Connections+to+The+Bluest+Eye


 * In //The Bluest Eye// Morrison talks about Funkiness in relation to the black women she writes about. It is said that these women are trying to get rid of the funk and that they consider their funkiness as something bad. It seems like the funk is part of their personalities or part of being black, which they are. Throughout their whole lives they have been trying to get rid of the funk by ignoring their feelings, wearing their hair the way white people wore it and desperately trying to fit in, in a world where they were labeled by the color of their skin. The Funk is something that would every once in a while try to take over underneath their skin but as soon as the women would notice it, they would wipe it away and pretend like it doesn’t exist. They tried to pretend like they weren’t different from everyone else they wanted to be like more than anything. But deep down they couldn’t deny the fact that they were indeed different and that the funkiness would always be a part of them.**

Brice Marden //Cold Mountain 3//, 1988-91, oil on linen


Both these paintings have one thing in common: they're funky. They seem to have no pattern whatsoever and maybe because of that, they are some of my favorites.

The painting by Cleve Gray connects with the theme of the excerpt of //The Bluest Eye//, in that all the colors in the foreground represent the funkiness that the black girls in Morrison's story are trying to fight in order to become as "white" as possible ( just like the background). But because the colors are so prominent, you can't ignore them when looking at the painting. A similar thing happens to the black girls in the book; they can't ignore their personalities, appearances, or heritage. As hard as they are trying to change all of those assets, they will always be a part of them, that people are going to notice when looking at them. For me, the painting has the same effect, you notice the colors even if you don't want to.

In the second painting //Cold Mountain 3//, black and light blue lines are not only painted on top of each other, but they also intertwine. If the black lines stand for the black girls and the light blue lines for all the white people the black girls are trying to be like, it seems like there could be a harmony between the two. But isn't this what we all wish for? A world in which all people can live in harmony, without hatred, wars, and racism? Because when it comes down to it, we can pretend all we want, but we are who we are and there is nothing we can change about that.

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