Things I Didn't Know About Porn

I was doing research for my Playboy paper today (for which I have yet to come up with an appropriately pithy-yet-risque title), mostly reading more articles about the fact that everyone capable of logical thought (ie, everyone who doesn't approach the Guadalupe issue with the sole intention of proving it's true) accepts that there was no Juan Diego, no apparition, and no acheiropoietic image of the Virgin. Even the prior of the cathedral that houses the image publicly said it was all a myth back in the 90s, before the Pope canonized Juan Diego--and he promptly caught hell for it, death threats and all. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church already has plenty of saints of dubious or false existence: St. George, St. Christopher, St. Valentine, etc., so I guess they figured one more wasn't that big a deal in exchange for securing the allegiance of Latin America.

But I digress. As I was doing this, it struck me that I should probably do some reading on pornography as well, because the major controversy of the image I'm working with is that it presents a holy figure in a sexual context in a porn magazine. So I pop in "pornography" to JSTOR and, unsurprisingly, get hundreds of results. Most of them were sociological studies, which are really handy because they give you an abstract right at the beginning, including their conclusions. I like to read the research background and how they perform experiments, but once it gets to the data analysis,"where n=0.23," I just skip to the discussion of results.

One of the great things about studies in the social sciences is that they start by often exhaustively referencing all the other studies that have been done in this area recently. So the first article I read, which was about the effects of repeated exposure to porn and erotica on attitudes toward women, nicely summed up a bunch of other research that had reached similar results--namely, there is no negative effect. Watching a lot of porn doesn't make people think women are more inferior or should be treated solely as sex objects. This is kind of a big challenge to the quietly accepted idea that porn reinforces negative stereotypes about women, and especially to the "anti-pornography feminists" like Andrea Dworkin who led crusades to ban porn in the 80s based on it being all kinds of evil.

More interesting was another study which examined the relationship of circulation rates of pornography magazines to gender equality in all 50 states. To estimate the level of gender equality the researchers used a 24-point Gender Equality Index, which may not have been of their own devising, I don't remember. The results showed that in states where more copies of Playboy and Hustler were sold there was actually greater equality of the sexes; the authors suggested that this is because a community that is politically tolerant enough to be open to porn is also likely to be open to gender equality.

Food for thought...and for inclusion in my paper!

Good to be Home

I put more than 900 miles on my car this past week--"spring break" my eye. Happily, I did manage to accomplish everything I had planned, and I got to see Rae, Heather, and even my sister. Sean and I met her for lunch at Dom's on Friday and then went to see her new apartment, which is on the bank of the Connecticut River in East Windsor, and really attractive. It's bigger than her apartment in Brooklyn, and she has a porch overlooking the river. Sapphire seems to have doubled in size since the last time I saw her; "Fatty Lumpkin" was mostly a joke nickname, but Jesus, now it really applies, the poor thing is obese! I saw Cinnamon for half a second at Rae's house before she grumpily ran away, since Rae's dad had just woken her up to bring her downstairs. When I got home tonight to Thomas' welcoming yowls, I looked at him and realized that my idea of cat-size has become skewed by living with such a skinny little thing. Phyllis says he just has a 'Gandhi-esque' physique. Little HIV-cat, I actually missed you a little (only a little, till the top-volume meowing began).

Sean pointed out that our separation this time will be the longest we've been apart since Italy three years ago (hard to be believe that this past Thursday, Sara's birthday, was three years to the day since "Blob night"...) Sigh.

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In Which I Am (Again) Not Working

Technically, spring break has already begun for me, but here I am sitting in the 'new' grad lounge in the brand-spanking-new art building, doing absolutely nothing except reading old journal entries. In my defense, this so-called lounge is a soul-crushing wasteland, tucked away in the back, back basement of the building, past the damn loading dock, and protected by a mountain of unnecessary security--you have to key in a code on a little box by the door to get the key out, then unlock the door, throw the key back in, go inside and retrieve a second key from its hiding place to open the computer room. Sooooo much easier than just giving the grad students their own keys, right?

