The Cheese Monkeys
"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs." (Pablo Picasso, 1870) When one looks at a piece that they believe to be art, they stare, they admire, they criticize and then they move on to the next piece. Not everyone will say that the same thing is art, just like not all people believe rap is actual music. Art is what you make of it; it's what's inside ones soul. Himillsy, in The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd, followed her own soul in everything including art, and taking anyone she felt worthy enough along for the ride. Himillsy Dodd takes art because she can. She drops the classes the teacher is too hard' or the one that does not agree with her views. She cannot take criticism; she must be the one who has the final word, the one that is always right. The almighty Himillsy, in a sense, believes she is above God. Well, she's wrong, way wrong.
Himillsy Dodd is a feminist, a person who craves attention, an alcoholic college student (which is not hard to find these days), and she is a very artistic and lonely girl, even with a boyfriend she cannot confide in and one she argues with constantly. Himillsy loves art, but thinks it is pretentious' as well, which is kind of paradoxical. "I've just had it with this faux-primitivism in the arts. Abstract' daubs. Symbolic, bleak little plays. Junk sculpture, nihilistic, avant-garde' robotic verse. Crude banalities. Is that what we need? Is that what feeds the human heart? Is the human heart ABSTRACT?!" (Kidd, p. 50-51) Well, Hims, maybe it is. Maybe the human heart is as abstract as it can be. The human heart, which in reality is just a muscle the size of one's fist, can metaphorically be what it desires, what it pleases. It does not have to conform to society's ways, but in a lot of cases it does. Our society is lacking a lot of individualism now-a-days, but what society...
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