Reading on Theater

In the reading we read about theater. The origin of the theater really interested me the most. I thought it was interesting how the book related the beginning of the theater to a parent reading the book and just getting into it. I know that when I have read stories to little kids going to bed I have created different voices and have maybe gotten into it a little more than the book required. I can easily see how people read stories and then decided to pass the book around and read it like a play where different people have different parts. Then I could see someone acting a little bit and it would just grow. I also thought this analogy was a little strange at first because the ancient people didn’t really have books but as I started to think about it made more sense. People would have the story memorized and they could even add their own parts to it. I can’t quite make the jump in my head to where they performed it on the stage but of course it happened.

I think it would be cool to see the ancients perform a play with their masks and really taking in the whole atmosphere. I’m sure I could really only take one before I got bored then I would want to see some special effects or something. The way the stages and the performance areas that the Greeks and Romans used really fascinate me a lot too. I have been to many different stages in the past and I am always amazed. My favorite was in Ephesus for different reasons. Probably the biggest reason that it is my favorite is because Paul spoke there to the Ephesians. It is also the biggest that I have seen and had a huge library not too far away that I’m sure housed many of the plays that they used.

They book explained different things that surprised me greatly. I thought that comedy and tragedy had always been the way that we know them but like Jasie put in class it really is how many people are dead at the end. After thinking about how these words could have evolved into the definitions that we today it could really easily happen. I just think it is fascinating to learn about this stuff and how our modern entertainment used to be people with masks walking around in the dirt interacting with each other.

The Fair?

When I was growing up I loved going to the fair. I’m not sure what I liked the most but I liked everything about it. When I was in middle school I actually raised sheep and then at the fair I would show them before auctioning them off. I lived at the county fair for about a week and I loved it. I would camp out for a week and would go on an occasional ride, eat elephant ears, look at all the other animals, and at the end I would go to the rodeo. These and other reasons are why I wanted to go to the fair down in Spanish Fork this weekend and for the same reasons that is why I was disappointed.

On Saturday I walked from one end to the other in about 2 minutes. I didn’t expect it to be so small. It was in the middle of a city in a school parking lot that overflowed into the street. I thought that at least I could get an elephant ear but they didn’t even have those. What they did have were the jacked up prices even though there were restaurants and fast food chains a block away. The ferris wheel was the smallest I had ever seen and besides that there were probably 5 other rides. I was expecting a lot more out of a small town that seemed to have a lot of countryside and farms but the people I saw were high schoolers that didn’t have anything better to do and small children with their parents. I was planning on going to the rodeo but after seeing the fair portion I abandoned that thought. To drop 12 bucks on anything that relates to that fair without seeing it first would be ridiculous to me. Honestly we walked up and down the entire fair in about 20 minutes. We then took off because we didn’t seen one thing that interested us at all.

The MOA

So this week I went to the Museum of Art here are BYU. At first I went through the American Exhibition which I liked a lot. I noticed a lot of the transitions that we talked about in class. I was actually a little impressed with myself when I thought something looked Dada and then I read the caption and it mentioned that it was in fact Dada. I also enjoyed looking at the buildings pictured and the architecture in them. Many of the pieces drew on patriotism that I am easily drawn into. We talked about some of the art in class but it really does seem different seeing it live up close and in the atmosphere of an exhibit.

The highlight of the museum was Walter Wick. I never really had the I spy books but I thought it was amazing the attention he put into the detail. The tricks that he played with the mind were pretty cool and a couple of them really tripped me out. I also enjoyed the I spy section. I wish I had a larger sheet to find all the things that were pictured but they did have a few things posted that we could search for. The different shapes that Wick saw and then incorporated into his work were amazing. How a pen can be in plain sight but hidden right into the surrounding takes imagination that Wick has plenty of. We really enjoyed finding all of the normal things to us but were out of place to the environment of the picture or painting. We found thimbles, matches, clothespins, hair pins, toy soldiers, and a lot of other things we didn’t find.

Visual Arts Through the Ages

In class we really just went through the time periods and what distinguished them throughout from one another. I was a little disappointed that we skipped over the Northern Renaissance because I enjoy the artists. Durer is one of my favorites especially his engravings that I think are amazing. I do like Bernini and Michelangelo and enjoyed looking at their architecture and sculptures. It was interesting to see why and how the mediums were developed and what prompted the different style changes.

