Overall blog experience

To be honest, I don't really update my blogs until the last minute because I often have a hard time thinking about what to write for a blog. However, once I do get an idea what to write, the process gets easier for me. Reading other blogs is really interesting and it helped me guide my posts. If I had to do the blogging all over again, I would make sure to update my blog frequently and vary my post topics.

Next Semester Topic

Next semester my teacher is Dr. Shetty. My friend had her this semester and their topic was linguistics. I believe that next semester we will still be talking about languages. I think that the human language resembles art in a way. Everybody doesn't sound alike even when imitating others. Your voice is one of the most expressive things. Your voice can change pitch when you're expressing emotions. Also, dialects help express where you came from. I am excited to see what we study and analyze for English 1102.

Save the Art

Art isn't as appreciated today as it was in the past. Funding for art programs is schools are being cut because it's not as important as physical education or computer classes. It's very disappointing to hear that funding is short because my art and chorus classes from kindergarten up till my senior year of high school were very enjoyable and relaxing. Kids won't be as fortunate as the older generations were if everyone doesn't give back to the community. I think that activist groups who are making a difference in the funding of art are doing a great job. Many groups hold benefit concerts, i.e. save the music foundation, competitions, etc. Here is a link to learn more: http://www.dosomething.org/make-art-save-art

What is that?

This website is hilarious when talking about artwork. It's very humorous and it makes you think why artists create strange art. Check it out:
http://bertc.com/weird/index.htm

Expressive

Expressive clothing defines our generation. The new fad in expressive wear is duct tape clothing. I don't know how people make clothes out of duct tape but it looks like a fun and a very bold way of expressing yourself. Here are some great examples:



Check out this article :

http://articles.courant.com/2005-10-14/news/0510140601_1_duct-tape-sticky-situation-prom

It's Winter

It's winter time! It's that time of year when the leaves are on the ground, the temperature is dropping, and Christmas music is on 24/7. I don't really associate art with the winter, just Christmas music. When you google famous winter paintings, landscape during the winter is shown. Claude Monet's winter scene picture isn't you typical winter scene. His brush strokes give the snow dimension and depth. Monet painted many winter scenes across Europe. This painting is called Le Boulevard de Pontoise à Argenteuil.  The picture looks gloomy just like a normal day in the winter. There are many realistic detail in this painting. Gloomy and cold are the moods that I get from looking at the painting.

Different faces of Emotions

In my last blog post, I said that all art has emotions embedded in it. Color, texture, tone, and symbols have effects on art.Here are some examples of different emotions in art:

                                                                Depression

                                                                      Celebration

Sorrow

Anger

Agony

Relief

Emotions

When you see a dark painting or image, there could be different reasons for the creation of artwork. One reason for seeing a depressing, dark artwork is because the creator is feeling down at the time. Another reason is that the artist is in a "dark" period. Or maybe the artist created a dark painting to give the art emotion. Emotions plays a big role in art. Artists put their emotions in their artwork to express what they are feeling at that time. Other examples of emotion in art can be seen or heard in song, dance, literature, sculptures, and memorial artwork. Artwork that contains emotions have alot more depth to decipher than other artwork that doens't. However, I believe that all art has emotions.

Places to go Part 2

Another place to check out in downtown Atlanta is the Center for Puppetry Arts. In the past, I've been to the center for elementary and middle school field trips. I've always enjoyed going to these shows not just because of the puppets, but how the tell the story. In each puppet show that I've been to had an element of comedy to it. I think the reasons for including comedy are for the audience, which is children, and that puppets correlate with comedy. I don't believe that many people think of puppetry as art but it is. The acting, the storytelling with voices and in motion, and the singing is expressive art. The Center for Puppetry Arts isn't just for kids. They have adult workshops and their have a variety of puppet shows.

The places to go.....

All around Atlanta there are great places to look, see, and hear art. Last year, I was fortunate to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Shakespeare's Tavern located in Atlanta. I loved the play while reading it but I loved it even more when I got to see the characters interact. I love to go see plays. The difference between plays and movies to me is the emotions involved. I feel that way because plays are live that the emotions are much more stronger unlike movies, where you can take as many takes as the shot needs. I always enjoy going to see plays and dances at the Fox Theater. You can't help but be excited to see the show once you are inside the Fox. The last time I was at the Fox was when I saw the Alvin Ailey Performers. The art of dance is beautiful because it's another way of someone understanding of what art is. The emotions and the movement I see stirs something inside of me and causes me to think differently. I just think that emotions are the key component in understanding art.