Also, whatever genius designed this building decided it would be awesome to have not one, but two basements, which don't even connect to one another. So if you attempted to go down the stairs by the entrance, you would find an auditorium, classrooms, photography studios, and a bunch of art students who all seem to know instinctively when an outsider is present, but no art history offices. However, if you went back upstairs, down a giant hallway that is part studios and part exhibition space and which is always crawling with more of the aforementioned art students, and then went down the staircase at the back of the building, you would find a lot of mechanical noises, a loading dock, and! joy of joys, a couple of art history classrooms and our lounge. Which you would be free to enjoy once you have achieved the double-key entrance.

In contrast, let me just point out that our old location was a very 1970s-looking floor of one of the other humanities buildings, conveniently close to the library and also the cart from which I like to buy lunch. It was on the eighth floor, which really made you feel like you'd earned your food, and it was just art history, so it was quiet, and nice, and the professors had their offices there so you could see the teachers you didn't have classes with. Here, we're in the hinterlands and they're up on the second floor in--this is awesome, too--modular cubicles. They used to have offices, with real wooden doors, and sometimes a window. Now they have less space than I did when I worked for Paul, or even for Stubhub for that matter. Progress, right?

I Passed the German Exam!

....that's all. That news just made my day.

March Already

Last night I had a bad dream about the wedding--it was the day of but somehow I'd still thought it was far away, so everyone's telling me I have to get going for the ceremony, but I hadn't had my hair done and had no shoes to wear. Sean wasn't in the dream, but ironically, my parents were; my father was hurrying me along and my mom was in her bathroom showing me the shoes she was going to wear, which were not real shoes but these massive contraptions looking like nothing so much as 16th century Venetian platforms. And then my sister tried to force her scuffed, formerly white shoes on me, telling me no one would see them under my dress. Typical.

Random

There's a big orange storage container in my closet that holds almost all of the things I've saved over the course of my life. In Windsor they were separated into several plastic underbed containers, and innumerable shoeboxes. I started out with the shoeboxes, probably in eighth grade or so, although only years later did I realize that labeling them would be useful. Some boxes are miscellaneous; some contain everything from a particular year, like senior year of high school. There is a box for the Europe trip sophomore year, one for the HILL trip, and another for Florence. The same storage container has awards from high school, my dad's childhood baseball glove, and a long piece of faded Chinese silk, preserved now in a plastic bag, that was once my prized possession.

I like to imagine someone going through that box years from now and trying to get an idea of who I was, like an archaeologist trying to form the image of a people through a shard of the cup that once held their wine. The first thing you see when you open the box is a small paper plate wrapped in tissue paper; on it there's a handprint in clay. What would someone make of that, supposing that it survived? What are the chances that they would be able to guess that that was my mother's hand, even if they had everything else in that box to help them?

Of Nuns and Adultery

Right now I'm rather slowly translating a German article on the legal differences between nuns and monks in the Byzantine period. Apparently, if you decided the nunnery wasn't for you and wanted to quit, you would be prosecuted as an adulteress. Because, you know, you were betrothed to God, and then you cheated on him, filthy tramp! It didn't exactly say how they punished adultery back then, but I feel like it might have been something of the "who wants to throw the first stone?" variety. Later on it also mentions the fact that dual-sex complexes, with a monastery and nunnery in the same place, were completely forbidden, and that if any monks and nuns lived together 'as brother and sister,' it was considered bigamy. Which would undoubtedly lead to more nasty punishments. What a drag.

ETA: Um, so later it does explain what happened to the adulterers--you got the death penalty. And if I'm reading this right, they just locked you up in the cloister and let you die in there. Oh, but some later legislation was milder: you only had your nose cut off. Yay!

Rainy-Day Trip Planning

It's cold and wet here, so what better time to focus on July in Spain, where daily temps average between 95 and 104? Last night I figured out a basic itinerary for our travels: Madrid for three nights, then Salamanca, Avila, Segovia, and Toledo, and finally three nights in Madrid with a day trip out to El Escorial. That gives me not one, but two Sunday mornings in Madrid to experience the wonder of El Rastro, the world's largest flea market: 3500 stalls! Sadly, I think I'm almost equally excited for that as I am to visit the Prado again. Priorities, right?

