Category: Uncategorized

Clouds are innocuous things to look upon, omnipresent, mundane, worth barely a mention. The sky is there every day and night. Weather often serves as a filler in conversations, a last resort. And yet, many seem to have a propensity for sunsets and sunrises and dramatic summer cumulonimbuses. Never mind cliche. “Let’s enjoy nature,” people say, and head out to the yard or the lake to watch the sunset. There is allure, clearly, but what?

Some time ago, when I had been maintaining a personal blog, I discovered a little link-share page. It was called Skywatch Friday, and the concept was very simple. Every Friday, you blogged. You posted a picture of sky. You added your link to the Skywatch page, and your thumbnail was displayed for all to see. Here’s the sky in Sweden, the sky in Melbourne, the sky in Iowa. For three years, I browsed others’, posted my own.

Inane? Perhaps. But what you learned was how to see.

One needs be neither a meteorologist nor an astronomer to  find interest in studying the sky.

A great number of posts contained the classic something-silhouetted-against-a-sunset shot, or the picture-of-buildings-with-a-sliver-of-sky-in-the-back kind of deal, perhaps. Some displayed particularly striking and unusual atmospheric conditions. One can take a picture for the sake of taking one to post (it boosts my traffic!), or because it seems aesthetically pleasing, or because there is a rare phenomenon that musn’t be missed. These are simple. Click, done. But then there are the ones that physically, literally, do not show anything of particular interest. Yet they manage to be more than aesthetically pleasing- meaningful, thought-provoking.

Interpretation is the viewer’s task.

I’ve recently just read Annie Dillard’s Seeing, an essay on just that. Bah, you think. Everyone sees. We’re not blind. The truth is objective. It is out there. Is that really the case? In a way, but not quite. We see, she seems to say, what we expect to see. We do not see what we do are not searching for. Those well-versed in their particular areas of knowledge will always see more, know more about their own area than outsiders do.

The point is that I just don’t know what the lover knows; I just can’t see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct. The herpetologist asks the native, “Are there snakes in that ravine?” “Nosir.” And the herpetologist comes home with yessir, three bags full.

Although, what we see is certainly not set in stone. One only has to look. Possess the desire to know, to see, and it will happen. I am not suggesting the sky is full of rich, life-fulfilling truths, necessarily, only that it is a good place to begin. We give such simple things not a second glance, not a second thought. Can it not be that we are missing something?

During my first semester as a freshman I had signed up for HISTART 275: 19^thCentury French Impressionism. On the first day of discussion, the GSI asked everyone to go around and name, hometown, favorite artist, and museum. Since going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is not exactly impressive when you live a short train ride away, I decided to reflect back upon my one trip to Europe (as an awkward 13 year old) and disclosed that my favorite museum had been Monet’s house and garden in Giverny, France. Though I was naively satisfied with myself, it turned out that my classmates were plotting the same move (since they were all from New York). However, instead of listing super touristy spots like Giverny or the Louvre (which I visited, but don’t remember a single thing from because my brother hijacked the visit with one of his food tantrums), they started throwing out obscure museums from Germany, Spain, and Italy – three countries that were not included on the Srinivasans Take Europe Tour 2004 and probably won’t be the destination of any trips in the near future on account of my empty pockets.

Understanding my plight, Google has recently launched a great new site called “Art Project,” which lets you revisit museums that you’ve forgotten (like the Louvre), and lets you take a look at the collections of museums you wished you had visited (like the Uffizi Gallery) from the comfort of your dorm room bed. However, this isn’t just a website containing thousands of slides of famous paintings. Unlike other art collection sites, Art Project also allows the viewer to explore the museum itself through 360 degree viewing of gallery rooms and museum architecture. Additionally, this site allows users to compile their own list of favorite works/museums and share it with other users. Not only is Art Project a great study tool (for all you History of Art Majors out there), but it is also a great way to spend a lazy Sunday morning :) 

Check out the following link and tell me what you think: http://www.googleartproject.com/

Libraries are some of the most fascinating places in the world.  There’s something about walking into a building full of books that opens the imagination when one visits for fun and helps one concentrate when one needs to work.  Recently on Stumbleupon I ran across this article which lists one blogger’s opinion on the most beautiful libraries in the world.  The libraries included range from old-style baroque buildings to much more modern strctures, and I have to agree with the writer that each of the included libraries is beautiful in its own way.

At the end of the post, there is a link to another list of beautiful libraries in the United States that is also worth checking out.  I was shocked though in this particular list that the Library of Congress wasn’t included.  However, it was fascinating to see other beautiful libraries in the country that are less well known.  It would be amazing to see some of these libraries in real life and explore their collections.

