Modern Art, scripture reading

Well, here I am about to embark on another research paper.  Oh what fun!  Last time it was my paper about technology.

This time, it’s for a modern European art history class.  Modern as in Modernism, ca 1900-1945.  I’m going to write about Mucha and how he used the female body as a decorative motif, put it on a pedestal, and used it to represent objects like gems and seasons.  Woohoo!  Funny that even though I’m going to say his art is misogynistic, he’s one of my absolute favorite artists just because his art is so pretty!  It is SO pretty!  In fact, my little circular picture to the right, where my name is, that is a Mucha painting.

I am so happy that within the past year I have finally learned what Modernism and Postmodernism are.  I like Postmodernism more, in theory, but I like the art in Modernism better just because it’s pretty (not all of it, but more than in Postmodern).  Modernism freaks me out.  So does Postmodernism, but at least it’s trying to correct/criticize Modernism, which had helped bring about thinks like Nazism and Fascism.

I do like some Modernist ideas.  My favorite thing that the Modernists said that I’ve learned so far is that artists should not try to copy art from the past or say that it is the “best way” or “only way” to make good art.  To do so is to make art soulless and sappy.

“Every work of art is the child of its time, often it is the mother of our emotions.

“Thus, every period of culture produces its own art, which can never be repeated.  Any attempt to give new life to artistic principles of the past can at b est only result in a work of art that resembles a stillborn child.  For example, it is impossible for our inner lives, our feelings, to be like those of the ancient Greeks.  Efforts, therefore, to apply Greek principles, e.g., to sculpture, can only produce forms similar to those employed by the Greeks, a work that remains soulless for all time.” -Wassily Kandinsky, co-founder of German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, taken from Concerning the Spiritual in Art

The only problem with this idea is that it starts to say that art is constantly evolving and getting better and better.  Soon they believe that all of history and mankind is on this same upward slope.  Then ideas of Utopia come up and people start killing off “imperfect” people in their quest for a perfect world.

In other news, I have decided to read the Bible in a year, maybe once a year for the rest of my life.  I’ve never read the entire Bible.  I remember in seminary we weren’t asked to -only selections, and anyway I rebelled and read the parts we weren’t asked to read -a.k.a Song of Solomon.  HA! See my brother-in-law’s post about why it is ok to read Song of Solomon, though it is not inspired scripture, as our church believes.  However, the only thing I remember is “The voice of the turtle is heard in our land” (Song 2:12).  It means turtle-dove, but boy that image is funny.

So I found a neat plan online and I’ve been doing it for four days so far.  Today I read about Noah, after the floods were gone and God made a covenant with him and his family.  And then when he got Very Drunk.  I also read a part from the New Testament, and a Psalm.  In this plan, you read three different parts each day.  It takes 20-30 minutes.  I’m totally stoked to read the whole Bible!  There’s so many fantastically interesting things that happen in it. And can I just say that I am in love with King David?  Well, I am. Maybe he’s my favorite character in the Bible.

Of course, not to neglect, I’m also reading the Book of Mormon with Samuel.

memorization

Since my orality-literacy class last term, the previously nonexistent desire to memorize things has suddenly sprung up inside me. We learned about the people in cultures from long ago and/or far away who memorize huge amounts of words on a regular basis, usually because they don’t have access to books.

Before taking this class I said pooh-pooh! to anyone who thought memorizing scriptures or poems or songs was important. I disliked memorizing scriptures in seminary because it seemed like just another thing to check off the list, rather than a life-changing and important activity. I’d forget the verse as soon as I’d passed it off, and it seemed silly to memorize something when it was so easy to access in a book.

But now I’ve changed my mind! Why not memorize scriptures? There are so many moments when my scriptures are not with me. If I memorize them, I can “read” my scriptures to myself while I walk somewhere, or cook, or whatever. That’s why people memorize songs, isn’t it? So they can sing them for fun when they don’t have access to the recorded version. I can carry the words in my heart. Also, I saw on a blog that I read that the writer had memorized the entire book of Ephesians and could recite it in a storyteller-type fashion. COOL! I remember helping my dad memorize the Proclamation on the Family, and, even though I wasn’t actively memorizing it, some phrases stayed in my mind, and they have been invaluable help to me. Also, we learned in my class that one of the editions that the King James Bible is largely based on (William Tindale’s translation- I read somewhere that 9/10 of the words are the same in many passages) was specifically translated by Tindale into English in such a way that it would sound beautiful being read -or in my case, recited- aloud.