I also liked the neoclassicism because it is used more in the United States. I have seen a lot of neoclassicism in the different museums that I have been in such as the Chicago art museum. It also draws my mind to the renaissance which I also enjoy. I like the idealistic view that the artists have and how they put their vision into the art.

Sculpture Reading

The reading this week wasn’t long, it was really only six pages. All of it was on sculpture too so I really don’t have a lot to say. Sculptures are probably my favorite medium for one because it looks so hard to do. Especially with a chisel and hammer I can’t imagine making the sculptures that have been made in the past. I am also drawn to sculpture for one of the reason that the book brought up: sculptures are physically real and aren’t as illusory like paintings are.

The evolution of sculpture was also interesting to me. The fact that the sculptures use to be so lifeless and after centuries Bernini was able to make the marble look like cloth is amazing. The old statues have an artistic feel but really look lifeless and lacked the motion that came later on. Then the grandeur of Michelangelo’s David is breathtaking. It will always baffle me maybe because I have worked with clay and have failed so many times with a malleable material that I don’t know how anyone could make something so beautiful out of stone.

From Bahaus to Our House

Bahaus to our House was an interesting book. While reading I didn’t know what exactly what was going on it just sounded like a lot of negative critiquing. It was when I finished and put all of the pieces together that I realized what the book was really about. The critiquing seemed to be what the architects of that time were experiencing and what pushed them from one scene to the next. When a type or techniques of architecture were criticized the architects would fix it and move on. There were so many different styles in the past 50 years and it is interesting to see the changes and why things changed. I thought it was interesting that Europeans didn’t like the skyscrapers and just straight up insulted them. Stepping back I can see why, the skyscrapers were more engineering marvels than they were architectural art. Architects and engineers were starting to become separate fields and the European architects didn’t like it or appreciate it. Americans seemed to be more on the power side and wanted to create bigger and better things so they created the tallest building in the world. I can relate to this especially directly following a war and when the United States is the up and coming world power. The Europeans were more into the art aspect and connecting with their roots that went on for centuries.

Other parts of the book were interesting as well. I thought that the part where Wright punked Gropius was quite funny. To have someone come up to shake your hand and then just basically say you’re here for this purpose so leave when you are done would be hilarious to me. Gropius was a man of influence too so the significance of that moment would be huge. This also showed the distaste and bitterness that the battle of architecture resulted in. The critiques that one architect would put on another or that even other critics would compare one to undoubtedly made some people bitter. Overall From Bahaus to Our House was a book that I enjoyed more when I finished it. Not that I didn't enjoy the read but when I put together the information that it had I enjoyed it more than while I was actually reading it.

Movie at the Capitol

Last night I attended a movie screening of Shrek 3 at the Utah State Capitol. It was quite interesting to see the capitol lawn filled with people on blankets and chairs. The background was amazing with the capitol building lit up the way it was. On the drive up I decided to go through downtown and I was intrigued by the architecture. I immediately could see the different arches and different column styles as well as the domes. Each building was unique as I tried to analyze the different aspects of them all. I bored my girlfriend talking about what was taken from the classical period and what an ionic column was but I just told her I was putting it all in my memory for the test. It is one thing to talk about buildings and to look at slides but actually seeing something in real life is such a better way to learn. The capitol building itself had the same dome that just about all the capitols have in the United States. It was interesting to me to see how Michelangelo affected so many buildings so far away when he designed the dome on St Peters.

The movie was one that I had seen before but I had forgotten how funny it was. Mike Myers is a comical genius and although I could only hear his voice I could almost see him moving the same way that Shrek moved. Eddie Murphy was also hilarious in how he spoke for his character. A lot of the comedy though came from the little side remarks that different characters would make. The integration of both adult and child humor was genius. At times I looked around and the little kids wouldn’t be laughing but their parents would be cracking up. Other times it was the opposite. I’m not sure how the directors did it but they got laughs from all age groups constantly throughout the movie. The only downsides to the event were when the screen blew over briefly because of the wind and the kid that screamed in my ear several times throughout the movie because he wanted some snacks. I’m not sure how often they show movies at the capitol building but it was well worth the trip.