Art Essay # 1 - David Crowder Band

This photo was taken November 18, 2009 at the David Crowder Band concert in Charlotte, NC. David Crowder, a Christian musician, actually stopped singing during his concert and allowed his other band members to keep playing the song while he captured this moment of everyone praising God in the auditorium. He took three pictures; one to his left, (where I was) one in the middle, the picture that is shown, and one to his right. First of all, I am a strong advocate of finding art in photography. I believe in the "art" of capturing real, genuine moments on film that could never be reproduced by any other means, and I think that is why this picture is so dear to me. David Crowder felt so inspired by his audience that he chose to capture this moment, because surely just telling his family and friends what he occurred that night at the concert could not justify the actual event. I read in his blog, where I got this photograph, that there was a moment that he looked across the room and not a hand wasn't raised in that place, honoring and praising God. He felt so special and moved that he was able to be an instrument of God's by leading that praise and by doing so, helping people grow closer to God. This is real art, it really happened, and being a part of that moving night and seeing it myself is awe-inspiring to say the least every time I see this photo.
I believe art should be something that is captivating, whether it is a photograph or not, and should engage the viewer to either desire to be there, feel empathetic for the subject of the art, or find some way to allow every viewer to connect to the art itself. Art should keep people staring at it, making them want to try to figure out why is this here? What is the meaning of this? etc. Art should be a creation of passion, and this photograph in my opinion is the essence of art.

Introduction

Hello!
I am Chelsea Starr, a sophomore here at Catawba. I am from Weston, Florida and have lived there all of my life. Needless to say, I'm really missing the warm weather at this point. On campus I am a writing center tutor and the co-manager of our school's Coffee House. I strongly encourage you all to go to both places. I play the piano, and have played for around ten years, although I don't do much with it. My real interests are in children; I am an elementary education major and love to be involved with anything that deals with kids. At my church I am a small group leader for our Children's ministry for the little four to eight year old kids. I absolutely adore them and can't wait to be a big part of kids' lives.
I was interested in this class because I have always had an interest in art; my mom had to drag me out of the Met in New York a few years ago. I've actually always wondered, "what is art?" Who can actually say what art is, and what it's not? I'm excited to see what the rest of the semester has in store for us and if it can give me more knowledge on the meaning of "art."

Art Essay #1 "Under My Umbrella"

This picture was painted by my roommate’s soccer teammate, Allison Ester. The portrait is called “Under My Umbrella”. I was attracted to this painting for two reasons. First of all, the warm beach theme, and second of all, the bright and vibrant colors.

For me, the beach is an “escape” and reminds me of summer and spending time with my family. The tepid orange horizon and clear light blue waters fascinated me because it made me want to be sitting in a beach chair, warm in the sun with my toes in the hot sand. The painter is a student at UNC Wilmington, so for her, this painting of the beach represents a safe haven and a comfortable environment. Her uses of the bright colors throughout the umbrellas symbolize the beach being an entertaining and playful place, and make the audience want to play fun beach sports such as paddleball or beach soccer. Another reason Allison used vibrant colors throughout her painting is because they are pleasing to the eyes. When people think of the beach, they think of bright and fun colors, not boring and bland ones. She used different patterns, shapes, and colors on the umbrellas to signify the variety of people who come to the beach, and she put all of the umbrellas close together to represent how the variety of people come for the same reasons, to spend time together and to enjoy the beauty of nature.

Nevertheless, the painting may have a hidden meaning. When I looked at the painting for the first time, all I saw was bright colors and all I felt was happiness. But when I studied the painting again and truly looked at the umbrellas, I noticed the use of the color black. The artist filled the small empty spaces between the umbrellas with black. The painting is called “Under My Umbrella” and I suppose the black could represent how the umbrellas “cover” and “shade” the people and items underneath them from the onlookers. No matter how pretty something may seem on the exterior, you never know what is lurking underneath. I found it interesting that the focal point of the painting was the light blue and dark blue striped umbrella. The uses of the curved stripes make the umbrella seem almost like a target and beg the audience’s eyes to look and see what is underneath. However, rather than having a negative connotation, I believe this painting was meant to be relaxing, positive, and to take the audience’s mind to a better place.

