Post #9- Reading GRQ Discussion- Renaissance and Modern Art

GRQ Questions:

1. portraiture

2. window

3. linear perspective

4. aerial perspective

5. Masaccio

6. Brunelleschi

7. Jan van Eyck

8. Leonardo's

9. The School of Athens, the Birth of Venus

10. Stonebreakers

11. David

12. Modern

13. "Avant-garde"

14. Autonomous

15. "kitsch"

Discussion:

During a class discussion this week we analyzed the Arnolfini painting and tried to determine if it was a memorial or wedding portrait. Most of the class determined it was a wedding portrait, but I am convinced it was painted as a memorial. There were many symbols that indicated it could be either one, but there were some that stood out to me and convinced me otherwise. The first thing I noticed was the all black clothing on the male. Nowadays, whenever someone dresses in all black it signifies mourning and a funeral. After diving deeper into the painting and researching what different things mean, I found a few interesting things that point to a memorial painting. One thing was the gargoyle behind the woman’s hand, which signifies doom. This rang an alarm for me and made me keep digging to find more symbols. The next one I found was the meaning of the dog in front of the woman. Dogs in the ancient Roman times were used on the tombstones of women as a guide and guard into the afterlife. The dog being on the woman’s side made me believe that the woman is deceased and this is a husband clinging to the memory of his wife. In addition I learned that the decorations on the mirror have their own meanings. The left side is covered with symbols of Christ’s life (the man’s side), and the right has scenes of death and resurrection (the woman’s side). One more symbol I found was the chandelier and how that plays into the debate. The chandelier holds 1 candle on the left side, but there isn’t anything on the right. The candle burns on the side of the man while the woman’s side has wax dripping from its spot. This is interpreted as signifying the life of the man and the death of the woman as her candle is no longer there, meaning neither is she. There were many symbols that went both ways in determining the true purpose of the painting, but I am convinced that this was a memorial for the husband’s wife. I would go as far to say that the painting might be a memory of their wedding day, but with key symbols added to show that the wife is no longer alive.

Camara Obscura Project:

Click here to view Dropbox folder 

Post #8- Lecture- Renaissance

In this week's lecture, we talked about modern painting and abstract art. To start off, we talked about the Renaissance Era which e was the period in Europe, especially Italy, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, when there was a new interest in art, literature, science, learning, and philosophy, a really interesting thing about Renaissance is that it was considered the bridge between the Middle Ages and Modern history. During this time, the term Humanism (a belief in self, human worth, and individual dignity) became popular, and due to this, the Roman Catholic Church also began to lose its power. We then talked about a lot of different art styles that were born during that period, such as Byzantine art (which characteristics were almost completely in tune with the religious realm), Early Renaissance Art (where they used a lot of gold, and a really amazing and hard painting technique called fresco, a painting done rapidly in watercolor on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling so that the colors penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries), Linear Perspective, Camera Obscura (the natural optical phenomenon that occurs when an image of a scene is projected through a small hole and appears on the wall opposite the opening as an inverted image), and the grid. We also talked about the High Renaissance, and how by the end of the 15th century, Rome had displaced Florence as the principal center of three great masters of the High Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci (Creator of La Gioconda), Michelangelo (creator of the 'David' and 'Pieta' sculptures), and Raphael (best known for his Madonnas and his large figure compositions in the Vatican). Lastly, we talked about Modernism, which in the fine arts, the late 19th to mid-20th century was a break from the past and the search for new forms of expression. Here we can find really important art styles such as Impressionism (developed by Claude Monet and other Paris-based artists from the early 1860s, where their style of painting has a sketchy and unfinished look, capturing a sense of immediacy), Fauvism, Abstract expressionism, Cubism, Abstract Art, Symbolism, and Post-Impressionism ( where the artists continue using vivid colors, a thick application of paint and real-life subject matter, but were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort forms for an expressive effect and use unnatural and seemingly random colors. Dominated by the immense personalities, such as Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the Post-impressionism artists took different approaches and continued building on the advances of the previous art).

