Final Blog Post

I feel like I have definitely changed a lot over the two course period. I feel that I know a lot more about art and music of different cultures. However, I’m somewhat happy that I somehow made it through. I think what resonated with me the most is how you can find connections between so many things. I didn’t realize that some of the non-Western cultures were similar to Western culture. Also I never realized that literature, art and music of one culture could all be related until this class. I think it will help me move forward in live, I feel like I can compare things in a new way than I could before. It also gives me a perspective on some things that I never knew about. For me personally I thought that the new assessment sheets were a bit on the heavy side compared to the essay assessment from Humanities 2001. Although the assessment sheets were shorter, they were more comprehensive, like we had to know everything about almost every culture studied. In some respects I get it because it tests us on everything we went over, on the other I talked with other Humanities 2002 students which wrote essays instead which seems a bit more reasonable. I think that you might want to consider shortening the midterm assessments from four to two. I think that you could add more practice with connections. As for the grading of tests from individual professors I think that they should use examples of which period concepts are in the piece they talk about. The period concepts were more evident in the music and literature than the art pieces. I also felt that although the art was interesting I didn’t remember much about it afterwords, and didn’t have much to go on for the period concepts part of the tests. Overall it was a somewhat enjoyable thrill ride from finding connections and remembering everything.
323/323

Pre-WWI Modernism

Some of the difficulties we had in developing a paragraph were answering the focus question of what is different. We chose to focus on the art piece Les Demoiselles by Picasso. We thought it would easy to describe how it was different from what art normally looks like. However, we were only doing that, and not describing why the art was different during the Pre-WWI time as Professor Armstrong pointed out. We came up the key period concepts of the attempt to break from the ideas that shape society and structural patterns are distorted and even irrational. While we came up with a good amount of facts we didn’t actually articulate them into a paragraph. Here are the basic ideas we came up with: The reason for the attempt to break from ideas that shape society could come from the anxious feeling artists were getting due to the rapid growth of technological achievements and the sense of impending doom. Picasso was representing woman very differently from conventional art at the time in that their bodies and faces were somewhat distorted. The structural pattern of the piece is also different from that of the time because it seems very flat compared to the art styles. The rejection of previous forms and the intense distortion expressed the anxious feeling of the time. We could definitely compare this to the short story by Kafka, In the Penal Colony. Kafka’s short story is unusual short story which breaks from the ideas that shape society and it had distorted pattern of thought. These key period concepts could also work for the Schoenberg piece of music Moonfleck which really breaks from traditional structure with its atonality meaning it having no key center. The 12 tone system of which gives equal importance to all the notes and breaks from the idea of society of music only is having 5 tones. The anxious feeling during the time could contribute to people wanting to be able to express themselves with more notes.
333 words.

Midterms

This midterm was pretty much as I expected it to be, making connections between the cultures/periods. Although I found that doing four of these essay summaries to be challenging, to study for this I prepared an outline of what I would write in class. I have to say finding connections that work for every part of art, music and literature was challenging for me. I would see some connections that worked for some of the disciplines however none that worked for all of them which I understood. I would have to say the part that I messed up on was not explaining the connections in full detail. While I felt that I was explaining them I didn’t explicitly explain how it was connected to the key concepts or how it answered the focus question specifically. I thought that I would do a little better considering the amount of time I spent making connections however I’m glad that I at least passed the midterm.
From seeing my grades I was a little disappointed on the grade I received however, it’s probably better thanks to you guys changing the way you graded them. I would have to say that I’m a little overwhelmed with the amount of material we were tested over, the whole four essay summaries instead of just doing two essays. I think I was just used to writing an essay and when we were told to just sort of summarize and shorten what we were supposed to write was what got me. I know that explaining the connections in more detail is the way to improve my grade. I believe that I will have to work on not only explaining the connections but also finding connections that actually work. I think my explanations were too general and did not explain the connections as I saw them in my mind.
309 words.

Realism/Impressionism/Symbolism

This Friday in lab we talked about making connections for the Realism/Impressionism/Symbolist period. This period was in the 19 century. For the focus question I would probably choose what representation is even though we talked about it in class, it seems like the best question for this period. During this time of industrialization there was a movement reform because of the unbalance of wealth made it so that the living conditions of the poor were terrible. This led for a want of social reform and some sought to depict the conditions using journalism and photography. For the symbolist part it would be poetry from Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, in which he uses words different from the way they would normally be used to represent a new idea. The poems are somewhat disturbing and have some sense of romanticism in them. One of the key period concepts is ephemerality, because things were changing due to the industrialization people began to value the transience of things. Some of the poems of Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil talk about the decaying of a lover, which in some since represents the ephemerality of life. The music during this time was called Impressionism, and bridged the gap with the 20th century. Impressionism basically means the external perception. The piece of music we talked about in music was Claude Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Fawn; it’s based on a pastoral poem by Mallarme about a fawn who can’t remember if he slept with some nymphs. The use of solo instruments was used to represent different things happening during the poem. The art was also known as Impressionism, and the piece of art was Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet. This painting used broad paint strokes which ending up representing the sunrise on what looks like a water village. While far away you can make this out close up its hard to distinguish what you’re looking at.
321 words.