Post From South Bend

Sadly, it is already the morning of my departure, which sucks. The last time I was here I was able to stay for five days, but alas, having class on Thursday and Monday, I could only do the weekend. Still, we had a lovely Valentine's Day; we went to Notre Dame's museum on campus, which surprisingly had an interesting collective of medieval/Renaissance objects, then we went to what passes for a fancy Italian restaurant around these parts *derisive hmph* and then, on Sean's insistence, we saw the Reader. I wasn't really interested in watching a movie about Nazi pedophiles on V-Day, but I must admit that it was really good even if it was depressing. Kate Winslet has, like, the perfect body. And yes, the actor who was playing the 15 year old boy was hot too, except in this case he's not actually 15 in real life (unlike that time we all saw Peter Pan in high school...anyone?)

This is Some Fuckery

I'm suffering from an excess of adrenaline right now...I was in the German department with my friends, all of us pumped to finally take the exam and get it over with at fucking last so we could stop living and breathing German, and what happens? The proctor doesn't show. She had to take her husband to the hospital because he had an eye problem. OK, yes, not her fault, but what really pissed us off was that despite this being a GERMAN DEPARTMENT no one else could manage to proctor the exam for us. They said they didn't have the materials. Just photocopy an essay out of one of our german for reading knowledge books, for god's sake, it's where you take them from anyway! But no, now we have to individually reschedule the exam next week. Which means more stress over passing or not passing. And I still have to sit through my Durer class at 3 to get to the part where we go out for drinks. If it weren't a little too "ladies who lunch" I would have totally been OK with going for drinks right the hell now. Dammit!!

Fingers Crossed

Tomorrow is the German translation exam; I have about a one-in-five chance of passing, but I'm still hopeful...

Oh, Academia

Two article titles I found in JSTOR by accident while looking for an author named James Harper: "The Tardy Domestication of the Duck" and "Another Simple Proof of $1 + \frac{1}{2^{2}} + \frac{1}{3^{2}} + \cdot \cdot \cdot = \frac{\pi^{2}}{6}..." And I thought proofs in geometry were bad--at least those had practical applications (sort of). Anyway, to hell with this theoretical crap. Vertical angles equal, dammit! That was always the easiest to remember and thus, my favorite.

Te Adoramos, Maria

For my modern art class on censorship and controversy, my research project is focused around the image above: Playboy Mexico's December cover, featuring model Maria Florencia Onori as the Virgin Mary. Naturally, various groups, including the Vatican, were outraged by the image and Playboy had to issue an apology for offending anyone, though they curiously (and, undoubtedly, facetiously) claimed to be surprised that anyone was.

Interestingly, the iconography doesn't specifically relate her to the Virgin of Guadalupe, an image of paramount cultural and religious significance in Mexico, and the editors claimed they were merely trying to conjure up a Renaissance-era devotional image (and I'm intrigued to see if they sourced that hand position from somewhere, I don't recognize it). However, the magazine was released Dec. 11, a day before the feast of Guadalupe. Even more intriguingly, the photo shoot inside the magazine, which it's unlikely that many of the objectors even saw, emphasizes the connection more directly: Onori is depicted amid rose petals and wrapped in a floral veil, allusions to the miraculous scent of roses said to accompany Guadalupe's apparition to Juan Diego, and in several shots she wears an elaborate crown related to the original Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain. Of course, there are other shots which present the model with a sky-blue wrap, which reminiscent of Renaissance Madonnas. Incidentally, you can see all the images here, a lucky thing for me, so that I don't have to buy a back copy (how cliche: "it's for research!")

I haven't decided exactly in what direction I'm going to develop the topic; I could go either toward exploring the history of the sexualization of the Virgin (is it just me, or is there some weird vaginal symbolism going on in that stained glass window?), or I could work more specifically in the context of Guadalupan imagery. A number of Chicana artists have depicted Guadalupe nude or in other non-canonical situations (like kick-boxing) with various levels of associated controversy. Then there's the fact that this image appeared in a nationally-distributed porn magazine. Although I'm sure it would have been protested had it simply hung in a gallery, there's a separate level that's added by the overtly sexual context. Oh, and anyone who read the 'article' would have likely been even more infuriated, because it begins with a parody of a Catholic prayer directed to the model that starts "Blessed are you, Maria..."