I am not sure how large the painting is because I have never seen it in person, but hopefully one day I will. I feel as though when I have a house of my own (preferably at the beach), I will want to fill the walls with paintings similar to this because of the sense of comfort, affection, and warmth. Even though the artist is young, I am impressed with her work and the feeling of sincerity and longing of summer she was able to place upon me.

-Anna Toole

Art Essay #1: Holbein's Ambassadors (1533)

I've been interested in this painting for quite a while now:

I'm no long sure when I first became interested in this painting -- perhaps when I read about it in John Berger's Ways of Seeing (pages 88ff.).  But I do know that I find the distorted skull (in the foreground) the most captivating part of the picture.  If you stand off to the right of the picture at a very sharp angle, you can see the skull pretty clearly.  I realized that when I stumbled across the picture while walking through the National Museum in London.  I was also struck by how large the painting is -- over six feet tall.  The size and the brightness of the green drapery where the most surprising new details that I noted that day in the gallery (and which made me temporally forget about my aching feet and lower back, the result of a few hours of slowly trekking through endless galleries).

I am drawn to this painting not just because the skull is a memento mori, but because of the way this particular example of the tradition is rendered. (I guess I have to admit that I "collect" images of memento mori; I have a cool postcard in my office of another one that was created inadvertently by a different museum display.)  I have used this skull to illustrate the perspective of death or eternity in various poems, such as ones by Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti that use beyond-the-corpse narrators .  I have also used this image -- and its contrast with the undistorted and luxurious material existence of the two ambassadors and their belongings/surroundings -- to try to present a figurative objects that gestures toward the nature of eternity or timelessness as T.S. Eliot invokes these modes of being in "Little Gidding," a section of the longer work called "Four Quartets."  I try to connect this strange image of a skull (you can see what it looks like when undistorted here) to these lines in particular:

And what the dead has no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead; the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere.  Never and always.

The twisted, hard to perceive, unnatural skull serves as a sort of iconic rendering of the fact that the timelessness that Eliot speaks of is not simply a continuation of our sense of time as we live it.  Timelessness is beyond our ability to experience it.  We cannot speak from the view of death (we cannot "speak Death"?) because we have no way of getting to that perspective while still staying connected to the perspective we have while living.  I suppose the best symbol of this disjuncture might be nothing, but the distorted skull is an effective makeshift indicator of the difficulties of perceiving eternity.  Eternity is always around our lives, but it is also never available to us.  We cannot connect to it.  Tolkein's elves were another attempt to deal with this issue.

Damien Hirst has a title for one of his projects that captures the idea I'm trying to articulate: "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living."  I'm not really sure how the physical reality of this artwork, however, achieves the title.  Here it is -- a shark suspended in formaldehyde:
 

This is an amatuer shot of the front view (the tank now resides in the NY Met Museum).

PC vs. PS3

The following picture is by an unknown artist who clearly understands the current industry struggles between PC and consol gaming. In its own way the picture shows this conflict in a very “Transformers” like fashion, demonstrating giant, humanoid, robot versions of a PC and the PS3. However, the PC robot (let’s call him Steve) is much smaller than that of the humongous PS3 robot (we’ll call him Rob). While this may seem like a bit of a silly picture at first glance, there is much that can be inferred from it. For instance, starting with Steve, his portrayal as a smaller, more limber robot can be used to show how the PC is a much more versatile system that can host a large number of games and functions. Rob, in comparison, is large and unwieldy, but clearly has a significant power advantage over Steve; a feature boasted by the PS3 from its origins. There is also symbolism used in the dust that clouds the landscape in that it looks like Rob has just risen from the ground to new found powers. This could be symbolic for how consol gaming has been revolutionized and grown in recent years with the high powered processors of the PS3 and other new systems. All in all, this piece is important because it reminds us that such struggles between gaming mediums do in fact exist although perhaps without the giant robots.

