Sunday, August 05, 2007
Millennium Park, Chicago
Check out these pics by Thinking About Art -- makes me want to go back to Chicago just to experience it myself, since I had no idea this even existed!
art for art's sake
In response to Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland's study regarding the role of the arts in school curriculum, I highly agree with their reasoning in support of the findings in their research. Art should be seen as a subject strong enough to stand on its own. Our society often rationalizes the subject of art as a worthy subject to study in school (excluding art schools, of course) only because it supports the other "more essential" subjects such as math and science (sometimes, literature).
Being a teaching artist at one time and going into public schools, my lesson plan for each session often had to list the multi-disciplinary aspects of each art lesson, which subjects my lesson was reinforcing, and more specifically, which specific skills such as reasoning, spatial intelligence, etc. I was teaching. I was there to teach art, not math through art, yet sometimes we had to tweak our lessons to help students prepare for their standardized tests. I found myself teaching the math in patterns instead of teaching the kids how to appreciate and see the pattern's aesthetic value through repetition and colors of say, Islamic Art.
I don't deny that learning how most compositions in paintings that we find pleasing almost always follow the golden section, is very fascinating and helpful -- especially when it comes to creating your own composition -- this fact should be seen as how math supports the art, the visual, instead of the other way around. Studying abroad in Europe, I also discovered that this unique perspective was very American. I found that my visual intelligence and creativity skills were severely impaired compared to those who were just out of high school (some were still in high school). I didn't think that this was due to talent/"artist genes," but more to the European outlook on art as a subject. Therefore, I did a lot of "catching up" and tried to make up for the lack of art I had in high school. One thing's for sure: they took art and art making seriously and it was a subject that was seen as equal as calculus or chemistry, not an extra class convenient to skip when you needed to go to the dentist and have your wires tightened.
Lastly, I believe this is the reason many people look at modern/contemporary art with a blank stare. (There are other reasons, of course, which is another topic and I won't get into now). High schools and universities do not teach us about visual intelligence. Most of us are not taught how to look at a painting and see. If the argument is, how will this help me in my life, the same can be said of calculus. Not everyone uses calculus in their career of choice, but we still have to learn it. Why should art be different? GEs often include such subjects like intro to Classics, Philosophy of Ethics & Morality, basic intro to chemistry, biology, physics, etc....., perhaps even art appreciation, but we do not have classes in visual intelligence. At least with writing -- I believe all schools have GE courses in expository writing, but many, many college graduates finish school without really learning the skill of basic essay writing despite the requirement. It's a deficiency in the system, more than with the individual. Many people enter the modern art/contemporary section on the MET or go into the MOMA and say, "I don't get it," or "I can do that," more often than they try to stand there in silence and think visually about, or really try to see what's in front of them -- especially when it comes to Rothko's color fields, abstract art, in general, and many contemporary pieces.
The same is true with some art buyers, they want to be told what to buy and instead of actually looking at the paintings, sculptures, photography, etc. themselves to see what they really like looking at and seeing on a daily basis. I mean, it's going to be a presence/part of a room in their apartment/house, so why not pick something you like instead of what something someone says you should like? But that's for another blog entry, for another time.
Being a teaching artist at one time and going into public schools, my lesson plan for each session often had to list the multi-disciplinary aspects of each art lesson, which subjects my lesson was reinforcing, and more specifically, which specific skills such as reasoning, spatial intelligence, etc. I was teaching. I was there to teach art, not math through art, yet sometimes we had to tweak our lessons to help students prepare for their standardized tests. I found myself teaching the math in patterns instead of teaching the kids how to appreciate and see the pattern's aesthetic value through repetition and colors of say, Islamic Art.
I don't deny that learning how most compositions in paintings that we find pleasing almost always follow the golden section, is very fascinating and helpful -- especially when it comes to creating your own composition -- this fact should be seen as how math supports the art, the visual, instead of the other way around. Studying abroad in Europe, I also discovered that this unique perspective was very American. I found that my visual intelligence and creativity skills were severely impaired compared to those who were just out of high school (some were still in high school). I didn't think that this was due to talent/"artist genes," but more to the European outlook on art as a subject. Therefore, I did a lot of "catching up" and tried to make up for the lack of art I had in high school. One thing's for sure: they took art and art making seriously and it was a subject that was seen as equal as calculus or chemistry, not an extra class convenient to skip when you needed to go to the dentist and have your wires tightened.
Lastly, I believe this is the reason many people look at modern/contemporary art with a blank stare. (There are other reasons, of course, which is another topic and I won't get into now). High schools and universities do not teach us about visual intelligence. Most of us are not taught how to look at a painting and see. If the argument is, how will this help me in my life, the same can be said of calculus. Not everyone uses calculus in their career of choice, but we still have to learn it. Why should art be different? GEs often include such subjects like intro to Classics, Philosophy of Ethics & Morality, basic intro to chemistry, biology, physics, etc....., perhaps even art appreciation, but we do not have classes in visual intelligence. At least with writing -- I believe all schools have GE courses in expository writing, but many, many college graduates finish school without really learning the skill of basic essay writing despite the requirement. It's a deficiency in the system, more than with the individual. Many people enter the modern art/contemporary section on the MET or go into the MOMA and say, "I don't get it," or "I can do that," more often than they try to stand there in silence and think visually about, or really try to see what's in front of them -- especially when it comes to Rothko's color fields, abstract art, in general, and many contemporary pieces.