So I am going to do it! I have a huge list of what I want to memorize, starting with the Bible first. The first thing on the list is the verses in Proverbs 31 about the virtuous woman, because it’s one of my favorites and it’s not too long.

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.  The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.  She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.  She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.  She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.  She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.  She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.  She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.  She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.  She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.  She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.  She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.  She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.  Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.  She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.  Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.  She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.  She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.  Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.  Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.  Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.  Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

These are the other favorite scriptures I have in mind:

Genesis chapters 1-3 (Creation and Fall)
Genesis chapter 24 (Rebekah)
Isaiah chapter 53 (many of the verses in Handel’s Messiah)
Book of Jonah
Luke chapter 2 (Nativity)
John chapter 1
Matthew chapters 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount)
various Psalms

I was at work today, handwashing all the corsets that were used in the opera, when suddenly everything went dark. The power went out! The costume shop is in the basement where there are no windows and it was so dark it felt oppressive. It reminded me of the dark room in photography class where we would wind our film onto the spools for developing negatives. Absolutely no light. Soon we were rescued by someone with a flashlight, and he said the power was out all over campus. So we all went home.

On my way out of the building -luckily there were some emergency lights still lit in the hallways- I realized how dependent we are on electricity. I tried to exit through the tunnel, but the door was shut. I realized that if the door had been open, they wouldn’t have been able to close it (it’s a big door like a garage for driving trucks full of hardware into the building). When I got outside, I saw that people were trying to drive out of the parking lot, but the arm barriers would not go up at the exit, so they were stuck in the parking lot. Then, since it’s finals week, I wondered about the Testing Center. If someone wanted to take their final at that time, they wouldn’t have been able to, because the computers wouldn’t work.

These thoughts were all fueled by the paper I just wrote, about technology and education. Here I’ve posted some of my main points. It’s a really fascinating topic!  I apologize for the huge wall of text, but if you have a moment, read it and tell me what you think.  It’ll be nice to have someone read this and not give me a grade on it.

- New technological inventions have always changed our lives. They make our lives easier, and production more efficient, for example. We also tend to think that technology makes us smarter. Each discovery in physics or medicine leads to more discoveries. But are we actually smarter than those who didn’t have technology? Are technological discoveries always good for us? Socrates told a story about an inventor, Theuth, who, having invented writing, said it would cure forgetfulness and make men smarter. He presented it to the king, Thamus, who rejected the new invention, saying that it would actually make men more forgetful because they would rely on things outside themselves to remember for them.
Thamus’ warning applies to most of our technologies: they are crutches for our minds or our bodies. Writing keeps us from training our minds to remember what we hear. Cars keep us from walking, huge corporate farms keep us from growing our own food, to the point where we are barely able to do either. Before these inventions people used their bodies and minds more, it would seem. Are we really smarter than they were? Also, we adopt new inventions so readily these days, it’s impossible to tell what the consequences might be until it’s too late. Literacy took hundreds of years to be accepted. People seemed to know that if they adopted it, they would lose something. They knew that the way that they lived before would be gone. But today people adopt new inventions without thinking about what they will lose. Neil Postman said, “We are currently surrounded by throngs of zealous Theuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo,” (5). Because of the huge impact that technology has, and the rate at which new technologies are being produced, we need to be aware of the consequences before we accept each new invention.

-M.T. Clanchy gives one example of how a culture dealt with the the new technology of writing in his book From Memory to Written Record. In the book, he details England’s change from an oral to a literate culture. Though writing was used by 1066, when the Normans conquered England, it did not become common for hundreds of years. This is not just because people did not have the opportunity to be educated: Clanchy says that the main reason is that people distrusted written documents. For one reason, they were unaccustomed to fiction, and saw written fictional stories as lies. For another, they knew that official documents could easily be forged by scribes. The act of writing itself assumes that what is written will be forgotten otherwise, and these people were used to remembering those things that were important to remember. To them, written things seemed less important because they did not require memory. For example, one’s word was more official and trusted than one’s signature: “An honest person held to his word and did not demand written proof,” (Clanchy 193). If they used a signature, it showed that they might not intend to remember their promise.