~David Crescenzo

A little about myself

My name is Allijah Motika. I am from Asheville, NC. I am a freshman Music Business major concentrating specifically on the Artist Development Program. My goal is to be an artist: recording, performing, and writing, my own music. Although now that I think about it, it seems as though my career path should be the reason for my interest in this class. While this class may of course influence my opinions on my own chosen love for music (art), the reason that I took this class was because of my newly discovered love of visual art.
Last year I took AP Art History at Asheville High School and thought the class was incredible. Because of the unreasonable amount of snow we got last winter we didn't have nearly enough classes to give real respect to modern art and I felt like I barely learned it. That is one reason that I was interested in this class, because the debate about the validity of modern art is so heated and I barely got to study it. In that class, though, we went through the entire history of art from Venus of Willendorf to Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and others. Some of my favorite pieces are Fragonard's The Swing, Dali's Persistence of Memory (The melting clocks painting), and one of my favorites simply because of the craziness of the title is by Manet: Monet painting in his studio boat. So in essence the title is "Manet painting Monet painting in his studio boat" which I think is just incredibly clever. Some of my other favorite artists are David, Renoir, Bosch, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and the Impressionists are incredibly interesting among others. All in all I have just realized that I'm a huge art history geek and would love to learn more.
I had assumed that this class would be focused solely on visual art and I am looking forward to the fact that it is not, because I personally believe that music and sound is the purest, most moving, and ultimately most powerful form of art that there is. Music is not only in my soul but is my soul and rules my life. I try to put as much music in my life as I can and so far I have learned how to play many types of percussion (from the marimbas to the drum set), piano, and guitar. My main focus is singing and songwriting. I have also taught myself how to beatbox (this is probably the most fun out of all the instruments I play!! :). I am currently involved in Catawba Singers, the Colloquials Vernacular (as the drummer), Urb'NSol (as the keyboard player), an artist in the ADP Program, and am enrolled in two different vocal studios. Along with that I am planning a concert back in Asheville in March, as well as other random gigs that I will be doing. All of that should hopefully explain how much I love music.
I am really into philosophical discussions too and I love to argue so this class is turning out to be a lot of fun for me! I can't wait to do more!

P.S. When I studied Jackson Polluck...I thought he was an idiot, still do. Oh and Marcel Duchamp too haha

P.P.S. here are three pieces of art that I think are some of the most incredibly moving things that I have ever seen/heard

Element by Moses Mayfield
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UrczBIc8a8

Knock Knock by Russell Simmons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E0DMcZ23kE

The third was Goodnight Moon but the youtube video is gone. If you can find the cartoon version somewhere online please watch and post it, it is INCREDIBLE!!!

Introduction

Hi. I'm Michelle Chaffee, a sophomore Vocal Performance and English Major from Holly Springs, N.C. The nature and beauty of all types of art have always fascinated me. I'm the kid who dragged my parents into museums. Really, the only reason my Dad was able to drag me out of the Met in NY was because my 4-year-old sister couldn't take it anymore. I would love to live in D.C. so I can walk around in the Smithsonian whenever I have time to kill. Also, I constantly surround myself with music. If I don't have music on it's probably because I'm singing, yes even when I'm just walking around campus. My tastes are all over the map, but no matter what I'm listening to this week I can always come back to classics. I have loved Frank Sinatra since I was 8 and I don't think I will ever tire of his voice and energy, and if I ever can't sleep I know I can turn on the Bach Cello Suites played by Yo Yo Ma and I will be out by the 4th movement. More recently I have become interested in art, with a particular affinity for Monet. I sat in the Art Institute in D.C. looking at "Woman with a Parasol" for at least 15 minutes. I also enjoy Mattise, Picasso, Van Gogh, Degas, O'Keefe, Michelangelo, Bernini, and for some reason charcoal sketches. One thing I wish I could do more often is watch an artist work. The development, intensity, and feeling in the process of their creation is sometimes even more beautiful to me than the final product. I look forward our discussions and further developing my love, appreciation, and knowledge of art in all it's dimensions.

