animal is an insect electrocution device. The second side is another cube. There are four, singular holes on each surface and inside the holes are maggots. The maggots evolve into flies and through the slim piece of glass that separates the two sides, the flies feed at the slab of meat. Alternatively, they become attracted to the light that glows off of the electrocution device then meet a shocking death. The exhibit is bizarre. It is full of gore. It is messy. It is an immediate juxtaposition to the sterile environment of an art museum. But it captivates the viewer because of its carnage. The sight of the decayed animal is alarming; some may say its cruelty. Though the real treat lay within the flies. When the audience examines the isolated cube, almost similar to a die, the birth of the maggots is brutal. They squirm out and away from their birth place, eager to develop into a fly; they amongst peers, unbeknownst to the limited fate they are presented. When they become flies, two paths unfold before them. They can choose to live a life of satisfaction, oblivion, and bliss through consumption of the decayed animal. Or they can wander beyond their bounds and fly to their death. Even when they see their companions die, they still choose to dance around the light, engrossed by its luminance and starkness to the world around them. Similar to Icarus and the Sun, the flies know nothing of consequence and prefer to live a life of grandeur rather than logic. A Thousand Years symbolizes the cycle of human life and how innate our desire to be alive, to be satisfied and to die truly is. We see the paths the world paves for us, and through our own reasoning and experience, we choose the route that is best fit for how we feel in the moment. Regardless of the outcome, we decide our fate.

Hirst does a fantastic job of persuading the audience of our mortality. He sends the message of our fragile state of being through three persuasive techniques. Through McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” he writes, “For the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces to human affairs” (McLuhan, 1). He explains that the medium is an extension of ourselves, and that the consequences or successes that follow align with our personal beliefs and society’s expectations. The medium controls how we interact with the world, how we interpret the world and how we connect with our peers. McLuhan quotes General David Sarnoff who says, “Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value” (McLuhan, 3). There is no objective opinion of whether apple pie is delicious or disgusting. It is varied by the individual. Like art, which is entirely subjective to the viewer and the artist, there is no correct way to understand the “message” presented by the medium. However, Hirst uses his medium to tell the story of an endless cycle of life or death, the audience is persuaded by our transience. This changes our behavior through fear, perhaps even through admiration for his work. Like Francis Bacon, we are allowed to feel appreciation for an exhibit that outlines a mundane, underrated chapter of our lives. Second, Helena Bilandzic and Rick Busselle’s “Narrative Persuasion” tell us the difference between narration and persuasion. They write, “This distinction between persuasion and narrative also is reflected in the view of audiences as processing information in either a paradigmatic or narrative mode” (Bilandzic & Busselle, 200). When we differentiate the paradigmatic and the narrative mode, we take into consideration their purpose. The paradigmatic mode weighs quantitive data; typically the paradigmatic mode evaluates facts and information. Versus its narrative counterpart which interprets qualitative data. The narrative mode is primarily focused on what events and characters caused this situation to arise (Bilandzic & Busselle, 200). An example of this is, “I got into a car wreck.” The audience is naturally curious what caused this event; was the wreck my fault, or was it the fault of an outside character, yet to be introduced to my narrative? An important key to the narrative mode is the story realization of the audience. Our minds are quick to use our own vernacular to assess the scene. We realize what we know, and this is explained further by Bilandzic and Busselle, “Story realization is the audience member’s cognitive and emotional understanding of events based on the text and their own pre-existing, relevant knowledge of the topic” (Bilandzic & Busselle, 201). When we apply the narrative persuasion to A Thousand Years, Hirst reaches the audience through an impractical method. He shocks the viewer with an outlandish performance; the narrative we can understand from A Thousand Years is a dead metaphor. It is a pattern depicted through our real lives, but it is also a subject we see regularly from media. As the viewer approaches the cube out of pure attraction, their subconscious makes an instant connection between the maggots, the flies, the slab of meat and the electrocution device hung so proudly above the rotation of mortality. The viewer’s vernacular expands their understanding of the impression Hirst is painting. With their prior understanding of life and death, how quickly flies die from electrocution and their compulsion towards meat, the realization is clear: death is inevitable. We move forward into how Kennth Burke’s “Psychology and Form” applies to Hirst’s A Thousand Years. Burke opens his essay with an excerpt from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He specifies the Act where Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus wait on the ghost of his father; the audience is aware of Hamlet’s mental deterioration, and whether we’re consciously anxious of his father’s arrival, we watch with anticipation. Instead of his late father’s entrance, we are met with a blare of trumpets, an indication of the king’s arrival. This in itself is form. Burke describes form as the “psychology of the audience” (Burke, 2). He goes on to make the interpretation as the following: “Or, seen from another angle, form is the creation of an appetite in the mind of the audience, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite” (Burke, 2). As we dig deeper into Hirst’s work, the form of his piece truly affects the viewer. Because the audience is initially shocked by the presence of a decaying animal, maggots and flies, the form is essential to A Thousand Years. Burke writes about a type of form, eloquence, which is greatly apparent in A Thousand Years. To quote Burke, “The methods of maintaining interest which are most natural to the psychology of information (as it is applied to works of pure art) are surprise and suspense” (Burke, 7). Eloquence is a tool that is exacerbated in Hirst’s work; when we are uncomfortable, our vulnerability allows room for growth and change. It allows introspection and cognitive function to pull forward and grasp our subconscious; it forces us to look at A Thousand Years with more than face value.

