final projects

Here are the pictures I took of your wonderful final projects!

the art of gum-ball machines

Here are images to go along with “The Art of Gum-Ball Machines.” I’ve organized them very specifically, so check the text to see examples of the images as you read.

And here is the question: We come back around to still life, in the final lines of Kimmelman’s essay, and from Dutch painters and their lemons to Thiebaud and his baked goods. Along the way we took diversions to South India and the video art, but it strikes me that what almost everything we have discussed this semester has in common, is it is all about valuing and examining the ordinary–the family (Roy), the object (Doty), the bath (Bonnard), the moment (Miranda July). How does this almost unintentional focus confirm/change your ideas about Art?

Wayne Thiebaud: Brown River

Horace Pippin: Domino Players

Pippin: Harmonizing

Christmas Breakfast

Ellsworth Kelly: Dominican, 1952

Ellsworth Kelly: Black, Brown & White, 1951

Chardin

The Smoker’s Case–Chardin

Chardin–Soap Bubbles

Wayne Thiebaud–Eight Lipsticks

Thiebaud–Hot Dog Row (2000)

Thiebaud–River Farm Study (2001)

Thiebaud–Man Sitting–Back View

Thiebaud–Pies

Thiebaud–Cakes

our introduction

Okay, y’all, here’s my first crack at stringing together the ideas we discussed in class this morning. Comment away–criticisms more that welcome!! What do you think?

_________________

This is a collection of individual ekphrastic responses created by students in LHSP 130: Writing/Responding: Art and the Ekphrastic Impulse. The word ekphrasis simply means writing that respond to visual art. Our expanded use of the term here is reflexive, however, and includes visual pieces that respond to writing as well.

This semester we have attempted to understand both writing and visual art by putting them in conversation with one another. Why do we respond a certain way to a painting or a poem? How can we shape that response into an interesting object in its own right? At times this conversation can become layered, so that a painting responds to a poem that is in turn responding to another painting. Like a real conversation, these layers then begin to overlap and murmur to each other.

Visual and written forms each have their own languages. Visual art speaks to the viewer through color, line, composition, and so on, while a poem or an essay uses adjectives, characters, and setting, to name just a few techniques. Sometimes words seem inadequate as a way to express what a visual piece makes us feel. Other times, visual images can provide for a multitude of interpretations—something words can help clarify. Sometimes, the act of response itself can be enough. It can help to bridge the gap between our aesthetic appreciation and our articulation of those feelings.

The artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher say, “The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response.” Our responses as presented here are intensely personal. They convey the artists’ (our own) emotions and thoughts. Since you are not us, you may have a different response to the original works, and we hope that you do: if we all had the same opinion, there would be no point. As the art critic John Berger explains, we come to art with our own backgrounds, knowledge, and assumptions: “although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.”  This freedom of interpretation is one of the most exhilarating aspects of art.

Finally, we hope that you enjoy the ways these images and words speak to one another. We aim to approach the sense of wonder described by the poet Seamus Heaney, “A hurry through which known and strange things pass/ As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways/ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.”

gallery info

Please post the information you want displayed next to your piece on Thursday. I will transfer it to a card exactly as you type it, with only a little formatting for space, so be precise.

research report

Please report on your research. Include two links to sites you find useful, or, if you’re not using the web, a link to the bookstore page of a book, or the library catalog page, you get the idea.

Here are two links from me:

BLDGBLOG is one of the coolest web sites ever. Here’s that story about the giant eddies I was talking about in class today.

We haven’t yet talked about the artist Joseph Cornell, subject of Octavio Paz’s poem “Objects and Apparitions. Cornell was recently the subject of a traveling art show–amazing images available here (need Flash, I believe.)

bonnard

Please read Michael Kimmelman’s essay “The Art of Making a World” carefully and look at these reproductions of some of Pierre Bonnard’s paintings. On Wednesday we used Hass to start talking about some Big Themes at the end of this course–what do you think about Bonnard’s attempt to create a world through these paintings, through his use of color and light? Kimmelman cites the German poet Rilke, who writes “…you lift very slowly one black tree/ and place it against the sky: slender, alone./ And you have made the world…” (p 21). Can art (visual or literary) make the world?

Portrait of the Artist in a Mirror, 1939-1945

La Table de Toilette

Crouching Nude in the Tub

La femme au chat (Woman with cat)

Le Salle de Bain

Marthe in the bath

Pierre Bonnard c. 1906

The Almond Tree in Blossom

The dining room

The Window, 1925

Bathing Rituals

Joan Mitchell: After April, Bernie

Mitchell: Sunflowers

Joan Mitchell

The Bath, 1925

Young Women in the Garden, 1923

art and life (time and materials)

Hi Class,

For Wednesday, please look over these two Robert Hass poems (coursepack pp. 39-42) in addition to commenting on your peers’ essays. The Gerhard Richter paintings that Hass discusses are in a post farther down. Unfortunately, they don’t get bigger when you click them, so there is also a link to a website with more of his work. Here’s Vermeer’s milkmaid, who also appears in John Berger, from long ago. Click it to enlarge it big time. It’s a good digital reproduction, so you should be able to see it in great detail.

See you soon.

kathakali

god’s own country

Kerala’s advertising motto has been, for years, “Kerala: God’s Own Country”. It’s not exactly “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but you get the idea.