If I were a Mexican man, I think would feel seriously uncomfortable with being turned on by someone imitating the Virgin--not just given the high adherence to Catholicism in Mexico, but also the incredible devotion in which Guadalupe is held there, even by many who may not identify themselves with the Church. One of the most interesting aspects of her, I think, is the way she became a symbol for Mexican nationalism; for example, the Zapatistas have carried banners with her image on them.

Anyway, since I am not a Mexican man, I think the cover is a remarkably striking image, and I'm excited to work on it. On the one hand, it's completely outside of the area in which I normally work, but being able to link it to the traditions of Marian iconography will be both familiar and useful, I think.

Stolen from Rae's Facebook Wall

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
In the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

-- John Updike

This Tickled Me

A review of a catalogue about women and Byzantium, in which the reviewer scathingly took the book to task for failing to actually address any issues of gender, ended thus: "We need to write this history differently as we teach a generation for whom the letters XP denote not the Chi-Rho but a Microsoft operating system."

I don't know why I found this so amusing. Probably because I am that generation?

Rome, Revisited: Pattern?

I bought my ticket to Rome today! This is my first time doing a multi-city; it's to Rome and then back from Madrid. Sean bought his ticket too; we'll probably be the only couple that ever planned on flying home from the honeymoon on separate sides of the plane. Lol. Sean claims that I'm unpleasant to fly with because I get irritable with little sleep, but I contend that my irritability would be self-contained if other people did not purposely antagonize me for their own amusement in airports during lengthy layovers. We have another five hour layover in Dublin on the way home (we're flying Aer Lingus, which was suspiciously cheaper than any other airline by about two hundred dollars) so those separate seats might really come in handy! Otherwise, we could potentially have a really short marriage....

Greece, Revisited

Rick Steves had a special on PBS on the Peloponnese this morning. They were at Olympia when I turned it on (watching a bunch of Americans run the Olympic track, just like Sean in the picture above), and then went south to the Mani peninsula, which is where Kathy told us we absolutely had to go the next time we were in Greece. Which will probably not be soon, but wow, did I want to go back when I was watching it. Which of course sent me looking at my pictures. Strangely I love the landscape shots the best.

This is the view from our hotel in Dimitsana, the tiny village straddling the mouth of the Loussios gorge. To get here took hours of driving mountaintous switchback roads, avoiding herds of goats and Greek Orthodox priests. We ate dinner around 7, I think, in a completely deserted restaurant--no other tourists, and Greeks eat incredibly late. I had rooster, which they weirdly served atop spaghetti without any sauce, but it was still excellent. It tasted of allspice. At night there was not a single light in the gorge or anywhere on the horizon. I can't remember having been anywhere else so peaceful, so quiet.

This was the view from our hotel room in Delphi (the Hotel Varonos with the Birdcage-esque proprietor and the lobby exploding with tropical plants) all the way down the mountain to the little sliver of coastline. We got the best-tasting olive oil ever from the little shop next door to the hotel.

The sanctuary at Delphi, which we arrived around 8 or 9 in the morning, before all the tourists groups. We were coming down the hill as the first of them were headed up--perfect timing, we got to explore practically alone. I saw one of the deepest blue skies I've ever seen that morning. In the museum there, I heard the distinct, nasal voice of this guy from Columbia, Clemente Marconi, who gave a lecture at Fairfield on metopes. We knew he was a friend of Kathy's, who we were meeting in Athens in the next day. I, of course, felt awkward walking up and introducing myself, but luckily Sean is braver than I am! Also, there were sanctuary cats. Awesome.

I was looking through my journal from the trip, and I loved this quote from the next day in Athens:

Me: "Dinner with Kathy, in one word--"
Sean: "Free?"

