Reading Chapter 15

Okay, so I can discuss Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus To Our House but I won’t. I thought that book to be one of the biggest wastes of my time as far as textbook reading goes, time that I shall never get back. One reason I feel this is that I was so disinterested in the book is that I really have no passion about the history of architectural work, especially modern architecture. I felt that I was so disinterested that I can hardly recall what I read. I felt like I was a robot, accomplishing a task just because I was programmed to do so. In fact, I often found myself dosing off during my readings of the book. Do you think I have made my point yet? Well, I think you are starting to understand my feelings about it. I could go on but I will save you the misery. Therefore, I would like to discuss chapter 15 from the humanities textbook Coming To Your Senses. Now, since I am not artistically inclined (Humanities inclined….whatever!), I found this chapter to be very important to my own personal understanding of the arts, especially paintings since that is the focus of the chapter. For me, I find myself to be someone who views art in a formalistic view, well, a very simple formalistic view. Since I see really no value or need in standing in front of a piece of artwork and digesting everything about it ( I would rather be reading a scientific article learning about cancer, since this knowledge has more value!), I find that using a simple formalistic view of artwork as something that works best for me. In fact, I can usually spend only a little amount of time in an art museum before I really start to become bored and irritated. This may be due to the lack of time I spend appreciating each piece of artwork, but personally, I see that my time can be spent on tasks that I find more valuable to me. Don’t get me wrong, there is a huge value to the arts and humanities and I have recently grown to appreciate this field a little more after having taken a previous humanities course. There is a need for education institutions to develop students who posses a well rounded education including the humanities and I wish to be included in that category. It is just that I am not passionate about the humanities field (as should not be expected of me!). Put it this way, if there were only to fields of education, biological sciences and the humanities, I would spend 98% of my time learning biology and 2% of my time focused on humanities and the arts. This is not intended to offend anyone. This is just my personal views of the subject (we are all allowed our own views, right?), but this may also reflect my IGNORANCE! Getting back to the chapter, I felt the arguments presented in the chapter will allow me to understand the arts on a new level. As I stated previously, I view the arts in a simple formalistic view. I tend to only look superficially into the artwork. I quickly appreciate the colors, lines, shadings, and the characters, but I don’t develop an understanding of how all of these factors come together to support the subject of the artwork, unless of course it is obvious. What I really need to do to understand the arts, as the book suggest is take the unified approach in appreciating visual arts. That is, combining the formalistic approach and the contextual approach. But doesn’t that mean I will have to have a knowledge of the history of a painting and personality of the artist to understand it contextually? Fortunately, the art museums usually provide a little background to the artwork (at least the ones that I have stepped into). Now, to understand a visual piece of work on both the contextualism and formalism level means to understand the lines, color, and form and how this contributes to the “psychological connection to the outside world”. Take for example the artwork of Gericault The Raft of Medusa. Now, I am no expert but I can see no lines in the artwork as far as the use of brushstrokes to create the artwork. But what I can see is the use of lines in creating the characters of the painting. The artist used different shadings and lines to create men that realistically depict what men struggling on a raft would look like with your own eyes. His use of lines and shading in both the body of men and their clothes gives the figures a sense of flow, as if the men and their clothes are moving with each movement of the men. He also perfectly uses shading to represent the shadow that would exist in a real life situation. The sun is setting behind the sail of the artwork and therefore we would expect there to be a shade cast over those behind the sail itself, as the artist uses. The use of colors also represents passion and survival. The man in the left of the artwork is draped in a red cloak while holding onto one of his dead comrades. His eyes also seem to look out at the audience with a look of despair and disappointment. The red draped over the man to me represent the love and friendship that man had for his fallen shipmates. The use of a red and white piece of clothing in flagging down help, to me represents the desire and strength to survive. It may also represent their innocence and yet the men were stranded and left to die. Now I am sure we could go on, but we must also look at the artwork contextually. As stated, the use of white may represent their innocence since these men were intentionally left to die on the ocean while others took off in life raft. This shipwreck was well known to the French since the situation arouse due to scandals that was associated to the tragedy. The painter was therefore using this situation to magnify himself as an artist. He was pulling on the emotions of the French culture to recreate a sensitive situation that would be remembered by those who would see it. He therefore uses the different shapes, contrast and colors to hit the emotions of those who viewed the artwork and knew of the scandal associated with the portrayed tragedy. I think the artist does an excellent job at putting emotions into the artwork. He seemed to develop a sensitive or soft spot in his own heart for those who died as he portrayed them as being loved by fellow shipmates. His ability to create the men as if they were real also gave the artwork life, as if you are looking at the situation occurring. The Raft of Medusa is one of my favorite pieces of artwork just because of the emotions it possesses and the ability of the artist to create such a real life situation of a tragedy that actually occurred.