-If technology were allowed to take up more time in the classroom, it would produce a very different student than a traditional education. Since the nature of our technologies today is to produce and make available information, students will tend to gloss over texts in order to read a good amount of what is available. The price of this education is that students, though they may have a broad education, will have sacrificed depth. There are some books that cannot be understood after just one quick reading. Readers need to ponder what they read, and allow the words time to resonate in their minds. A good analogy for this idea is given by John P. Davies in Education in the Electronic Culture. He compares the older, more traditional education involving memorization, deep reading, rhetoric, and so on, to the roots of a tree. Tree roots grow deep into the soil, and anchor the tree firmly. Davies compares a shallow but broad education to crabgrass roots, which only penetrate the first couple inches of soil, but spread outward along the surface indefinitely, (70).

-In Mary Carruthers’ The Book of Memory, she mentions a Medieval scholar, named Ockham. He was imprisoned without his books for several years, and while there he wrote about the books he had studied. He had read them to memorize, as scholars did at that time, and “was able at will to draw extensive resources from his memorial library”. In expounding and commenting on these books in his memory, he filled 551 folio pages, all showing a deep knowledge of the things he had studied. In his writings he also apologizes for “skimming the surface,” and says if he had access to his books he would be able to write more, (Carruthers 158). These hundreds of pages of philosophical commentary written from memory, an incomplete work to him, is much more than is expected in a dissertation today.

The student that emerges from our current education system does not usually learn how to read and study deeply. Because of our love for technology and information, we tend to rush from topic to topic in school, taking in as much as we can as fast as we can, and we don’t spend enough time on texts that require more study and research. With each gain in technology, we lose something of wisdom and memory. But despite all this, we need to keep on top of technology to some degree in order to function in society. So what should we do? Perhaps the only thing we can do is to understand that with each new technological gain, we lose something that had until then been fundamentally important, just as scholars in the Middle Ages must have lost the ability to memorize after books became more plentiful. In all probability, times will continue to change and education will soon become drastically different as a result of our love for technology. But we should at least try to understand what that change will be, and decide whether we really want it.

p.s. if you use this without my permission, you are plagiarizing, which is against the law.

where do you live at?

I just read something earth-shattering, mind-boggling, awesome, and exciting.

The anti-ending-with-a-preposition rule, so enshrined and ennobled in our English heads, was originally not relevant to the English language. The rule was imposed upon us by Latin lovers. A few of you may know how much I hate Latin. Well, not Latin itself. I just hate the way it makes people so picky about exact grammar. Like the guy I read about! I just read this in a book for class called Doing Our Own Thing: The Degredation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care: “Now, the preposition rule that people were taught in that era (1950’s) is, in itself, nonsense. One of the men who inflicted it upon us in 1762, Robert Lowth, labored under the assumption that English would be best off patterning itself after Latin, which happened to not allow prepositions to ‘dangle’ at the ends of sentences. (…) English has its own rules, and is no more beholden to Latin’s rules than a dog is obliged to purr. Lowth nearly undercut his case by committing the very ‘error’ while warning against it: ‘This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to.’!”

I love the English language. As a friend of mine once wrote, “It’s like this old rickety house with all these additions and secret passages, and rooms that feel the same but have entirely different decorative patterns. The roof has holes in it, and sometimes no one goes in a room for years. It’s a little patched up and old, and everyone who lives there takes it in a different direction, but the yard’s big, and the barbecues are amazing.”

a little defense

“What’s your major?”

“I’m a Humanities major, with a minor in Art History.”  Strike one!

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I just want to be a mom.” Strike two!

Am I a useless person because I don’t know how to program computers?

For all the engineers making our world more connected, we need some Humanities majors to understand the cultures on the other side of the world that are becoming more a part of our life in the west.   I plan on teaching my family what I know about history and cultures of the world, which I’ve learned in my major and minor classes at BYU.

I finally figured it out!

