Artistic Use
Some artists such as poets derive insight and inspiration from abandoned footwear - a form of art known as objet trouvé. The fisherman hauling up an old boot, rather than a fish, is a comic-strip cliché. In Cinderella, the lost slipper is a classic example of the literary device of the "lost object".
The theme of abandoned footwear and their untold story is explored in detail in the novel, Jen-Zen and the One Shoe Diaries by author Julie Ann Shapiro. In the novel, her character describes the phenomenon, “The forgotten shoes are everywhere: littering the side of the highway, floating in the tide, going upstream with the Salmon, or occupying a field like a dead body,discarded and left to rot.” The novelist described the backstory of her novel, which offers much insight about the abandoned footwear from an art, societal and philosophical perspective.
| “ | In Southern California I noticed flip flops and running shoes left behind on the beach, the freeways, construction sites and parking lots and felt this uncanny urge propelling me to write about them. I couldn’t escape them, nor the unshakable sadness and loss I felt emanating from the shoes themselves. Why singular shoes I kept asking myself? Is it a Cinderella complex? Is this a poem I should write or a short story? I wrote them all and then one pivotal day I remembered a time as a teenager when my friends and I played with a Ouija board and a shoe moved by itself. It was this big aha moment! | ” |
The author noted that, "... real life photographer, Randall Louis Hamilton contacted me and mentioned having a shoe photo collection, proving that life sometimes is stranger than fiction." The two artists have since collaborated on their coincidental works.
Read more about this topic: Abandoned Footwear
Famous quotes containing the word artistic:
“What the study of history and artistic creation have in common is a mode of forming images.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, who follows blind instinct, strives to duplicate the reality of nature. The first one elevates art to its highest peak; the second one lowers it to its basest level.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)