The air is hot and heavy as we traverse the maze-like side streets of Lukang. The buildings are older here, and the only traffic is foot or bicycle. Homes and shops are crowded together, but nevertheless exude an air of cleanliness. Fruit trees are hidden unexpectedly in corners. On the worn steps of a temple squeezed into a dead end are some elderly ladies, smoking and chattering. We approach, waving. We ask, do you know where the H– bakery is? Hmm, they murmur, squinting at one another. Back up that way, one says. Left and right and right again. The others nod in agreement.

The streets turn this way and that. Somewhere along the way a thick, pleasant odour wafts out into the street. There are piles and piles of little black coils lying along the outside wall of a small shop. What could these be, we wonder. We speculate: coasters, maybe? Probably not. Curious, though.

Inside the shop a man is bent over his work. He is making, as it turns out, incense. The man is a master of his trade. He explains his process. The doughy material is pressed from the machine- this is the great black iron beast the younger man is handling- which the shop owner then rolls by hand and coils on a wheel. They are then left out in the sun to harden and cure.

The shop-owner warms to our presence, seemingly delighted explain to us everything.  He does not look up from his work as he does so, deft fingers working and shaping and creating the coils with startling efficiency.

He has been at this a long time, it turns out, since he was young. All the ingredients are natural, he says, rather reminiscently. He used to gather much of it by hand. It was a family business. But there is also a grim set to his face. Business is not so good now; everything is commercialized these days, and there is competition. We’re surviving, he says finally, and it is silent for a moment.

In the end, we feel we cannot leave without having purchased a box from him. This package has little pale gold cones nestled in white tissue paper instead of the black coils, but it is not the point. It is hand-crafted, which is the point. Labor and care have been folded into each and every one of those little cones. Hard to come by, these days.

An education in literary/artistic criticism and theory — being constantly asked to evaluate and re-evaluate what is considered literary art, art in general and what does it really matter in the end – has its effects on you, despite initial impressions. Curled in an abundantly cushioned chair, I read the wits of Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, and Matthew Arnold — all calculatingly organized into theories on art’s intersection with literature. At times, such as when I am untangling a particularly unwieldy sentence, I think about how these abstractions matter outside of this page, out of this very moment of comprehension. Class becomes suddenly bordering on an existential debate, but the hand of the clock ticks its way to the end of the allotted time, and we shuffle our papers back together, push open the door and step outside to the reality as we know it, seemingly quite disjoint from the experience that had just occurred. What is this that we do on a daily basis? Is there no functional overlap at all? What do you mean you don’t live your life as if it were a silent impressionistic painting?

Over spring break, the regal affair of pinning awards to critically acclaimed movie titles happened for the 80th or so time, and it was declared that The King’s Speech would take home the top prize. Barring some moments of cinematography, choice of wallpaper, and my appreciation for Helena Bonham Carter, I declared to a friend of mine that the movie was overall as fickle as the pedestal it was placed on. Linear, completely easily predictable plots from the onset are prone to become cognitively numbing, and instead of taking the opportunity to turn expectations on its head, it followed its foreseen course like most history channel specials.  If there was a gem, it would have been the mildly endearing relationship developed between Bertie and Lionel, and the confidence and solidarity it has inspired for those with speech impediments. It was cute, and yes, maybe good for us. Yet, if the Oscars wanted to be truly, artistically reflective of our generation — the passion of the decade (which, I admit, may not be their priority) — instead of feeling nostalgic for Britain’s monarch in such a simplistic way, I think it should have turned to the chaotic, messy, psychological and humbly unanswerable turn inward that is depicted in a film like Inception or Black Swan. There are some theorists who argue that a work of art should be emotionally detached, that emotions riddle away any artistic value in a work, that it is base in some way, but I argue the opposite. I think the overwhelming nature of a piece speaks of its quality and that comes from evoking the most complex, irrational emotions that many of us cannot put to words or cause us to realize the insufficiencies of language. It’s this chaotic state of affairs that could never be moralized or logically assembled by a set of if-thens into a neat output.

And while I thought on this during my free, relatively unscheduled time off during the past week, it was then that occurred to me how a class on “Is Literature Art” had weaved its way into my evaluations on how the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had decided on excellence for 2011. It reminded me to ask myself what are my criteria for what counts as good art and then further asked where such notions came from. The bottom line is that perhaps, criticism, while being incorrigibly convoluted, has its “perks” when you least expect it.