In Which I Stand Atop Mt. Panofsky, Victorious

I exaggerate; the book got significantly better in the last chapter dealing with Durer's work on formulating a theory of art. Interestingly, after spending so much of his life trying to figure out ideal beauty, he finally concluded that there was no such thing as a perfect form, or if there was, only God could see it. Instead, he recommended using a variety of different figures, each of which are beautiful in different ways *insert Mr. Rogers theme song here*

Anyway, after reading this tome we got to spend today in class picking it apart. Even though it's still considered a foundational text, he was still trying to advance a certain narrative, in this case an 'intellectual history' of Durer as an independent genius with strong humanist ties. His goal was to preclude the co-option of Durer as a German nationalist hero (as the Third Reich had done) instead emphasizing his universality and his background in both the northern and southern Renaissances. With this aim in mind, he neglects things like social history, artistic collaboration, workshop practices, the art market, etc., instead focusing on the artist and his humanist sidekick (and possible lover) Pirckheimer to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Panofsky was also one of the first people to really study iconography, and that's how he analyzes all of Durer's work. However, the problem with picking apart a work simply based on the complex meaning of each wildflower and animal is that you wind up missing a lot of other important factors, which is why iconography has been demoted from the once all-important pedestal it was on up to a few decades ago.

Finally, I have to record this charming fellow:


A walrus, that Durer drew while on his trip to the Netherlands in 1521. What freaky-eyed walrus did they have up there? This looks like some kind of H.P. Lovecraft-esque monster. Panofsky simply remarked that the animal's "good natured grumpiness" so amused Durer that he thought of giving it a spot as St. Margaret's dragon in a massive Crucifixion that he never painted. Um, I see no good nature here. Look at that eyebrow. This thing wants blood.

In Which I Avoid Reading Panofsky

I'm only halfway through his book on the life of Durer, which I need to have read by class on Thursday, and the text is no cakewalk. Panofsky certainly wrote well in English, despite German being his first language, but he was writing in the dry, scholarly tone of the first half of the 20th century (1943) that affords only rare poetical flourishes. My favorites: when when talking about tempering the new industry of German woodcuts "...but the act of pruning presupposes the tree..." and when writing of engraving, that Durer learned to "render unto the burin what is the burin's." In addition to the bland style, this book has the same disadvantage as all older art history books--the pictures are all in the back. They're not in a well-defined order, even. It's really distracting and annoying to try to keep track of where you are on page 117 while simultaneously trying to find image 38 and compare it to image 101. Mainly, though, I think I'm grousing because I'm having a harder time connecting with graphic art than I usually do with painting or sculpture. Woodcuts and engravings just don't captivate me immediately, despite all manner of technical proficiency.

In other news, I'm almost finished with the German for reading knowledge book, and a friend of mine laid hands on a photocopy of the holy grail, 'reading german for art historians," which is out of print and can't be found anywhere in the U.S., apparently, except in the office of the woman who proctors the German exam, who won't let anyone look at it. Because apparently it is that damn special. Anyway, it doesn't look particularly useful in terms of actually learning the grammar (first question, first exercise: "Was ist Dadaismus?" "Dadaismus ist nichts." lol), which is probably why it's out of print, but it's got a lot of passages to translate, and they're all on art-- instead of the history of the country's eight thousand uprisings that are the subject of the other book's reading comprehension essays.

Alright, I'm going to throw myself back into the fray--the chapter I'm reading deals with Durer's three most famous engravings, namely, St. Jerome in His Study, Melancholia I, and The Knight, Death, and the Devil.

Three Cheers for a New President

It's hard to believe it's over. Imagine, we'll never have to look at W.'s monkey face behind a podium again! His public appearances will be limited to state funerals, inaugurations, and maybe a profile in Parade magazine about his ranching activities down in Texas. To him I say: good riddance; to Crawford and Dallas, god bless.

I ended up watching most of the ceremony before I left for class today. Luckily, Obama's address ended just minutes before I needed to be out the door to catch the train. I was impressed by Yo-Yo Ma and the other musicians' ability to play their instruments so flawlessly in such cold weather. Aretha Franklin's performance, on the other hand, was rather underwhelming. I tend to dislike popular arrangements of old standards, especially something so iconic as "As Country Tis of Thee." What's wrong with just singing it the way it's always sung, the way people are familiar with? Why must singers wring every last ounce of vibrato from such a classic?

Anyway, Obama's speech was well-crafted, stirring, and intelligent, as we've come to expect. I was particularly impressed by his mention of non-believers together with the major faiths of the U.S., a welcome nod to both atheism and secularism in the middle of a very religion-infused ceremony; his reference to returning science to its rightful place; and finally, his insistence that we need not sacrifice our ideals to the promise of safety. The proof of how far our nation has come from the pre-civil rights era was also moving. Though it was important to hear from those who remember the days when they were second-class citizens, I was the most inspired by what one of the commentators said as they panned over schoolchildren sitting in Independence Hall in Philly watching the first black man take the inaugural oath: for these kids, a black president will always have been a reality. This presidency is truly a game-changer.