I have been wondering for a long time why most fundamentalist Christian modest clothing stores only have clothing styles circa 1985: dresses with gigantic bib collars, elbow-length puffed sleeves, shoulder pads, elongated bodices sometimes coming to a point at the bottom, denim jumpers, etc.  I don’t like the style myself, but, you know, who cares?  This is a good example of what I’m talking about.  Anyway, today it just dawned on me that the 70’s and 80’s were a major time of Fundamentalist and Pentecostal membership growth and popularity in America! At least that’s what I remember from my American Christianity class.  Many old Methodist, Congregationalist, and other churches have been purchased by these growing denominations, because the Mainline congregations are shrinking and don’t need the space they originally built the churches for.  Interesting!

I don’t know why, but I find the differences in the definition of modest clothing (and woman/wife roles) between us LDS and Fundamentalist Christians to be quite fascinating.
Needless to say I like my church’s doctrine on the subjects much better.    That’s why I’m a member.

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I just dropped Samuel off at work; he is going on a camping trip for four days. It’ll be so weird here without him. I have lots of stuff to do, though. Tests, papers, projects. I want to clean the house, too. He shouldn’t have to go on campouts for work, but they are always understaffed. If he hadn’t volunteered to go, they would have called him this morning, begging him to come because they don’t have enough people. That’s what happened last time, I think it was in January. We had lots of plans for his three days off, then they call and beg him to come, he packs in about ten minutes and suddenly he’s gone for three days. Sigh. I miss my Samuel. At least this time it was planned in advance, though.

On another note, I really wish I were done with school. I want to have a baby! I want to stay home all day and cook things and keep house and do crafts. But alas, I still have a year of school left. I really want to graduate. I think it totally appropriate for me to get a degree and put off having children for now, much as I would like to quit school. I know that if I quit I would be very disappointed in myself. I mean no disrespect to mothers who did quit school: I’m just talking about myself and my own life. However, I think it is really interesting how the church has changed slightly on this topic over the past couple decades.

When my mom was a newlywed, Pres. Benson was the prophet. He greatly emphasized having children as soon as possible. He gave that talk called “To the Mothers in Zion” or something. It basically says to stop everything and have children and raise them (I like the talk, though). But while I was a teenager and young adult, Pres. Hinckley was the prophet. I remember him emphasizing time and again how important it was for all of us to get as much education as we could. He said it over and over in the Young Women broadcasts while I was a teenager (he also emphasized the importance of motherhood). And so, here I am, doing not what my mother did. She and my dad had children right away, and when Pres. Benson gave that talk, she quit school (she is now doing BYU Independent Study and will graduate soon). I am intentionally putting off having a baby, so that I can finish school. Some women do both school and baby, but I just can’t see myself being a good mother if I have to go to school, too. Plus I think I would go crazy. When I’m a mother I want to have no other major responsibilities. Also, I think having a Humanities degree will help me homeschool my kids. Another reason is that I am only 21 and will graduate in a year -doesn’t seem worth it to quit and then try and spend more time and money to get a degree later. My mom was 24 when she had her first baby. So theoretically I’ll still have plenty of time to have lots of kids -my mom had seven. I think the degree is worth the year-long wait.

Women who read my blog -especially LDS women-, how did/do/would you juggle education and motherhood?

Rejection Hurts

Well, Samuel got a rejection letter from BYU yesterday, which means he will have to wait another year before he can try and begin grad school again. It was really disappointing, and we cried for a while, but then Samuel said, “You know, I didn’t really want to go there anyway”. It might sound like sour grapes, but it really was true. Neither of us really wanted him to go to BYU for his Master’s, but he planned on doing it anyway because he wanted to get started on his graduate education as soon as possible. He could only apply to BYU because I am still stuck here trying to graduate, which we both feel is important for me to do. After Samuel said that, we stopped crying and went out to eat at a Chinese buffet, the traditional restaurant that he and his roommates would go to when one of them got dumped. We ate lots of dumplings and egg rolls and felt much better afterwards.

Now, even after the disappointment, I feel very hopeful for Samuel’s future education. Here I shall make a list of good things about the whole business.

1. He didn’t want to go there anyway.

2. BYU’s program that he applied for was only for a Master’s degree. It would have taken him three years or so, and BYU offers no scholarships for grad students. We would have been stuck here for years, taking out tons of loans. Now we have a chance to go somewhere new that might offer him some funding. And we should be able to completely pay for my schooling, unless something really expensive happens.

