Friday, October 31, 2008
Happy Halloween
My mom would have been 57 today. I was doing a periodic clean-out and reorganizing of my file cabinet and I came across a copy of the program from her funeral mass. The picture of her on the front is probably one of the nicest pictures I've ever seen of her--she's actually smiling, which is something she rarely did in photos; that is, when she wasn't ducking them entirely. Sean and I have fond memories of a time I had a photo of her and she asked to 'see it'--and then promptly ripped it into shreds. Vintage Mrs. D!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Palladio's Tempietto at Maser
As I said to Sean last night, who would have thought that the project I would enjoy working on the most is the one about architecture? I'm doing my paper on this charming little edifice:
Isn't it cute? I really dislike the belltowers, though. Carlo Maderno was apparently inspired by this building to stick a couple of towers onto the front of the Pantheon, which were ridiculed so much by the Italians (who called them "asses' ears") that they were eventually taken down. Someone should have told Maderno that just because Palladio did it did not make it a good idea. Thinking you can 'improve' the important architectural monument in Western history = epic fail.
For such a small building, there's a surprising amount of arguing over its original purpose, the dedication of the main altar, even the placement of various saints in the church (eg, my sources can't even agree on whether St. Paul or St. Andrew is on Christ's right hand at the main altar). There's also its rather unique design, which looks Pantheon-inspired from the front but which actually is a hybrid of a central-plan church with a Greek cross plan.
Hm, if I were better with Photoshop, I would try to take off those towers and see what it would look like. Unfortunately, I think that would make the lantern look painfully out of place. He should have just made it an oculus and been done with it.
Isn't it cute? I really dislike the belltowers, though. Carlo Maderno was apparently inspired by this building to stick a couple of towers onto the front of the Pantheon, which were ridiculed so much by the Italians (who called them "asses' ears") that they were eventually taken down. Someone should have told Maderno that just because Palladio did it did not make it a good idea. Thinking you can 'improve' the important architectural monument in Western history = epic fail.
For such a small building, there's a surprising amount of arguing over its original purpose, the dedication of the main altar, even the placement of various saints in the church (eg, my sources can't even agree on whether St. Paul or St. Andrew is on Christ's right hand at the main altar). There's also its rather unique design, which looks Pantheon-inspired from the front but which actually is a hybrid of a central-plan church with a Greek cross plan.
Hm, if I were better with Photoshop, I would try to take off those towers and see what it would look like. Unfortunately, I think that would make the lantern look painfully out of place. He should have just made it an oculus and been done with it.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
With a Cheshire Cat Grin
I got an A on my presentation! Whoot! Dr. Cooper said that my presentation style was excellent and that I definitely have a future as a speaker (I hope at this point that I managed to keep the grin off my face; I did not, however, manage to contain the "ka-ching!" when she told me I got an A. I'm not entirely professional yet: sue me.). Her only criticism was with regards to the non-conclusion that I reached about whether Palladio had any influence on Sinan; she didn't have a problem with a non-conclusion in itself, but thought I should have taken it further and pointed out how scholars can be so determined to find these connections that sometimes we're willing to take on faith links that are, in reality, extremely tenuous.
Anyway, there is going to be much rejoicing in the land, because I also had a chat with Dr. Bolman, my medieval professor, and she complimented me on my contributions to the class discussions--which is pretty interesting, considering before last week I don't think I said a damn thing in the discussions. I only started forcing myself last week because I realized she was kind of taking notes on who said what and I was like...crap. Now I have to talk.
We've been talking about seeing through medieval eyes when you're looking at the art, and a really interesting concept that she introduced was the idea that in the early centuries, sight was considered a tactile sense. It was believed that when you looked at someone, rays went out from your eyes, touched the object, and returned to you, so when you looked at an icon, or a holy man, or a holy site, you were actually touching it with your eyes before you got close enough to touch it with your hands. I wanted to know from her whether this concept had any influence on the practice of veiling women, which has as much of a basis in Christian culture as it does in Islamic, even if it's not generally practiced by laypeople anymore; did women need to be veiled because if men looked at them, they were considered to be touching them as well? She didn't have an answer for me, but she seemed really excited by the question, so I was like "holy crap, did I just have an original idea? Yipee!!" Because one of my main fears about grad school, if I haven't expressed it before, is that I will have No Original Ideas and will be cast out into darkness forever and ever. So even if that's not something I'm going to follow up on myself, it was good to remind myself that I at least have the capacity to generate lines of new inquiry!
