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Last winter, as I walked back to the train station in Chicago to head home after a long day, I had a little bit of time to kill. Almost all of the shops had shut down for the night, all except for one brightly lit gallery. There walls were covered with a variety of striking modern sculpture-style pieces, but as I made my way across the room my eyes fell on a huge classically painted oil painting of a young nude woman by the water. I honestly can’t conjure up the exact scene, but I will never forget that moment in time because that was my first art awakening. I was so excited, the art bug had finally bit me and I felt something I had never felt before, almost like I was finally a member of a secret club. The artist sort of chuckled at my gushing over the painting, telling me that it was just a copy of another artist’s work. He also told me that paintings like these were quickly going out of style and would be going for very cheap by the next year; what people wanted were the abstract compilations on the walls. Not me. I wanted that painting. I couldn’t remember the name he told me, but for several weeks after that night I scoured the internet to see if I could somehow crack the code of Google Images and unlock once more the treasure trove that this painting had revealed to me. No such luck. But my awakening that night has inspired me to soak in as much of the art around me as I possibly can.

After that day, I didn’t really feel that sort of connection to a painting again until this semester. Sitting in my art history class, my teacher began to talk about La Grande Odalisque by French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres in 1814.

We learned that Ingres and many of his contemporaries began to explore a new way of painting, abandoning linear accuracy for compositional beauty. This means that he sought to make the most aesthetically pleasing representation of a body in space and sometimes abandoning the realistic proportions of the body. He sought to attain a higher form of purity than the traditional anatomical accuracy of the Greeks and early neoclassical artists. Well, he gets an A+ in my eyes because I could study the intricacies of this painting for hours. There’s something so lush and exotic about the entire piece that pulls me in and almost makes me forget entirely about the fact that there’s no way her back could really be that long. The rich blues and golds of the tapestry create in me such a feeling of extravagance and luxury; despite the fact that the model is undeniably European, her elegant cohesion as a figure in the space of the frame makes her an integral part of this scene of exotic leisure.

Just to put Ingres into context, his painting Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne of 1806 also exemplifies this sense of compositional harmony and lush texture. Napoleon’s right arm is noticeably longer than normal, but it works as a part of the piece as a whole. His robes are also extremely detailed, it is almost as if you could reach out and feel how soft that white fur is around his neck.

Words are often inadequate to convey art’s ability wake you up out of the dull monotony of daily life, especially in these times of mass media when little to nothing has the power to shock. But through my two awakenings, I’ve come to find that a piece of art possesses the unmatchable power to unlock the treasure trove of meaning that already lies within the viewer.

Even if you have never attended the opera, there are certain pieces from within the operatic repertoire that everyone is familiar with.  Opera has found a place for itself in mainstream American Media, and through this medium its melodies have found their way to the masses.

From Bugs Bunny…

To Family Guy…

To the inevitable Superbowl Commercials…

Opera has infiltrated its way into the ears of everyday Americans. In honor of National Opera week, I have searched YouTube and found four examples of this infiltration.

The Bug’s Bunny cartoon above, What’s Opera, Doc, aired in 1957 and is a parody of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, heavily borrowing music from the second opera in the cycle, Die Walküre. The leitmotif (recurring tune) of the Valkyries is sung by Elmer Fudd on “Kill the Wabbit” giving this cartoon its informal name. Wagner was a German composer who lived in the 19th century, revolutionalizing opera with his concept of Gesamantkunstwerk (Total work of art). Writing his own libretto (lyrics) and music for each of his operatic works, Wagner sought to combine the dramatic, musical, poetic and visual arts into nothing short of a spectacle. The Ride of the Valkyries, which features the Valkyrie leitmotif, takes place as the Valkyrie sisters greet each other and prepare for the transportation of the fallen heroes to Vallhalla. The leitmotif has also made appearances in American films such as Apocalypse Now (1979) and Watchmen (2009).

The Lakmé Flower duet makes an appearance in the 11^th season of Family Guy when Peter takes up skydiving in the “Turban Cowboy” episode. In the Delibes’ opera this duet is song by Lakmé and Mallika as they go to the river to gather flowers. This duet is the second piece of the opera and takes place before the real plot of the opera is revealed (Lakmé, daughter of the high priest Nilakantham, & Gérald’s, a British officer, love affair).

In Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Lauretta threatens her father with suicide if she is not permitted to marry Rinuccio in her aria O mio babbino caro. Used in many commercials (as seen above) and films, this aria is far more famous than the one act opera which it originates from. Gianni Schicchi, is the third and final one act opera written as part of Puccini’s Il trittico. Il trittico is a collection of three one-act operas with contrasting themes written to be performed together.

Finally, we have Carmen’s L’amour est un oiseau rebelle, commonly called the Habanera. This is Carmen’s entrance aria where she warns the listener of the fleeting nature of love and to guard themselves from her love. During composition, Bizet thought he using a Spanish folk song as the inspiration for the aria. However, he was later informed that his habanera was based upon Spanish composer Sebastián Yradier’s habanera El Arreglito.

While to many, opera seems outdated and out of place in modern culture, we see many examples of opera within mainstream culture. These four pieces are easily recognizable and only a small portion of the repertoire which has infiltrated its way in the everyday sights and sounds of America.

This Sunday, five of us visited the Detroit Institute of Arts during a Helicon field trip. Our original purpose was to check out the Caravaggio piece, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, which is currently on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. DIA creates a mini exhibit of Caravaggio by displaying this painting next to Martha and Mary Magdalene, another Caravaggio’s work owned by DIA. Standing in front of these two paintings, I was surprised to realize that I’d seen both of them ten months ago in the Caravaggio exhibition held by Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This evocation of my personal memory turned out to be a prelude of the theme of our visit, because the notion of memory reappeared several times as we further explored the museum.

An exhibition of ofrenda altars caught our attention immediately. The exhibition is associated with the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday which is celebrated on October 31, November 1 and November 2 for people to commemorate family members or friends who have passed away. Traditionally, people would build ofrendas, which are basically private altars, to honor the dead. The exhibition consists of ten installations, each of which are dedicated to different people, animals, events and even ideas. One of the altars is for a former baseball player, which is evident since there is a huge poster showing a skeleton in a baseball player outfit, with a baseball cap on his head and a baseball bat in his hands. Another altar serves to remember the deceased pets, on which people put lovely photos of puppies and kitties, stuffed animals, canned dog food to show their long-lasting love and care for their former pets. There are also ofrendas to honor the Mexican American soldiers or to bless emigrants who have died while traveling.

My favorite one is Women’s Song for the Water, by Catherine Peet. This ofrenda memorizes the creatures that died when 200 million gallons of crude oil flooded the gulf of Mexico in 2010. The altarpiece is in the shape of a container, with glass doors that allow people to see what’s inside. Two sea birds stand on top of the container, bending forward as if they are two receptionists presenting this work to the viewer. Around the container are various sea creatures, such as sea shells, sea snails, sea snails, octopuses, turtles, and sea plants. Inside the glass doors, there are lovely fishes and beautiful corals. However, this pleasant scene of harmony is overturned if one looks further inside, where skeletons and skulls occupy the inner space, implying the underlying dangers and threats. This visual commemoration of the event definitely calls for people’s attention to the protection of environment and ecosystem.

Another awesome exhibition on view in DIA is Foto Europa, on European photography. Not a big fan of photography, I’ve never taken any classes on it and I’m always too lazy to take photos while traveling. I was wandering around idly in the gallery when suddenly a photo series caught my eyes. It was L’album de Photographique de Christian Boltanski (the photo album of Christian Boltanski). In the photos, the photographer recreates scenes from his childhood memories such as birthday parties and favorite games by entering the original settings with an adult body but act like a 4-year-old. In one particular scene, around-35-year-old Boltanski is sitting on one side of a seesaw and next to him are several kids playing on another two parallel seesaws. I learned from the description of this photo that when he was little, Boltanski’s favorite game was to play on a seesaw with his grandpa. In another photo, the grown-up Boltanski is presenting a puppy to the camera with a big smile, and the description goes like, “This is my sixth birthday and I get a puppy as a gift. It’s so cute. I really love it.” In another scene, he is playing a set of chess (probably? Can’t remember well) he used to play a lot when he was little with his nephew. All the descriptions are written in simple and childlike sentences. However, upon reading them along with the photos, I couldn’t help but start this melancholy mood and reminisce about my own childhood memories. Maybe I was just emo, but who doesn’t want to go back to his/her childhood? All grown-ups were once children. Boltanski is playing the 4-year-old him, but around him are the real 4-year-olds. Nobody could go back to his/her childhood; however, there are always children in the world, just like there are adults. Here, childhood never ends.

(Just a side note: for people who are taking history of photography with Professor Fay, coming to see this exhibit could get you extra credits for the class, so you should definitely check it out!)