3. Samuel can grow a beard when we move away!

4. The combination Master’s/PhD programs that most schools offer would probably take the same amount of time to complete as a Master’s from BYU and PhD from somewhere else, even though we have been set back a year.

5. I will graduate just in time for us to go to move to a new school. Next April, I hope to graduate. Samuel has almost a whole year to research schools and apply to as many as possible. Then hopefully he will get accepted to at least one school next March and we will move there in the summer to start school in the fall. Grad school acceptance seems so arbitrary to me. I really don’t understand it. Every school looks for different things in applicants. But if Samuel applies to lots of schools, someone has got to accept him. He has really good grades and experience!

6. He could even apply to KSU in my hometown, which supposedly has a decent program. If we moved there we would live near all my family and have free babysitting!

7. Maybe we can move into a place that allows pets (virtually no apartments near BYU allow them), or maybe even get a house at some point!

Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts, even though it didn’t turn out the way we’d originally hoped. We really feel ok about it now, especially after the dumplings, and are excited to find lots of other schools to apply for.

I am currently writing a paper called:

The Portrayal of Sex in American Art: Denying the “Supremest of All Delights”

I really love the Humanities (my major).

tee-hee

David

I wrote the following about two statues of David who slew Golaith. I hope you enjoy being introduced to Bernini’s statue, if you don’t know it already.

Michelangelo’s David is one of the most recognizable artworks in the world. Its fame is so widespread and it is so greatly loved because of its incredible beauty and grand size. However, in its shadow hides another statue of David, sculpted by Bernini. This statue, although very famous, does not have the widespread fame of Michelangelo’s. After being introduced to this statue of David, I decided that I like it more than Michelangelo’s version because of its realistic size, intense emotion, and use of dramatic lines to move the viewer’s eye.

Michelangelo’s David is eighteen feet tall, about three times the size of a man. In fact, he is about twice as tall as Goliath is supposed to have been. To me, this does not make sense. I understand the symbolism of representing David as a giant to signify his awesomeness, bravery, and general greatness. But to me the whole point of the tale of David and Goliath is that David was small. The only reason he was able to kill Goliath was because he trusted God to help him. Looking at Michelangelo’s David, one is unable to imagine a bigger giant for him to contend with, and so he has no reason to be brave. Bernini’s David, however, is life-size. This seems to allow the viewer to better imagine what David is fighting and how scary it is. In doing this it gives a clearer picture of how brave David really is, to be willing to face the giant even though he himself is of normal size.

The intense emotion on David’s face is probably my favorite aspect of the Bernini statue. Although Michelangelo’s David has a pretty intense stare, it is not nearly so emotional as Bernini’s. Like the statue, I myself tend to screw up my face when performing a task that requires a lot of focus. David bites his lip, knits his brows, and stares so intently at his enemy that one might try to follow his gaze. This gaze shows an intense desire and concentration that gives David a much more realistic and heroic attitude than the Michelangelo version, who appears to be thinking about killing Goliath rather than actually trying to.

Bernini created lines in his sculpture that emphasize David’s physical tension and force the viewer to walk around the statue. Starting at the front, the viewer’s eye first looks at David’s face, then moves down his curved arm, forcing the viewer to walk around to see the hand. Once the hand is visible, the viewer follows the taut sling, continuing to walk around, until he sees the other hand. At this point the viewer is nearly halfway around the statue. Michelangelo’s David does not involve the viewer in this way. Also, the curved lines of David’s limbs and taut muscles contribute to the intense focus and emotion of the face. He literally looks wound up and ready to explode. All of these aspects illustrate the story of David and Goliath better than the contemplative, relaxed pose of Michelangelo’s David.

Although I love Michelangelo’s David for its awesome presence and beauty, I enjoy Bernini’s David more because it is a better representation of the story and of David himself. David was a passionate, emotional guy, from what I can tell. After all, he was the one who “danced before the Lord with all his might…girded with a linen ephod,” (2 Sam. 6:14). He was the man who fearlessly killed a lion and a giant, who wrote psalms, who had to have Bathsheba, and who spent much of his life repenting for something that he knew could not be forgiven. I do not think of him as a cool, rational thinker like the man depicted in Michelangelo’s statue. He is much more exciting than that.