Intensity

I especially enjoyed the description of the intensity in Mary Stewart's textbook Launching the Imagination. She uses two examples to convey the idea of intensity in reference to the "level of energy in a performance or the quality of observation of an event" (Stewart 302). Both examples convey a social critique and both play on the morals of all people. The example that I would like to point out is in Figure 13.21 Mary Lucier, Migration (Monarch), 2000. Lucier photographed the death of a Monarch butterfly after it landed on a human hand, and displayed the series of photos in Manhattan. The message is that the butterfly is in fact "fragile and transient" (Stewart 302). I found this quite interesting because it shows that the emotional intensity of art is a way of portraying propaganda. Therefore the passionate feelings that the artist feels while they create and present their work, evokes a compassionate reaction. This is especially a propaganda piece because Lucier displayed a delicate, beautiful insect dying after an interaction with a human, which is a critique on human and nature interaction. More specifically it suggests that people who live in the city have become ignorant to nature's needs. The butterfly's death displays a critique on human's relationship with nature, and this assumption is due to the intensity of Lucier's work.