Podcast: Art, Culture and Memory with Court Carney
Join Court Carney, PhD, as he delves into how culture informs myth and memory
Leveraging his experiences writing "Reckoning with the Devil" (LSU Press 2024,) the artwork of Bob Dylan, personal anecdotes and professional expertise from his peers, Court gives insights into his creative inspiration, collective motivations, what he's reading now, and where to see art in Houston, Kansas City and beyond.
Listen to the episode to learn Court's best advice on assessing cultural history, how personal memories can inform creative work, and Court's experiences as a cultural historian.
"Reckoning with the Devil," by Court Carney is available for purchase on Amazon and through LSU Press. Learn more about Court on his website.
On Writing "Reckoning with the Devil"
"It is a book on Civil War memory. looking at one particular person and how he sort of helps explore the various ways that Civil War memory gets created and broken down, and all of that. This book, which has been long in the making is on the Civil War, and how the Civil War reverberates throughout the 20th and 21st centuries."
On Statues & Sculptures
"A sculpture can be abstract, and a story of abstraction where then a statue is trying to be some sort of concrete personification of something. But having said that, where I come in too, is that like, well, it's all abstraction, right? It's all abstraction of some version of the story. And with Forrest, what I'm dealing mostly with are pieces of art or artworks or art forms that are trying in some way to create reality."
On The Artwork of Bob Dylan
"For me, what I find interesting about the art is how (this is only a piece of what he does,) but this idea where he finds these films, or he's clearly watching a film that he loves, or he's remembering a story of a film he likes."
On Finding Amazing Art in Kansas City
"Kansas City is amazing! I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art there, which is a beautiful space. I was there for a conference and they had a beautiful special thing on the Japanese wave paintings. And so they had kind of the famous Japanese wave paintings, but then, they had these kind of newer, more modern interpretations of it. They had a Lego one, and it was really great that way they did it.
It was just kind of interesting and like, kind of creates the particulate part of the way that you don't think about the waves. And so, I just was like really stunned by that. And their collection is amazing."