Friday, 18 February 2011

• Fine Art Friday:O'Connor

  Newly released and apparently  not available at Amazon.com is this collection of Mary Flannery O'Connor's cartoons.

  The cover is a graphic representation of the artist's signature.

  What resembles a small fowl (duck or peacock?) is really an
  *M* *F* *O* *C*.

  Including the apostrophe!

  See it?

  The book features lino-cuts from O'Connor's years at Georgia State College for Women (GSCW) from 1942-45 where Mary Flannery was editor of the newspaper, The Colonnade;  wrote for the literary magazine, The Corinthian; and edited the yearbook, The Spectrum.

  Dorothy Leland, current president of Georgia College, reminds us in the Foreward ~

   

  "Although O'Connor's spiritual vision is central to her fiction,
  she is also widely recognized as a brilliant comic writer.
    The cartoons in this collection are an early indication of that
  humorous and satirical approach to the human condition."

   

  Madame Chairman, the Committee has reached a decision.

  Choosing just one to highlight today, I giggled over this caricature of committee work, especially in light of my recent review of Anthony Esolen's Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, Method 2 ~
  Never Leave Children to Themselves or
  If Only We had a Committee.

   

  Sarah Gordon, Professor Emerita of English at Georgia College (formerly GSCW) explains in the Introduction the tenor of O'Connor's collegiate artwork ~

  "she was speaking inside and to a community, to young women whose shared experience made them co-conspirators in her enterprise."
  

   

  "The cartoons were intended to elicit laughter and to please, unlike O'Connor's mature fiction, which assumed an audience indifferent to O'Connor's spirital concerns, an audience needing to be turned out of its comfortable chairs and complacency and made aware of the need for grace."

   

   

  John Updike's brief essay, Writers and Artists, is also quoted ~

  "the graphic artist learns to organize and to emphasize; and this knowledge serves the writer"

   

  Waste no time procurring this delightful volume by contacting Georgia College and State University or the Gift Shop at Andalusia Farm.

   

  Bonus Art ~ postcard reproduction of photograph of three year old Mary Flannery reading ~

  

   

  So precious!

  
  Thus ends my week-long fixation on MFO'C.

   

  Currently The Writer's Brush: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture by Writers By Donald Friedman see related

  • 7:32 AM
  • 71 Views
  • 4 eProps
  • 4 Comments