Art And Narrative

I read An article called "Telling stories Through Contemporary Images"
written by B. Stephen Carpenter II an Associate Professor of Art education at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The article starts with a story by Antoine de Saint Exupery's Le Petit Prince written in 1943, which I have found the original from:
http://www.spiritual.com.au/articles/prince/PrinceCh1.htm

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to theml

This story suggests the not always easily visable stories within art. Both pictures and stories depend on eachother and are both deeply connected.

It's a very short article (2 pages), but I would suggest it's worth a read. http://dd8gh5yx7k.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Telling+Stories+through+Contemporary+Images&rft.jtitle=Art+Education&rft.au=B+Stephen+Carpenter+II&rft.date=2004-03-01&rft.issn=0004-3125&rft.volume=57&rft.issue=2&rft.spage=4&rft.externalDBID=ARED&rft.externalDocID=574625411

I thought this sort of idea could link to Sophie Calle's work, in which Caleb talked about in our last lecture. She was the woman who became a temporary hotel cleaner in order to take photos, notes and delve into personal belongings of the visitors rooms. This idea that you could get to know someone through there personal belongings and diary entries, could be quite different to whom they really are. The same as how the little boys drawings appeared different to the adults from what they really were.

This work was called The Hotel, Room 47 1981 L'Hôtel, Chambre 47

Sorry I tried to find an image of it, but I was unable to find one clear enough to read.

You can take a look at it in these books that are in our library:

Sophie Calle
Book
Corporate Author: Whitechapel Art Gallery
ISBN: 085488176X Date: 2009 Pages: 175 p.
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation Call Num: 709.2 C157 X 1


Sophie Calle, m'as-tu vue
Book
Author: Calle, Sophie Corporate Author: Centre Georges Pompidou
ISBN: 9783791330358 Date: 2008 Pages: 443 p.
Subjects: Life in art Call Num: 709.2 C157 4