Post #7- Reading, GRQ, and Discussion- Theater of the People

GRQ Questions:

1. Ancient Greeks

2. Homer

3. Iliad, Trojan War

4. areté

5. Homeric epic

6. Iliad, Odyssey

7. Gods

8. inductive reasoning

9. Socrates

10. Plato

11. Republic (treatise)

12. "Allegory of the Cave"

13. Dionysos

14. satyr play

15. Greek comedies

16. Tragedies

17. death, dead

18. Thespis, thespian

19. protagonist, antagonist

20. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides

21. Dionysus

22. Aristotle

23. catharsis

24. Golden Mean

25. verisimilitude

26. "three unities"

27. universality

28. Intermezzi

29. Opera

30. nobility

31. intermezzi

32. "Modernism"

33. Modernism

34. Wagner

Discussion:

Part of this week’s discussion was about if all sounds can be music and where is the line that draws the difference between the two. I believed, along with the rest of my group, that any sound can become music, it just needs to follow some direction. Banging your hand on a desk isn't music but once you add a rhythm to it, it becomes a beat that can be used for music. You can add in pitches by using different objects and having those follow a different beat to make a song. The difference between a sound and actual music is that a sound is just something you hear with no rhythm or intention to it, while music is the opposite. Back in the Baroque era, musicians had to use the sounds around them in order to create music as they didn’t have the technology we do today. They used nature, household objects, and their voices in order to create early songs. These artists set the foundation for what would become the music we look up on Spotify and Apple Music today as without them, we would have silence.

Post #6- Lecture Baroque Theatre- Modern Opera

In this week's lecture, we first talked about Baroque architecture such as St. Peter's Square in Rome, the Cesky Krumlov Theatre, and the Baroque Theatre, and how it was linked to the Counter-Reformation, celebrating the wealth of the Catholic church, another interesting fact is that it was characterized by new explorations of form, light and shadow, and dramatic intensity. Then we went more in-depth with the Cesky Krumlov Theatre, located in the southern Bohemian region of the Czech Republic, and how it t is a perfect example of Baroque Architecture also using the same type of technology that we saw in the Roman Colosseum but much more sophisticated with a very important new feature called the 4th wall. We then talked about a very interesting topic, The Baroque Opera. The first-ever operas were written around 1600 and they used dramatic text and music to express their stories, which were often based on Classical Greek and Roman mythology. Singing, dancing, instrumentals, and even some spoken text are the main characteristics of Opera. Around the middle of the 16th century, castrated males began appearing as sopranos in church choirs, they were called the Castrati. Parents would castrate their sons in barbershops for them to keep their high-pitched voice, unfortunately, things didn’t always work out, there was no way to guarantee results and many boys became rejects. It wasn't until 1878 that Pope Leo XIII banned the church from hiring castrati, with the last castrati being Alessandro Moreschi. I was really surprised and concerned when I first heard of this practice, and I'm really glad that they stopped doing this to innocent kids. Lastly, we talked about Cathy Barberian and John Cage. Two of the avant-garde artists stepped out of their comfort zone as highly regarded musicians to take music to another level and even though people called their compositions just "noise", they continued to revolutionize what music was.

Quiz #1

1. Animism

2. storytelling

3. teepees

4. Greeks

5. the Iliad and Odyssey

6. Iliad

7. Homeric epic

8. Socrates

9. Allegory of the Cave

10. skene

11. Theatre of Dionysus

12. satyr play

13. protagonist, antagonist

14. Golden Mean

15. neoclassical ideal

16. Romans

17. pendentive

18. Gothic Cathedral

19. Baroque

20. orchestra pit

21. operas

22. opera

23. Akhnaten

24. Wagner

Post #5- Reading- GRQ- Discussion- The Art of Indigenous Americans Art History: A Century of Exhibitions

Article Discussion: 

The article explores the complex relationship between Indigenous American art and the American art historical canon over the past century. The author highlights various periods and exhibits that shaped the perception and inclusion of Native American art within the broader context of American art history. In the early 20th century, Native American art was celebrated as an assertion of American identity in the aftermath of World War I. Artists like Marsden Hartley and John Sloan championed contemporary Pueblo painters, emphasizing their work as uniquely American. Major exhibits, such as the 1931 Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts, aimed to establish Indian art as both classic and modern, representing thousands of years of American development. The 1950s to early 1960s were a relatively quiet period for Native American art in museums, but with the rise of civil rights movements in the late 1960s and 1970s, Indigenous American art regained prominence. Museums began to incorporate Native art into their exhibits, and this trend continued in the 1980s and 1990s. The article also discusses the challenges faced by Indigenous art in contemporary American art museums. It notes a persistent tendency to segregate Native American art from the broader narrative of American art history, despite efforts to integrate other ethnic and cultural perspectives.