Introduction

Hi, I am Anna Toole. I am a freshman from Greenville, South Carolina. I am majoring in elementary education, and have the hopes of becoming a speech therapist. I was interested in this class because art was something that always fascinated me and I wanted to take the opportunity to learn more.

MTV Skins

I heard this on NPR today about the controversial new series on MTV called Skins. Plato, Aristotle, and the nature of popular art are all mentioned. Check it out.

Another Introduction

Hello. My name is Collette Riddle and I am a sophomore Music Theatre BFA. And I love art! Visual art is my favorite mostly because I rarely can execute any form of it myself. Of visual art, I am most fond of cliche classics (i.e. Monet, Da Vinci, Van Gogh - especially Van Gogh! - Seurat etc) and cliche surrealist pieces like Magritte's The Son of Man or Dali's Melting Clocks (I have a working clock designed like this in my room!).

Of course, it goes without saying that I like the performing arts as well. It's only what I want to do for the rest of my life. Getting into the psyche of other characters and being their outlet for expressing such deep emotions is one of the greatest experiences I know. Oh and music! There is nothing in this world that can bring me to tears faster than a beautiful piece of music (be it happy or sad). Flaherty and Mahler (theatre and symphonic: diverse?), especially, leave me a blubbering mess.

I decided to take this class because I've always wondered who gets to decide what is considered art and what is considered trash. I'm really looking forward to more discussions about all the wonderful and not-so-wonderful artworks we shall explore :)

Introduction

Hello, my name is Laurel Powell. I am freshman from Mooresville, NC and I will probably major in business with an accounting concentration. I became interested in this class because it promised discussion and an exploration into many different types of art.

Garry Wills's Definition of Art

Open discussion.

An introduction

Hi. My name is James Abbott and I'm a junior from Winston-Salem, NC. My major is Music Business. I could continue to list bland statements about myself such as, "I like ketchup but don't like tomatoes," which is true by the way, but I don't know how beneficial to this class that would be. Instead, I'll offer a little bit about how I think this class is applicable to my personal goals and what I hope to gain from it.

My career path is one that will place me in an industry driven by the consumption of art and other content related to that art. Therefore, I feel that it will be beneficial for me to know something about how art has been perceived and what purpose it has served society throughout history. Should I survive, I hope to walk out of this class with a deeper understanding of the relationship between art, philosophy, history, etc, and its effect(s) on the human condition.

I would like to be able to touch on some of the issues that continue to cross my mind, such as the awkward but necessary marriage of art and commerce inherent in any industry centered around the monetization of art, the idea of good vs. bad art, and the bizarre way in which a piece of art can be loved by one person but hated by the next.

On a completely different note, I thought I would share this art which I found fascinating. Sorry, you'll have to copy & paste the link.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/2363/

- James

Awesome site for picture browsing.

I've only looked at it for a little while, but I intend to go back:  The Artchive Store.

If you have other suggestions, please paste them into the comments. Thanks!

Mimesis and Video Games

Perfect timing for our interrogations of Plato and Aristotle: a discussion, from Swarthmore College historian and tech/fantasy geek Tim Burke, of video game inputs and correlations to the real world.  Here's the key conceptual paragraph:

What bugs me about the middlebrow celebration of the downfall of the multibutton controller and its kindred devices (keyboards, etc.) is the naive understanding of mimesis buried inside that enthusiasm. The driving faith here is that representation and lived experience should have a 1:1 correspondence in order to rid ourselves of the work and difficulty that comes from a slippage between the two. There’s at least a kissing-cousin resemblance between this view and older positivist ideas, lingering on in some scientific and social-scientific circles, that we should tinker ceaselessly with language until all ambiguity is banished from it and it thus can be used for the efficient description of the real world.

The last paragraph is also crucial, so read the whole thing and then come back here to talk about it.

There will be no more naive understandings of mimesis in this class!!