The same is true with some art buyers, they want to be told what to buy and instead of actually looking at the paintings, sculptures, photography, etc. themselves to see what they really like looking at and seeing on a daily basis. I mean, it's going to be a presence/part of a room in their apartment/house, so why not pick something you like instead of what something someone says you should like? But that's for another blog entry, for another time.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Thursday, August 02, 2007
New Poet Laureate Assigned: Charles Simic
How timely, my previous entry was just about a former poet laureate (Billy Collins--for 2 years in fact). Simic wrote an excellent essay in one of those Poets on Poetry books series, the title of which I cannot remember right now. But check out the article. Here's the text for those who may not be NY Times subscribers, for the link expires after a week.
August 2, 2007
Charles Simic, Surrealist With Dark View, Is Named Poet Laureate
By MOTOKO RICH, The New York Times
Charles Simic, a writer who juxtaposes dark imagery with ironic humor, is to be named the country’s 15th poet laureate by the Librarian of Congress today.
Mr. Simic, 69, was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and immigrated to the United States at 16. He started writing poetry in English only a few years after learning the language and has published more than 20 volumes of poetry, as well as essay collections, translations and a memoir.
A retired professor of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire, he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990 and held a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant from 1984 to 1989.
He succeeds Donald Hall, a fellow New Englander, who has been poet laureate for the past year.
James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, will announce Mr. Simic’s appointment. Mr. Billington said he chose Mr. Simic from a short list of 15 poets because of “the rather stunning and original quality of his poetry,” adding: “He’s very hard to describe, and that’s a great tribute to him. His poems have a sequence that you encounter in dreams, and therefore they have a reality that does not correspond to the reality that we perceive with our eyes and ears.”
Mr. Simic, speaking by telephone from his home in Strafford, N.H., described himself as a “city poet” because he has “lived in cities all of my life, except for the last 35 years.” Before settling into academia, he held a number of jobs in New York, including bookkeeping, bookselling and shirt sales. He originally wanted to be a painter, he said, until “I realized that I had no talent.”
He started writing poems while in high school in Chicago, in part, he said, to impress girls. He published his first poems in The Chicago Review when he was 21.
Mr. Simic said his chief poetic preoccupation has been history. “I’m sort of the product of history; Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents,” he said. “If they weren’t around, I probably would have stayed on the same street where I was born. My family, like millions of others, had to pack up and go, so that has always interested me tremendously: human tragedy and human vileness and stupidity.”
Yet he balks at questions about the role of poetry in culture. “That reminds me so much of the way the young Communists in the days of Stalin at big party congresses would ask, ‘What is the role of the writer?’ ” he said.
Mr. Simic said he preferred to think of the point of poetry in the way a student at a school in El Paso put it when he visited in 1972: “to remind people of their own humanity.”
Reviewing his collection “The Voice at 3:00 A.M.” (Harcourt) for The New York Times Book Review in 2003, David Orr said Mr. Simic was “a surrealist with a purpose: the disconcerting shifts and sinister imagery that characterize his work are always intended to suggest — however obliquely — the existential questions that trouble our day-to-day lives.”
Mr. Billington said he admired Mr. Simic’s work because it was “both accessible and deep,” adding that “the lines are memorable.” He referred to a stanza from “My Turn to Confess,” a poem from Mr. Simic’s 2005 collection, “My Noiseless Entourage,” also published by Harcourt:
A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,
That’s me, dear reader!
They were about to kick me out of the library
But I warned them,
My master is invisible and all-powerful.
Still, they kept dragging me out by my tail.
The post of poet laureate has existed since 1987, although there were 27 consultants in poetry to the Library of Congress before that. Laureates receive a $35,000 award and a $5,000 travel allowance.
The position does not come with any specific responsibilities, although previous laureates have used the platform in different ways. Robert Pinsky, who held the post from 1997 to 2000, initiated a Favorite Poem Project, inviting poetry fans to share their favorites in readings captured on tape and video. Billy Collins, laureate from 2001 to 2003, began Poetry 180 (loc.gov/poetry/180), a Web site where high school classes can access a poem of the day. Mr. Hall joined Andrew Motion, the British poet laureate, for a trans-Atlantic reading program sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
Mr. Simic said he had not yet figured out what he would do. In the meantime he continues to write for The New York Review of Books and is a poetry editor of The Paris Review. He has a new collection, “That Little Something,” due from Harcourt in February 2008.