Friday, I figured out that there’s no easy way to choose the focus question/two concepts, and finding connections between each of those. However I did learn that are a few possible connections that can be made between them. By choosing the focus question first it helps you decide which key concepts will work with art, music and literature. For the Romantic period I decided to choose the focus question what is reason? This question goes well with literature and music piece however it was somewhat lacking in the art part. However, I think there’s a way to describe it in so that it can be done. For the two key period concepts I chose The Imagination/States of Consciousness and Powerful Emotions, Moods, and Experiences. It works well for Goethe’s Faust because during the play Faust struggles to see a poodle in the mist, he thinks he sees fire around its feet however, his student claims to see nothing. The Powerful Emotions concept also fits well because when Faust was away he didn’t know what had happened to Gretchen and he feels angry at Mephisto for deceiving him. It also works in Schubert’s Erlkonig because the father of the boy reasons away the boy’s illusions to nothing more than the mist playing tricks on him. The piece of composition shows a powerful emotion of fear as the boy sees the angel of death and his father doesn’t believe him. Another powerful emotion in this piece is the sadness of the father as he arrives in the courtyard and he realizes his son is dead. As for the piece of art I chose the Monk by the sea, it can be said that the darkness around the monk could leave one open to imagine what is actually there. It also conveys a somewhat spiritual emotion that can tie in with the Powerful Emotion concept. Now all I need to do is figure out how to tie everything together.
326 Words.

The Flea, Las Meninas & Four Seasons

The Baroque Period was a complex time when people were trying to decide who should be in charge of the government but also the church. There was actually a war that lasted 30 years because of this. An important concept during the baroque period was the concept of the complex but simple. John Donne was poet who wrote several complex poems, “The Flea” is a good example of the complex but simple concept. It’s about a man that wants to be with a woman but refuses him. Donne’s poem used the metaphor of the flea sucking the blood of the girl and of the poet as a metaphor for sex. The poet was trying to convince the girl to have sex with him because if the flea could suck her blood and she didn’t care for the flea, why wouldn’t she let him do the same. However the argument doesn’t work and she squashes the flea with her nail. For the art we looked at several different pieces however, Velasquez’s Las Meninas fits the concept of complex but simple also. It is a painting of a princess getting her portrait done but also of the people surrounding her and the artist himself. Although the painting appears very complex from afar, close up you can see the simplicity of the brush strokes. Also the shadowing of the painting looks very real from afar, the painting sort of draws you in. For the music of the baroque we listened to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, this also fits the concept of the complex but simple. The Spring part is very beautiful just like a spring day. While the piece sounds complex it actually uses imitation where it repeats itself but in a different form. The piece uses imitation and creates a complex series of sounds. The concept of complex but simple can be found throughout the art music and literature of the Baroque Period.
320 words.

The Monkey, The Flowing Brook & Terracotta Soldiers

For the literature we read Monkey, it was about a stone Monkey who becomes king to a group of Monkey’s after passing through a waterfall and returning unscathed. Although beforehand he had disrupted the Halls of Heaven and had been sealed under a mountain by Buddha.  Eventually the time comes when the Monkey must become the disciple of a Buddhist Monk, named Tripitaka. The Monkey was trying to be helpful to Tripitaka however, when they were attacked by a group of bandits. However, the monkey could have easily scarred the bandits away; he slays them as they start to run. This displeases Tripitaka and he asks the Monkey to leave. Eventually the two meet up and Tripitaka uses a spell on the Monkey to make him loyal. The music piece this week, The Running Brook, flowed like a running stream. It was played with a stringed instrument, probably some sort of guqin. The song started off slowly and increased in speed a few times during the piece. It also slowed during the piece, giving you the since of a flowing brook. For the art we looked at several different pieces of Chinese art. However the terracotta soldiers stood out to me because none of the thousands of soldiers were exactly the same. The grand scale of all the soldiers is amazing.

From reading the story Monkey, I have learned that the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism values self-restraint and control.  I learned that the Monkey in the story lacked self-control and was a little hyperactive at times.  Throughout the story the Monkey learns that to be an immortal he needs to follow the way. He finds the way to master self-restraint and control was through li, or rituals with Tripitaka. The music piece, The Running Brook, showed how through self-control you can create music that is pleasing to listen to. While the terracotta soldiers all varying in style showed how Confucianism could be as successful as a governmental system.
328 words.