Anyway, there is going to be much rejoicing in the land, because I also had a chat with Dr. Bolman, my medieval professor, and she complimented me on my contributions to the class discussions--which is pretty interesting, considering before last week I don't think I said a damn thing in the discussions. I only started forcing myself last week because I realized she was kind of taking notes on who said what and I was like...crap. Now I have to talk.
We've been talking about seeing through medieval eyes when you're looking at the art, and a really interesting concept that she introduced was the idea that in the early centuries, sight was considered a tactile sense. It was believed that when you looked at someone, rays went out from your eyes, touched the object, and returned to you, so when you looked at an icon, or a holy man, or a holy site, you were actually touching it with your eyes before you got close enough to touch it with your hands. I wanted to know from her whether this concept had any influence on the practice of veiling women, which has as much of a basis in Christian culture as it does in Islamic, even if it's not generally practiced by laypeople anymore; did women need to be veiled because if men looked at them, they were considered to be touching them as well? She didn't have an answer for me, but she seemed really excited by the question, so I was like "holy crap, did I just have an original idea? Yipee!!" Because one of my main fears about grad school, if I haven't expressed it before, is that I will have No Original Ideas and will be cast out into darkness forever and ever. So even if that's not something I'm going to follow up on myself, it was good to remind myself that I at least have the capacity to generate lines of new inquiry!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sinan and Rain
Yesterday I gave my first real presentation of the year in my Palladio class. At the beginning of the semester we picked from a list of topics that Dr. Cooper had prepared, each of which had an article to use as a 'jumping off point;' I chose Palladio and the East, because that sounded pretty interesting. The article was about possible Ottoman influences in Palladio's Redentore church in Venice, and since the point of the presentation was to move in some other direction based on the theme (although I felt like a lot of people just reiterated the thesis of the article they read) I decided to lgo in exactly the opposite direction and look at Western influences on the Ottoman architecture of Sinan. Lo! a presentation was born.
Ironically, despite the fact that my entire presentation was based on circumstantial evidence and suggestive possibilities (for example, Palladio's treatise I Quattri Libri might have been available to Sinan, because his patron Marc'antonio Barbaro was in Constantinople as a consul when it was published in 1570 and he was buddy-buddy with the grand vizier, and wouldn't that have just made a swell gift? Not only was the plan for his very own country home in it, there was even a staircase he'd designed himself!), as well as one single concrete example of a time that Sinan seems to have seen something Western and used the idea in one of his mosques (support piers, very exciting stuff) I think it went off rather well. I tried to show that there was at least a context of cross-cultural communication in both directions, not just the East-to-West influence we're always led to believe, even though I couldn't actually say that Sinan ever directly adapted anything from Palladio in the way that Palladio might have adapted ideas from him. I've noticed that in academia you can get away with a lot of postulating as long as you're clear up front that you can't necessarily prove what you're saying.
I'll find out tomorrow how I did, but the feedback I got from the older students was positive, which was really good to hear. In addition to reading it aloud a few times beforehand, I had made Sean sit through the presentation, slides and all, while he was here on Saturday evening, even though he was suffering a cold and probably falling asleep. And then I made him look at a few of Palladio's buildings, which he was a good sport about, lol. At least I didn't make him look at mosques...it's probably my Euro-centrism, but I just don't find mosque architecture appealing, especially from the exterior. They look like weird blobs. For example, this is one of Sinan's most famous works (and incidentally, the one that may have been an influence on Palladio), the Selimiye in Edirne:
It just doesn't work for me; too many protrusions from the central mass, I think. Kind of like really symmetrical tumors.
Anyway, now that I'm done insulting masterpieces of Ottoman architecture...there's a one-day symposium on Palladio coming up in November at Columbia that I'm going to go to. Dr. Cooper is presenting a paper, and also a couple of the major names in the field (whose work you can't help but trip over no matter what) are going to be giving papers as well, so it's kind of exciting, even though I'm not really into architecture in general. Oh, and David Rosand will be there giving a paper on scenographic architecture in Venice--he's the guy from Columbia who works on Titian, and I met with him when I was applying, but of course then I didn't get in, so boooo to him. Yeah, except his work is amazing. Curses!