August 2, 2007
Charles Simic, Surrealist With Dark View, Is Named Poet Laureate
By MOTOKO RICH, The New York Times
Charles Simic, a writer who juxtaposes dark imagery with ironic humor, is to be named the country’s 15th poet laureate by the Librarian of Congress today.
Mr. Simic, 69, was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and immigrated to the United States at 16. He started writing poetry in English only a few years after learning the language and has published more than 20 volumes of poetry, as well as essay collections, translations and a memoir.
A retired professor of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire, he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990 and held a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant from 1984 to 1989.
He succeeds Donald Hall, a fellow New Englander, who has been poet laureate for the past year.
James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, will announce Mr. Simic’s appointment. Mr. Billington said he chose Mr. Simic from a short list of 15 poets because of “the rather stunning and original quality of his poetry,” adding: “He’s very hard to describe, and that’s a great tribute to him. His poems have a sequence that you encounter in dreams, and therefore they have a reality that does not correspond to the reality that we perceive with our eyes and ears.”
Mr. Simic, speaking by telephone from his home in Strafford, N.H., described himself as a “city poet” because he has “lived in cities all of my life, except for the last 35 years.” Before settling into academia, he held a number of jobs in New York, including bookkeeping, bookselling and shirt sales. He originally wanted to be a painter, he said, until “I realized that I had no talent.”
He started writing poems while in high school in Chicago, in part, he said, to impress girls. He published his first poems in The Chicago Review when he was 21.
Mr. Simic said his chief poetic preoccupation has been history. “I’m sort of the product of history; Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents,” he said. “If they weren’t around, I probably would have stayed on the same street where I was born. My family, like millions of others, had to pack up and go, so that has always interested me tremendously: human tragedy and human vileness and stupidity.”
Yet he balks at questions about the role of poetry in culture. “That reminds me so much of the way the young Communists in the days of Stalin at big party congresses would ask, ‘What is the role of the writer?’ ” he said.
Mr. Simic said he preferred to think of the point of poetry in the way a student at a school in El Paso put it when he visited in 1972: “to remind people of their own humanity.”
Reviewing his collection “The Voice at 3:00 A.M.” (Harcourt) for The New York Times Book Review in 2003, David Orr said Mr. Simic was “a surrealist with a purpose: the disconcerting shifts and sinister imagery that characterize his work are always intended to suggest — however obliquely — the existential questions that trouble our day-to-day lives.”
Mr. Billington said he admired Mr. Simic’s work because it was “both accessible and deep,” adding that “the lines are memorable.” He referred to a stanza from “My Turn to Confess,” a poem from Mr. Simic’s 2005 collection, “My Noiseless Entourage,” also published by Harcourt:
A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,
That’s me, dear reader!
They were about to kick me out of the library
But I warned them,
My master is invisible and all-powerful.
Still, they kept dragging me out by my tail.
The post of poet laureate has existed since 1987, although there were 27 consultants in poetry to the Library of Congress before that. Laureates receive a $35,000 award and a $5,000 travel allowance.
The position does not come with any specific responsibilities, although previous laureates have used the platform in different ways. Robert Pinsky, who held the post from 1997 to 2000, initiated a Favorite Poem Project, inviting poetry fans to share their favorites in readings captured on tape and video. Billy Collins, laureate from 2001 to 2003, began Poetry 180 (loc.gov/poetry/180), a Web site where high school classes can access a poem of the day. Mr. Hall joined Andrew Motion, the British poet laureate, for a trans-Atlantic reading program sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
Mr. Simic said he had not yet figured out what he would do. In the meantime he continues to write for The New York Review of Books and is a poetry editor of The Paris Review. He has a new collection, “That Little Something,” due from Harcourt in February 2008.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
storytelling
| "A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens -- second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths." --Reynolds Price |
animation/film + poetry = graphic word poetry (?)
I've run into something new on YouTube. What an excellent way to illustrate poems, via animation. Is this poetry performed electronically? Just kidding. Either way, it's an interesting way of mixing/juxtaposing text with the visual. I think it brings more life to the poem. Not to say that it wasn't a complete work before the collaboration, but that the visual element brought the poem to a new state of completion, made it fuller in a sense. Much like a song or music can bring up a poem to a new level in "performance poetry".
Forgetfulness, poem by Billy Collins
However, the poem would stand on it's own whereas the animation doesn't make much sense with out the text.
Forgetfulness, poem by Billy Collins
However, the poem would stand on it's own whereas the animation doesn't make much sense with out the text.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
arbitrary
most people start over in january, make resolutions and whatnot.
but people start over when they're ready, not because it's the first of the month, or the first day of the week, or the first day of the year. so, this blog is reborn and will concentrate on work. more writing, more artwork, you get the point.
but people start over when they're ready, not because it's the first of the month, or the first day of the week, or the first day of the year. so, this blog is reborn and will concentrate on work. more writing, more artwork, you get the point.
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