Dreamweaver

Since we all go to tech, it's very interesting to see the school's influence on our project. In high school, I had to make a website for a project but comparing it to the project that we have to do in english now seems very elementary. After the Dreamweaver tutorial in the library, I was a little bit nervous making a website for the project because I'm not really creative in general and I'm not creative on the computer. However, I was really intrigued by Dreamweaver because of all functions you can do to create a website. I really like how Dreamweaver is for beginners to advanced people who are interested in web design.
When I started my first page for my group, it was actually kind of hard to get started. But after I starting to get used to it, I think it's really fun. I think if I was to change my major, I would change it to computer science. So far this is what my page looks like :

A Museum's End

Some people might think that museums are boring and are a waste of time, but they really aren't. If you go to a museum with bad expectations, at the end of thev visit, you views will change.In the Duncan article, she talks about a ritual's experience is to have a purpose, or an end. After, visiting a museum, the beneficial outcomes of musuems are compared to outcomes of traditional, religious rituals. When people peform some religious rituals, they are trying to seek obtain some sort of education out of it. Duncan explains that at the end of visiting a museum (museum ritual), the "visitors come away with a sense of enlightenment, or a feeling of having been spiritually nourished or resotred" (Duncan 479). Something unexpected will happen during your visit, and you will discover so many interesting things that it will be on your mind later after the visit. That's why so many people go to museums.

My experience is that I've always found something worth while in a museum. Everything in a museum is fascinating, even if the objects in the museum aren't aesthetically pleasing to look at. I really don't know when the last time I went to a museum, not including the High Museum. The Prado Museum in Spain is one art museum that I would love to go to because of the Spainish art.

My thoughts on the visual essay

The visual essay that we were assigned was actually hard to accomplish. There is so much that we could do for the assignment, but it was really about how you could all put it in one theme. I had a hard time thinking what I was going to talk about and how I was going to convey my theme through my pictures. I understood how difficult it is for photographers to convey what they want to say through their photos.

Everyone did such a great job. I really enjoyed hearing what they had to say about public art and how they incorporated that into themes. The visual essays that really stood out were the ones that were really out of the box. The evolution of the trashcan was probably my favorite just because I wouldn't have ever thought of that idea and the presentation was great. Other good ones had to do with nature and public art and advertising.

Labyrinth and Thread

In class Thursday, we discussed 4 case studies that was analyzed in the Mitchell essay. The case study that I was assigned was Labyrinth and Thread: Camera Lucida by Barthes. It basically discussed the relationship captions and images have with each other with using Barthes' book of photographs of his mother as an example. What really caught my attention is how the photographs that Barthes, used from other photographers, all relates back to his mother. How could random pictures relate back to one's mother? The answer is perception. What one person sees in a picture is different from another one's view of a picture. The captions that Barthes that describes or analyzes the picture is the "thread" that leads the observer through his book of photographs the "labyrinth". If you apply that to all pictures, you can relate that to a number of things.

Walking around Atlanta

I was really excited about taking pictures for our visual essay assignment. There is so much public art in Atlanta that you just have to be inspired by it. I was nervous about taking the pictures with different perspectives and angles because I'm not much of a photographer. In the end, my pictures came out pretty well in my opinion. Here's some of my photos that I took-

The Wonders of Public Art

Public art is all around us. We see it through architecture, gardens, murals, and sidewalk chalk, billboards, etc. I believe that public art is for those who seek public art and those who don't. Public art only has a message if you seek it out. Public doses so much for the community. Public art highlights the surrounding area and attracts new people to the site.

Symmetry

In my biology class, we were studying the process of evolution. In a homework assignment of ours, there was a picture of that showed a bird evolving into a fish; or it could be the other way around. I thought it was interesting and I researched more in the artist who created the picture. M.C. Escher is a graphic artist who is inspired by math to create art. Many of his art is symmetrical. I find that Escher's artwork is fascinating and beautiful.