Please choose a passage from this section of reading (89-177) in which the writing, that is to say the language itself, does something interesting. I’ll let you decide and explain what “interesting” means.

You can comment on each others’ responses, but you need not feel obligated to for this post.

a pale daymoon hung hugely in the sky

Please answer this question and then RESPOND to at least one other person’s response. In other words, interact with each other.

Obviously Arundhati Roy is taking some liberties with syntax and grammar. Choose one instance where language corresponds with the tone of the story so far in an interesting way. You may like or dislike her style–choose one quotation and explain why.

musee des beaux arts; time and materials

The Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel (c. 1525-1569)

     

Gerhard Richter: Abstrakt Bilden

See this useful web site for more Richter images.

learning to love you more

I did assignment #5, which was to re-create an object from someone’s past using only cardboard, paper, and tape. It’s a soccer ball in case you can’t tell.

The other assignment I did was #35, where I asked three members of my family to write a description of what they think I do. I was very curious to hear what they had to say, and what they see me doing away from home. Here are their responses:

Mom: Jennifer Conn

I see Melanie sleeping as long as possible, getting up at 8:30 to get ready for classes, or earlier if she needs to finish a project or do some reading. Breakfast is a bowl of wheat chex and off she goes to catch the bus to North Campus. Studio classes are long–between three and six hours a day, not including her other classes. She eats lunch on North Campus in between classes, sometimes meeting one friend or another. After classes, it’s back to the dorm for a short nap and dinner with Kelsey, Patty, and Rachel in the cafeteria. After dinner, there is studying or working on a project, often with Mark. It’s a late night, taking breaks to socialize with friends on the hall, practice the guitar, or watch part of a movie on the laptop. Eventually bedtime arrives, usually after midnight. Her mother wishes she’d go to bed earlier.

Dad: Richard Conn

I believe Melanie is spending her time learning how to juggle the daily
life cycle of being a college student and meeting her academic demands
and learning how to be a good employee at her M-Den job. In between
these 2 major responsibilities come finding time to rest, think, read,
go out with her boyfriend and roommates and girlfriend and just enjoy
college life and being in such great physical shape.

She is also learning how to become independent from her family that she
just spent 18 years with. I am sure we all miss her (I know I do) more
than she has time to miss us. Looking forward to her coming home for
the spring and summer.

Brother: Brian Conn

When I think of what my sister, Melanie Conn, is doing at college I mainly think of art. I’ve heard of her schedule and all the art classes it entitles, so I have this vision of her doing art almost all the time in class. What I have to imagine, though, is what kind of art. I’ve seen a lot of drawings and paintings of hers, but I’ve also seen a surprising number of computer generated pictures, so when I think of her art I think of electronic art too. I also have an image of her being on the computer almost as often as I am, messing around with all the neat features of her mac, but also working with all the programs it has.
I don’t see her running much, but I do imagine her socializing quite often. She also works a lot and I guess now plays the guitar. That’s basically all I see her doing these days (along with editing my book for me), but it seems like a fun life and I can’t wait for my own college experience.

And here’s the picture for the soccer ball:

Learning to Love You More

The picture on the top is of the deep-dark-abyss under my bed gloomily illuminated for a fraction of a second.  The other picture of me tuning my guitar as I prepared to play a cover of the song “Don’t Dream it’s Over.”  This didn’t workout so I did #61, my ideal government, as follows:

My ideal government?  Well I really couldn’t complain if I was head honcho of a dictatorial regime.  But more realistically, all I want from a government is freedom to do what I want as long as I am not hurting anybody else.  This means freedom of speech, assembly, religion, sexuality, etc.  Basically if the freedom is not directly harming someone it is okay.  I say directly because there can always be an argument made for why a liberty is dangerous.  Concerning dangerous liberties though, hate groups could exist under the freedom of assembly but they are not going to have the same rights to speech as other groups.  This is because words have power, and the last thing we need is a civil conflict sparked by some loud mouthed bigot.  They can say what they want, but they cannot go marching around, wasting the people’s resources when police have to be called to protect they hate mongers from a rightfully upset populace.  Basically it can be justified that by marching, any group that creates undue civil unrest and needs protection should not be allowed to march.  If one person wants to pass out fliers, or stand on a street corner at his or her own risk, that is fine.  The government will not have resources dedicated to the protection of the people in general diverted to protect a few who would incite unrest.  You might say this is unfair, but you know what?  It’s my government, long live King Andrew and whatnot.  But seriously, the one thing the government won’t tolerate is intolerance.  In the global world in which we live, any philosophy that declares that outsiders are inferior is only going to set us back.  Immigration problems can be solved through economic as supposed to punitive means.  If the government removes the need for people to leave their countries and try to sneak into this country we wouldn’t have such an illegal immigration problem.

Also, this whole debacle with foreign policy.  If there is genocide going on somewhere or an unjust killing of a specific group, the government will make it a point to resolve the conflict by ANY means necessary.  This does not mean it will get involved in struggles between other nations, it simply means that it will not tolerate the ethnic cleansing and other like activities going on throughout the world.  It will not stand by while innocent people die.  Speaking of people dying, no more capital punishment either.

Learning to love you more

 

Learning to Love You More

 #27-Take a Picture of the Sun and #6-Make a Poster of Shadows