There are always those people who when you read their work, you really, really wish you'd written that, or thought of that; right now I can think of Billy Collins in the poetry department, as well as Rosand and also Patricia Brown at Princeton, especially "Private Life in Renaissance Venice". With her, though, it's not even so much her research that I admire (although that's stellar, of course) but the way she synthesizes different aspects of Venetian culture and relates them to the art and architecture of the period, and still manages to make it really readable and fascinating. I want to write books that people will actually want to read, books they'll enjoy reading, and I think she manages to do that really well.
On another note, it poured today, icy sheets of rain that were being propelled practically sideways by the strength of the wind. Very unpleasant to be walking in, especially with a $10 umbrella purchased at an airport gift shop that threatened to give way at any moment. I wound up spending the entire day in the library, which is fortuitously connected on the ground floor to the building where my classes are. The only time I left was to dash out to a kiosk for a Diet Coke--Temple's greatest flaw is that it is a Pepsi campus. Luckily, there are independent vendors on every corner. However, I did have to forgo my lunch of choice, which is a meatball sandwich from this little cart near the art history department. It's literally just bun and meatballs with some sauce, not even any cheese, but they're really good, and even better, they're $2.25. Who loves cheap food? Me.
I was also delighted to hear that a couple of my classmates, Alice and Agnes, are applying to the Rome program as well. Agnes is from Poland and is very friendly, and Alice is kind of like an awesome den mother. She's older, has several children our age and is a high school history teacher who already has two, count them, two other master's degrees, history and I think economics. Anyway, if we all get in we agreed to look for a place to live together, which would be a lot of fun, I think. Not anywhere near as much fun as Florence--for one thing, this will actually be real coursework, not 'study-abroad' coursework--but that's to be expected.
Finally, my dear Carla's first performance in an opera is on Youtube! Brava! She's the nun in the white habit.
Ironically, despite the fact that my entire presentation was based on circumstantial evidence and suggestive possibilities (for example, Palladio's treatise I Quattri Libri might have been available to Sinan, because his patron Marc'antonio Barbaro was in Constantinople as a consul when it was published in 1570 and he was buddy-buddy with the grand vizier, and wouldn't that have just made a swell gift? Not only was the plan for his very own country home in it, there was even a staircase he'd designed himself!), as well as one single concrete example of a time that Sinan seems to have seen something Western and used the idea in one of his mosques (support piers, very exciting stuff) I think it went off rather well. I tried to show that there was at least a context of cross-cultural communication in both directions, not just the East-to-West influence we're always led to believe, even though I couldn't actually say that Sinan ever directly adapted anything from Palladio in the way that Palladio might have adapted ideas from him. I've noticed that in academia you can get away with a lot of postulating as long as you're clear up front that you can't necessarily prove what you're saying.
I'll find out tomorrow how I did, but the feedback I got from the older students was positive, which was really good to hear. In addition to reading it aloud a few times beforehand, I had made Sean sit through the presentation, slides and all, while he was here on Saturday evening, even though he was suffering a cold and probably falling asleep. And then I made him look at a few of Palladio's buildings, which he was a good sport about, lol. At least I didn't make him look at mosques...it's probably my Euro-centrism, but I just don't find mosque architecture appealing, especially from the exterior. They look like weird blobs. For example, this is one of Sinan's most famous works (and incidentally, the one that may have been an influence on Palladio), the Selimiye in Edirne:
It just doesn't work for me; too many protrusions from the central mass, I think. Kind of like really symmetrical tumors.
Anyway, now that I'm done insulting masterpieces of Ottoman architecture...there's a one-day symposium on Palladio coming up in November at Columbia that I'm going to go to. Dr. Cooper is presenting a paper, and also a couple of the major names in the field (whose work you can't help but trip over no matter what) are going to be giving papers as well, so it's kind of exciting, even though I'm not really into architecture in general. Oh, and David Rosand will be there giving a paper on scenographic architecture in Venice--he's the guy from Columbia who works on Titian, and I met with him when I was applying, but of course then I didn't get in, so boooo to him. Yeah, except his work is amazing. Curses!
There are always those people who when you read their work, you really, really wish you'd written that, or thought of that; right now I can think of Billy Collins in the poetry department, as well as Rosand and also Patricia Brown at Princeton, especially "Private Life in Renaissance Venice". With her, though, it's not even so much her research that I admire (although that's stellar, of course) but the way she synthesizes different aspects of Venetian culture and relates them to the art and architecture of the period, and still manages to make it really readable and fascinating. I want to write books that people will actually want to read, books they'll enjoy reading, and I think she manages to do that really well.