Abstract

Abstract art is really intriguing. There's so much in the work of art that I'm not even sure that you can analyze what the meaning behind the piece (if there is actually a meaning). Abstract paintings are usually bright colored so immediately it demands your attention. Other abstract artwork has one central figure but is camouflaged in the background that it not the first thing that you see.

Imagination and Realism

All things expressive are considered art in my opinion. From literature to facial expressions, expressive things are art because imagination is expressed through art. Imagination is a helpful tool for analyzing a form of art. Without imagination, the world wouldn't have half of the creations we have today and humans wouldn't be as expressive as they are today. 

Although imagination may influence some art, it doesn't influence all art. Art may not be inspired by imagination or intend to inspire others.  Realism in art is defined as something that the artist creates just to create something without the intent of it being analyzed for its meaning. I often feel like people always try to analyze everything in the world because they need to find meaning to everything.

Ferdinand de Saussure

"Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth"- Ferdinand de Saussure

Semiotics and Art History by Bal and Bryson, goes into detail about Ferdinand de Saussure's fundamental views of Semiotics. Saussure is the one of the founding fathers of Semiotics. His view is if others want to know how things function, such as words in a language, then they "must set to one side both the aspects of historical change within particular languages over time and actual utterances or performances of language in local situations (parole)." If art spectators can use Saussure's view of the way signs work, they can understand the paintings or even have another way to approach the painting without being biased. It is really true how easily people become biased towards anything because of what people and the media say about certain things. If we could approach something in a semiotics way, we wouldn't be biased because it would be a natural process just like thinking process.

Las Meninas

When I was first reading Foucault's piece, the introduction captured my attenction. If you refer back to Las Meninas by Diego Velaquez while reading the article, everything makes sense. Foucault puts emphasis on invisiblity and visibility by repeating the words and using examples. One of the examples that Foucault uses is Velaquez in the painting. In class today, we talked about various reasons as to why Velaquez put himself in the actual painting. The act of him putting himself in the painting while painting the artwork symbolizes to me that Velaquez wanted to be in that time period to accurately paint the picture right in his eyes; that's the fundamental answer to the question what is art. Just like Velaquez, Dali paints himself in numerous artworks as well. For some reason, I like that artists can put themselves into their work. It makes the art more personable.

Connection

One connection that I noticed after reading the Sontag essay was when she mentioned Samuel Beckett. Last year, I read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Analyzing literature is similar to interpreting art. Either you can see the literal aspect of the piece or you can try to find a deeper meaning of the work.  I can agree with Sontag’s point about a writer who is “uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself- albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony…”. I defiantly think that Beckett avoided being blunt about religion in the play because religion shown in a bad light is very controversial.

First trip to the High Museum

Before entering the High Museum, I expected that the museum would look like a regular, plain building. My expectations were wrong as I walked up the slope to enter the museum. The modern building is so interesting that you see the building as a piece of art rather than a museum. My wrong expectations caused me to enter into the Dali exhibit without any expectations at all.

                When you hear often hear of Dali, you think of The Persistence of Memory. In many of his paintings, the same symbols would appear, such as eggs, clocks, and horns. I think that the time period or his philosophy caused him to use the same symbols over and over again. One thing that I appreciated about Dali is that he is in control over what he does. Under one of his pieces it says that Dali believes that his art has other functions than just being painting.

The painting that really held my attention was Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Dali. I feel like many people, myself included, can just look at the piece and relate it back to their religious lives. There is so much that could be said about the piece of art. It’s powerful. Dali defiantly appeals to the audience by using the religious symbol of Christ on the cross.       

 Overall, my first trip the High Museum was really enjoyable. 

Definition of Art

Definition of Art

Art is an ambiguous term. There is no clear cut answer as how to define art. Some art evokes emotions that the author is trying stir up inside of the onlooker. For example, Ivan the Terrible by Repin evokes many emotions due to the boldness of colors and the history behind the picture. The red that contrast with the black creates a serious image that you can’t help to avoid. Art tells a story as well. Studying the picture, the onlooker can make an educated guess about the history of the subjects in the picture. That’s the benefit of art. If you see art with an imagination mind, you can have appreciation for something that may not look pleasing to the eye.

 Ivan the Terrible by Repin