Beaux Arts

Today, as one of the Brennan Family pre-Christmas outings, I went for the second time ever to the Portland Art museum. I was upset that I would be gone for the visiting Degas/Renoir/Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit, but then I remembered that I am going to be within a few hours of Musée D'Orsay in a few weeks, so no worries.

We went primarily for the Chuck Close exhibit that was about his printmaking process; halfway through the exhibit I realized: I don't like Chuck Close that much.
I will give him credit where it is due: the method must have taken years to perfect and complete. But to me it doesn't say anything more than, say, pointillism, and it's much less interesting. All he paints is faces. Over and over again. And yeah, his techniques of printmaking are admirable; but I always find it hard to appreciate something if, in order to appreciate it, you need to understand how it was made, all the grids that were used, the mathematical use of color, blending, whatever. In the end, the painting itself just doesn't sell, because the idea behind it, the inspirational part that's supposed to ring out like lightning or a big loud churchbell, is actually pretty dull. Yeah, images are made up of smaller abstract parts that form one complete form. Period.

It's funny, though. I went to the gallery with my parents and fourteen-year-old brother. Tucker didn't really say anything, but my dad was full of opinion, especially in the modern wing. We were in the Minimalism room (and yeah, it's Minimalism, so you know I can't be that crazy about it), and he was scoffing off everything. My dad has a tendency to turn into a crotchety old man at the drop of a hat, and this seemed to be the perfect time to do it. I got a bit fed up with the "Oooh, hey, it's a cube. So what?" and "Ugh, what a waste of paint" after the first ten minutes, it wasn't very nice to have it for a full hour.

But if you've never been to Portland, take a note: the museum is worth a look-through. It's not an incredible collection, by far, but the lesser-known works are still lovely. I've been looking in vain online to post them, especially Eastman Johnson's The Little Harpist, Franz von Stuck's Allegorical Figure of a Woman and Eugene Berman's Time and the Monuments. If you ever happen upon any prints or pictures of them online, let me know. Here are a few of the pieces that I could find online:



Edward Steichen, Lilac Buds; Mrs S. 1906



Joseph Stella, Factories of the Night



Kiki Smith, Saint Genevieve 1909



Vincent Van Gogh, Charrette de boeuf, 1884. This is the museum's most recent acquisition



Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1909



Auguste Rodin, La défense, 1879


I'm still pretty bummed about not getting prints of those other ones; I might have to go to Powell's and see if there are any books that might feature them.

Christmas is coming up pretty fast, and I'm practically done with my shopping. All my gifts are wrapped and finished and under the tree. There are even a few small gifts under there with my name on them!

On a cold afternoon you can float room to room like a ghost

I've decided that this bloggidy update needs to be daily, if not bidaily (that is a word now), if not semiweeky, if not weekly. In short, regularly. It will be my place for analysis and insight into the literature that I am both reading and writing (if you can call that literature--har har), as well as notes upon what's going on in the world around me, interesting things on the internet, and parenthetical notes (I doubt that will get annoying whatsoever). So here goes.

I think it would be best to start out with the classes that I'm taking now.

Shakespeare and the Renaisseance: a fun and engaging class. The prof, Patricia Badir, is one of those who constantly talks about how much she loves the readings, and we spend a good amount of time watching film adaptations of plays we are reading. So far we've gone over two gems, Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Of the two, I would much rather discuss Twelfth Night, because it's more fun than Hamlet. The play itself is madcap, and Dr Badir brought up an interesting point about it's conception: that everyone involed plays some sort of language game, with the exception of Malvolio, who is the only person who ends up getting really shafted at the end (if you haven't read the play, I won't go into detail about it, but it's a really horrible thing they do to him). This accounts for all the witty banter that goes on between the most interesting characters: Olivia, Viola, and Feste. The fact that Olivia ends up marrying Sebastian at the end despite that she really fell in love with Viola always made me sad, as well as Viola marrying Orsino, who is an idiot and doesn't deserve her (basically). However, it's one of the best comedies, and one of the most bizzare, so I deeply recommend it to anyone with eyes. Next on the reading list: Henry V. It's a bit silly and hard to believe so far, but Henry's speeches are good, so pfah.

Postmodernism: dear lord. This course is interesting, but frustrating. I love some aspects of Postmodernism, and I think that my own writing style falls somewhere betweem Postmoernism and Modernism, but the prof's (Paul Endo) choice of literature is a bit bothersome. Too much of it seems to focus on the "sensory overload/modernism sucks/no resolution/artistic deconstruction" side of the movement, instead of that which actually changed the way that we look at narrative and expression. Also, I had to read Baudrillard and several other criticisms of Postmodernism. It's an odd movement, really. There was really nothing wrong with Modernism, but Postmodernism seems to be an idea sprung out of irritation instead of revolution; that it didn't really follow Modernism but ran beside it, like a kid who claims to hate his parents and become an anarchist but still relies on them for most of his or her well being. Sad, really. So far, along with the philosophy, we read A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. I didn't like it that much, the narrator just spent most of his time talking about how bored he was, and when he finally found something transcendant or deep, he would shrug and walk away from it. Next on the reading list: Blade Runner. The movie, not the book. Yeah.

Virginia Woolf: Mixed feelings. I love Woolf in all senses of the word, but the class focuses on war and feminism, paying hardly any attention to other aspects of Woolf's writing. Bummer. I could go on forever about what we've read so far (Mrs Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own), so I might skip it for now. I'm getting kind of sick of this list, anyway...

Metaphor and Thought: one of the profs talks like a Polish Grover, one is very cute and browsome (adj: a degree of handomeness that extends from one's forehead; having a dramatic brow). The mappings we use are interesting and fun to do sometimes, and the material is interesting, though one of the classrooms we have has poor acoustics and tends to make me sleepy. Still, a good class to take, I'm glad to be in it.

Grammar: So. Much. Fun. We get to figure out clauses and subjects and predicators, and make trees and use formulas and learn about the differences in language between areas of Engish-speaking countries. Also, it is easy to skip and still be caught up; and most of the classes involve "investigating" what words mean. Word detectives!

So there's that. I don't have much else going on now besides school. Well, work. That's not too much to crow about, except that it's divinely easy and I have to wait more than two weeks between paychecks (example: I got paid last Friday, my next check is on the 23rd). It's getting colder fast this year, and September seemed to be more like October, and now October feels like November. I hate not being able to read leisurely at all. I did finish The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Fantastic read. At least I can watch films still; I just got The Iron Giant on DVD and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as some of Aletheia's Avant Garde films recently. All quite wonderful. I'm sure I'll have something truly substantial from them to blog about soon.