In the essay “In Wildness is Thoreau,” scholar Lewis Leary calls Thoreau “... a revolutionary of absolute faith … who started a one-man revolution, which has overturned worlds – not through what he did, but through what he wrote.”
That’s the spirit of my piece “Write the Power, No. 1 – Thoreau,” a mixed media collage which began serendipitously as I sat on the couch listening to music while reading, writing, and researching my idea to synthesize the worlds of Henry Thoreau and punk rock. The phrase “write the power,” stems from the 1980’s Public Enemy hip hop anthem “Fight the Power,” and I envisioned a power salute fist holding a pencil. Both punk rock and hip hop can be considered cultural and political revolutions of a sort, and a cultural revolutionary is a lens through which I see Thoreau.
Pondering that image of the fist and pencil, I imagined a series of mixed media pieces featuring revolutionary writers, artists, and musicians, celebrating the power of language and the written word. I even imagined variations such as a fist throwing a punch or flipping the middle finger, as I envisioned different writers and artists ranging from Frederick Douglas and Mark Twain to Chuck D of Public Enemy and Joe Strummer of The Clash. But I started with Henry Thoreau who was a true revolutionary, as significant, in my opinion, as any Founding Father, in his questioning and criticism of America in the early 19th century for failing to live up to the promise of its premise.
Scholars Laura Dassow (Dah-soh) Walls and Bob Pepperman Taylor emphasize how Thoreau’s work intentionally challenged America in relation to the ideals of its revolution. Revolution is also fundamental to my Thoreau-Punk alignment for both the man and the movement are grounded in what Walls describes as Thoreau’s belief that “The American Revolution was incomplete: inequality was rife, materialism was rampant, and the American economy was entirely dependent on slavery” [and injustice]. Walls says Thoreau’s “dilemma [was] how to live the American Revolution not as dead history, but as a living experience that could overturn hidebound conventions and comfortable habits.” Bob Pepperman Taylor echoes this idea in his book America’s Bachelor Uncle asserting “No writer has more powerfully portrayed the American betrayal of its own commitment to individual liberty.”
Thoreau was indeed a revolutionary with a pencil – and interestingly he also was a revolutionary pencil maker. His personal innovations literally changed the industry and made “Thoreau & Son” pencils the premier American pencil. That idea is behind my image of the pencil, and the phrase “The Power of the Pencil” is written in a style mimicking Thoreau’s more legible script. The pencil covering Thoreau’s mouth clearly draws attention to his face but also symbolizes that Thoureau did his talking on the page. Granted, at his time, his many essays were delivered at the Lyceums. But the written word enables them to live on long past the night of the performance.
The collage style for this piece and for the planned series blends text and images, emphasizing the power of words. With Thoreau in regards to this year’s theme, collage can reflect both the messiness of revolution and of art while also presenting a mosaic of the complex ideas behind Thoreau’s words, their impact, and his legacy. Graffiti style text is intended to invoke a punk rock spirit, a renegade art form. The power salute fist clutching a pencil resembles a classic tag, and of course, it is a revolutionary symbol used by many protest movements. You’ll also notice in gold paint pen various scribbles mirroring Thoreau’s looser handwriting style, which I display with several versions of his original text, the lower left being the most freeform example.
Background images making up the collage include the cover of the original edition of Walden over which I placed the fist, and the cover of the play The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee. Published at the time of the Vietnam War and subsequent protests, it’s reflective of the revolutionary spirit behind Thourea’s protest and subsequent essay known as “Civil Disobedience.” In the upper right corner I have an image of another of my Thoreau artworks which is the minimalist “Portrait of Henry David Thoreau” by Swiss/French artist Felix Vallotton over two Thoreau selections, “Walking” and “Civil Disobedience.”
The cabin in the bottom right is obviously an iconic image associated with Thoreau, and the simple act of building the cabin and living there was a revolutionary act, as Laura Dassow Walls notes in her exceptional biography, Thoreau: A Life. The cabin truly unsettled the people of Concord. I’d describe it as a punk move precisely because it agitated others and disrupted the status quo. I also included an image of the sign and quote at the original cabin site.
Thoreau was determined to be a writer, and he honestly hoped to change the world with his words. Writing is power, and we all remember the origin story of Thoreau’s epic two million word journal – Emerson asked if he kept a journal and he wrote “So, I start today.” In my research I’ve pulled countless quotes which evoke to me Thoreau’s revolutionary punk rock spirit, and I incorporated them in the piece as banners and slogans, and more are painted around the outside edge of the piece.
So, with all that, I give you “Write the Power”
No comments:
Post a Comment