On another note, it poured today, icy sheets of rain that were being propelled practically sideways by the strength of the wind. Very unpleasant to be walking in, especially with a $10 umbrella purchased at an airport gift shop that threatened to give way at any moment. I wound up spending the entire day in the library, which is fortuitously connected on the ground floor to the building where my classes are. The only time I left was to dash out to a kiosk for a Diet Coke--Temple's greatest flaw is that it is a Pepsi campus. Luckily, there are independent vendors on every corner. However, I did have to forgo my lunch of choice, which is a meatball sandwich from this little cart near the art history department. It's literally just bun and meatballs with some sauce, not even any cheese, but they're really good, and even better, they're $2.25. Who loves cheap food? Me.
I was also delighted to hear that a couple of my classmates, Alice and Agnes, are applying to the Rome program as well. Agnes is from Poland and is very friendly, and Alice is kind of like an awesome den mother. She's older, has several children our age and is a high school history teacher who already has two, count them, two other master's degrees, history and I think economics. Anyway, if we all get in we agreed to look for a place to live together, which would be a lot of fun, I think. Not anywhere near as much fun as Florence--for one thing, this will actually be real coursework, not 'study-abroad' coursework--but that's to be expected.
Finally, my dear Carla's first performance in an opera is on Youtube! Brava! She's the nun in the white habit.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Next Semester's Menu Features...
...a class on obscenity and censorship in modern and contemporary art, a class on Albrecht Durer and the Baroque in Germany, and a class on "visual performances of femininity and masculinity" in Eastern Mediterranean art. The last one sounds really interesting, since I've never really worked with gender theory before.
I can't believe I registered for next semester already--it throws into relief exactly how much I still have to do for this semester. Eep.
I can't believe I registered for next semester already--it throws into relief exactly how much I still have to do for this semester. Eep.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Cherish the Little Triumphs
I passed the Italian reading exam! Whoot! Let's ignore the fact that it was a ridiculously easy biographical essay on Raphael and instead focus on me not having to take it twice. Which leaves me staring down the specter of the German exam in December...and most likely again in February...and let's be honest, probably a third time next May. I don't foresee an easy victory, since most everyone who took it this time failed terribly. Suddenly I find myself wishing they would let me do French as my second language instead of German. Damn them for pioneering this field and making themselves and their stupid subordinate-clause-heavy language indispensable!
In other news...well, there isn't much. I have an entire day of studying in front of me, since my one class ended at 11 but I have a grad student meeting at 7:30. Sean suggested I just go home, but I know that I'd begrudge having to return again this evening, so here I stay.
That reminds me of a scene from the "Emily" series from LM Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. In the first book, Emily's aunts are explaining how the family came to be living in whatever picturesque corner of Canada they're in: their paterfamilias was on a ship heading for New York, but after the crossing they stopped in Canada. His wife was terribly seasick the whole way, so they took pity on her and let her go ashore for a little while, but of course as soon as she got there she announced "Here I stay" and refused to go back on board. So the husband is forced to unload all their baggage and settle down in the hinterlands instead of cosmopolitan New York to his great dissatisfaction. The coda to this is that years later when she died, he had inscribed on her tombstone, a little bitterly, "Here I stay." Anyway, that was completely unnecessary and totally irrelevant to anyone who hasn't read those books (they're not as good as Anne, but I still enjoyed them) but as my own aunt would say (to Jen's great irritation): 'it is what it is.'
In other news...well, there isn't much. I have an entire day of studying in front of me, since my one class ended at 11 but I have a grad student meeting at 7:30. Sean suggested I just go home, but I know that I'd begrudge having to return again this evening, so here I stay.
That reminds me of a scene from the "Emily" series from LM Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. In the first book, Emily's aunts are explaining how the family came to be living in whatever picturesque corner of Canada they're in: their paterfamilias was on a ship heading for New York, but after the crossing they stopped in Canada. His wife was terribly seasick the whole way, so they took pity on her and let her go ashore for a little while, but of course as soon as she got there she announced "Here I stay" and refused to go back on board. So the husband is forced to unload all their baggage and settle down in the hinterlands instead of cosmopolitan New York to his great dissatisfaction. The coda to this is that years later when she died, he had inscribed on her tombstone, a little bitterly, "Here I stay." Anyway, that was completely unnecessary and totally irrelevant to anyone who hasn't read those books (they're not as good as Anne, but I still enjoyed them) but as my own aunt would say (to Jen's great irritation): 'it is what it is.'