Motionless as an Idol - Columbus State University

"Bullock 6wrote about the artists whom he admired most and "mainly drew on the artistic traditionof the impressionist and post-impressionist eras" (Honnighausen 559). Faulknerappreciated several painters. Degas, Manet, and Chavannes, but he was particularlyinfluenced by the Post-Impressionistic painters, such as Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, VanGogh, and Cezanne (Blotner 160). Iwill examine Cezanne's influence on Faulkner indetail later in the discussion of "A Rose for Emily.There is a subtle dialogue present in each of the texts Iwill analyze here thatconverses with these Modernist painters by whom Faulkner was so struck. Iwill examinethe distinct elements that compose Faulkner's response to his culture's artisticconversation in conjunction with the texts in which they appear. However, the dialogue towhich I refer is more complex than it may initially appear. Examining Faulkner's workthrough the contexts of Modernist art and his commentary on women introduces thesignificant question of why he even includes art as a significant theme in his work andalso, why he casts his cultural criticisms within metaphors. My analysis seeks to answerboth of these questions, illustrating the parallels between Faulkner's artistic interests andhis own intentions in creating art using metaphor.Just as any discussion of Faulkner would be incomplete without the Southernelements, so itis with the influences and effects of Modernism. Stephen Spender talksabout Modernism and how it changed from preceding traditions: "[...] the principle ofreality in our time is peculiarly difficult to grasp, and that 'realism' is not an adequateapproach to it" (qtd. in Peter Faulkner 15). Faulkner is creating art out of the samesocietal context as the artists who influenced him. Therefore, it is natural that there aresimilarities in the content and form of their work, and these similarities will be analyzed