With the criteria I created in my opening paragraph, I will evaluate whether A Thousand Years is persuasive. Hirst, the sender, delivers a message of gutsy mortality. Its effectiveness is renounced in its structure; I admire the dedication to gore, despite the critiques that come with using live and real animals. While my personal values tell me to flinch and waver at the face of animal death, this is the reality of our world. There is no hiding from death, and even when we imagine a happy world where somehow everyone is immortal and pain-free, that is not the truth. It creates a productive conversation within the contemporary art sphere, and it is present in the rhetorical sphere now, too. Hirst also demonstrates the impact A Thousand Years holds by its presence in an art museum. As previously stated, the evident disparity between the aseptic white walls versus the bloody, lifeless head of an animal is an image that will burn into anyone’s mind. Another perspective I’d like to add is during COVID-19, the exhibit was still open to viewers; when we observe A Thousand Years behind a mask and through its glass walls, it intensifies the feeling the art museum instills. We observe our lives in a barbaric, unsafe and uncensored fashion in a sterile environment. Finally, the cultural response speaks for itself. While PETA succeeded in dismantling A Thousand Years in some museums, others let this exhibit live. Minds like Francis Bacon and the YBA association admire A Thousand Years for what it is; a critical piece that propels us into a state of savagery. A piece that peels away the beauty we paint onto ourselves and reveals our true nature, and our unavoidable fate. There are no recommendations or changes I would make to A Thousand Years, as it a phenomenal standalone exhibit that speaks volumes for itself. Damien Hirst produces artwork that is refreshing, frightening and rhetorical. A Thousand Years persuades the audience in the three following ways; our mortality is mirrored in the box, our death is unavoidable, and we should feed on satisfaction when we are allowed. By applying the works of Marshall McLuhan, Helena Bilandzic and Rick Busselle and Kenneth Burke, we are able to digest A Thousand Years in a way where we’re able to utilize the medium, narrative persuasion and psychology and form in an evaluative fashion.

Bibliography Burke, Kenneth. “Psychology and form.” The Dial 79, 1925. Bilandzic, Helena & Busselle, Rick. “Narrative Persuasion.” SAGE Knowledge. (2012, October 11). Retrieved December 11, 2022, from https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/hdbk_persuasion2ed/n13.xml McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium is the Message.” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964.

[jsheios]

a lil treat for whatever sketchbook enjoyers are still out there

[caemidraws]

Session notes...dinner is served

[milkcryptid]

messy

[ckret2]

is this anything

[viviarts-c]

more Ritual Self Torture doodles

Masterpost

context | next | illustration

[patrothestupid]

no... sorcerer ?

[teem-boo]

Knights of the Shield cottagecore rebuilding post-canon AU going great.

original post

[sylph--scope]

the beast hungers

(full version + original photo under cut)

[evermorelore]

𝐼'𝑚 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡. 𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡? 𝐴𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡? 𝐴𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑒. 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑦. 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒?

did I start drawing this last night as I watched persuasion? yes. regency au elucian when?

[emilianadarling]

Some of the Imperial propaganda pictures I referenced and used as inspiration for a scene in the latest chapter of my fic ‘only as strong as the warrior next to you’. 😊 (Please do mind the tags.)

All of the images above can be found in “Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy”. It’s an amazing reference book and I’m really enjoying it!! It also came with 10 free posters included... bonus. 😃🙏 Also, made a rebels equivalent -- check it out!

[stvrmaker]

Hello, Jane Austen book stack for your viewing pleasure 💖 In publication order, and I based the designs off of first editions and early editions that I could find pictures of!

[caycanteven]

A couple’o sweethearts ❤️