GRQ (13 Fill in the Blank):

1. scholars

2. museums

3. Native art

4. Pueblo watercolors

5. esthetic value

6. Basket Dance

7. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

8. multiculturalism

9. Two American Painters (exhibited Fritz Scholder and T.C. Cannon)

10. American Indian Art: Form and Tradition

11. Native art history

12. ghettoization

13. younger generation

Discussion:

In class we discussed how Native American storytelling differed from Roman/Greek storytelling, and how the architecture resembled that. Native Americans would meet with their villages and only converse with each other to share personal stories and their faith. This wasn’t the case for the Romans and Greeks as they wanted to reach a much larger audience, so they crafted buildings that could house thousands to be used for entertainment. I found this interesting as both sides had the same core purpose, delivering a message to as many as possible, but they used drastically different methods for drastically different reasons. The art of storytelling and corresponding architecture then spilled into religion, where Cathedrals were built to tower over all over buildings to easily spot it and the design had certain criteria it had to follow. I always knew that every Cathedral kind of looked the same, but I never knew that it was because there were rules set in place.

Post #4- Lecture Native American- Gothic Architecture

Native Americans were the foundation for most of the world as we see it today. Their beliefs in God and love for the Earth are what the Christian and Catholic faiths are based on today, which translates into their architecture we see every day. When speaking to their people, the Natives didn’t need a large space to connect with the audience as they were only speaking to their villages. Contrastingly, European architecture was designed to hold thousands of people. Buildings such as the Colosseum, Greek Amphitheater, Circus Maximus, were used for entertainment such as operas and gladiator fights. The structure of these buildings were made to hold thousands of spectators and remain some of the largest ancient buildings today. On the flip side there's the Pantheon, where this building is known for its large concrete dome on top. This was the first instance of this type of design and although the Romans failed to perfect this technique of using pendentives, it set up the builders of the Hagia Sophia for success. The Hagia Sophia, a place of worship for the parishioners in Istanbul, is the largest cathedral ever built as it still stands today. This building brought forth a new wave of architecture design called Byzantine Art, where pendentives and squinches were used to hold up a massive dome on top of a square building perfectly. Something the Romans tried to accomplish, yet didn't quite make it perfect. This design set up the foundation for Gothic Architecture where Cathedrals implemented it as a way to make parishioners feel closer to heaven. The tall spires towered over buildings and dominated the skyline making them easy to spot. The design of the Hagia Sophia and the Gothic Cathedrals were used to enhance the message and story that the church was trying to tell. The church wanted to be the center of everyone’s lifestyles so making these Cathedrals these tall, elaborate buildings made sure the public knew where they could go to worship.

Post #3- Creativity Article- GRQ and Discussion

Article on Creativity:

The article on creativity discusses a study in which the people who thought creatively had a “high-creative” network in their brain and that correlates to an increased amount of original thoughts. A creative person's brain is talked about being wired differently and leaves you with the question if this is something that is fixed or can it be malleable. I believe they can be shaped and mastered as you can learn to do anything as long as you practice it. The more you practice the better you become even if it takes longer for some people rather than others. Even the article starts off by saying that everyone can be creative, and we all have the ability to be creative because we possess the ability to.

GRQ (12 T/F Questions)

1. Question #1 is True

2. Question #2 is False

3. Question #3 is False

4. Question #4 is False

5. Question #5 is False

6. Question #6 is True

7. Question #7 is True

8. Question #8 is True

9. Question #9 is True

10. Question #10 is True

11. Question #11 is True

12. Question #12 is True

Discussion:

In class we discussed how school limits creativity in students and the rigid nature of the classroom prevents them from thinking creatively. Schools should be able to teach students how to think without telling them what to think and that way they can learn their sense of identity in the world without being inhibited. You’re not given a chance to think for yourself until you are in college, and for the first 18 years of your life everything was told to you. I believe that many students experience difficulty with thinking creatively and that translates into their jobs and work life as they struggle to complete tasks without specific instructions because that’s how they were taught.

Post #2- Raul Cuero

Raul Cuero is a living example of a person who was subjected to discrimination and discouraging words, yet he chose to rise above mediocrity and become someone great. The video teaches you that it doesn't matter where you come from or what you are, but who you are as a creative individual. I do agree with Raul Cuero because being creative is something you can learn and master. You can work on it as a skill as well as learn from scratch. Raul was not born creative, he had to adapt to his environment since childhood and that taught him to be creative from a young age. Anyone can learn to be creative as long as they truly want it and have the resources to do so. You can apply these concepts to daily life by adapting to surroundings and not being scared or fearful of failure. Raul talks about how we spend too much time indoors on computers and we are not prepared for what the real world is like, but facing these challenges will cause you to think creatively and quickly adapt to new circumstances.