{"id":3272,"date":"2013-02-25T14:38:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T18:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arts.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=3272"},"modified":"2013-04-09T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T14:23:14","slug":"painting-spoiler-alert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2013\/02\/25\/painting-spoiler-alert\/","title":{"rendered":"Painting Spoiler Alert!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day in my art history class, we had just moved past the French Realist movement and were centering in on the beginnings of impressionism.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the last fifteen minutes of class, we were examining this painting:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It looked pretty nice to me. \u00c2\u00a0Like a post card or the book cover to a Victorian rags-to-riches story. \u00c2\u00a0What it communicated to me was something along these lines, “Oh, look at these wonderful hats! \u00c2\u00a0Fluff, fluff, fluff! \u00c2\u00a0I wonder what’s on The Bachelor<\/em> tonight. \u00c2\u00a0I hope that slut from Reno goes home. \u00c2\u00a0Ay me!”<\/p>\n

However, after fifteen minutes of lecture, I was told that such was not the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, what this painting is\u00c2\u00a0actually<\/em> communicating, is a commodified young girl who is susceptible to the penetrating male gaze of capitalist France.<\/p>\n

\n

\"What
What do FEATHERS have to do with the male gaze??!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In literary criticism, examining a piece of literature without any historical context, author’s biographic information, or ideology is part of New Criticism. \u00c2\u00a0New Critics focus on works of poetry and prose as self-contained entities with meaning in themselves.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>All of this commodification talk got me thinking… does a painting have inherent meaning? \u00c2\u00a0 If we don’t know the painter’s original intent, how do assess what the meaning is in the first place? <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>While I was sitting there, trying to take notes, all I could think to myself was, “I still think the colors and textures are pretty. \u00c2\u00a0And that this woman is probably nice and sends money to her mom every weekend.”<\/p>\n

I was also thinking that I needed some chocolate or something to cheer me up, because Marxism (along with many other -isms) often sucks the positive emotions out of my life like an ideological dementor. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day in my art history class, we had just moved past the French Realist movement and were centering in on the beginnings of impressionism. For the last fifteen minutes of class, we were examining this painting: It looked pretty nice to me. \u00c2\u00a0Like a post card or the book cover to a Victorian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[151,252,258,260,259,82,254,261,253],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3272"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3523,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions\/3523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}