I don't want to heroize Obama or expect that he will magically right all that is wrong with this country, but today I was proud of America for having made the better choice.

Back in Philly

I have such a headache! I'm not sure if it's the change in the temperature outside (ten degrees warmer here than in CT) or inside (a whopping fifty-three degrees in our house, vs the balmy 70 of Concord St), but so far aspirin and doses of Diet Coke have not helped. Nor does Thomas' high-pitched meow, which he is currently mournfully sending up the stairs because Phyllis isn't home yet for him to chase around. Speaking of, the wonderful woman had a case of Diet Coke in the fridge for me as a New Year's gift! Super awesome. Meanwhile, in my month-long absence she repainted the kitchen, got a new stove and a fancy Cuisinart machine that bakes, toasts, broils, and basically does everything but your taxes--it looks like a miniature oven, too. I'll bet five bucks we'll never use that thing for anything beyond toasting bread.

I stopped by Paul's office on my way down because I felt guilty that I'd forgotten to get in touch with him about lunch or drinks over break like I'd promised. It amuses me how glad everyone is to see me--I sense that Paul in particular feels some sort of quasi-paternal pride in my scholastic achievements. Heather is engaged to Ema now, and they're planning on getting married in December, which is awesome. Apparently he proposed to her with her whole family present visiting her grandfather in a convalescent home; he started out by telling everyone how much it means to him to be a part of their family, and Heather said that she wasn't even listening, she was scratching off a lotto ticket (and I could hear Sean's voice saying "that'd be you!"). Then he started talking directly to her and she realized what was going on, but said that she didn't freak out until he actually got down on one knee. *cue awww sounds*

In other news, I read in the local paper today that this beautiful, dilapidated mansion on Germantown Ave next to the grocery store was actually designed by the same architect who designed the cupola for the Capitol Building in Washington DC. It was in the news after a group won a court order for the house to be sealed for the winter against the elements after it was left in a shoddy state following a developer's attempts to turn it into luxury condominiums. When he ran out of money, he left the project and left the house unprotected. Apparently this was the first time a court has intervened to ensure the preservation of a historic site. Go court!

Four Years

Today is our four year anniversary! Technically it's our last, too, since our anniversary will be in May next year, not January. We were supposed to go out for dinner to Che Tango, an Italo-Argentinian restaurant in Branford, but much to our dismay, we pulled up to find the place shuttered and the sign gone--we had driven past it as recently as last week, so it must have closed around the new year. We wound up going to Bocca in the center of East Haven instead, which was certainly not as good as Che Tango would have been, although being a Wednesday night we did have the place to ourselves.

Still, today, as with every day, I have to say how extraordinarily lucky I am :-)

Ring In the New Year

As I thought back over 2008 this morning in the shower (an excellent contemplative space) I realized how much of a good year it was for me. I started out the year with a good job and a nice apartment; in March I went to Italy to see Carla, and in April I got into grad school. During the summer I spent many an evening with Heather drinking cheap riesling and eating pizza from Vas, and then Sean and I got engaged and managed to do half our wedding planning during the summer months, including moving our date from two years away to one. Finally, in the fall I moved to Philadelphia and started grad school. Really, this was a great year (and no one died, which is always a major plus). No complaints.

When I look back in the future I'll always think of the period from May 2007 to August 2008 as the transitional year or so, when I was just kind of treading water, waiting for the rest of my (academic) life to begin. I thought I'd miss Shelton, the same as I thought I'd really miss Fairfield, but I don't. I've found myself pretty adaptable to new circumstances, which is always the subject of jokes between Sean and I, as he is famously resistant to change and adapts slowly and uneasily to a new environment (example: see our torturous attempts to find mutually acceptable sleeping arrangements, subject of many a late-night argument as I fail to understand why he must occupy the entire bed, face down, limbs akimbo, forcing the other occupant to either curl up into an isosceles triangle or fight back against the encroacher).

But I do like Philadelphia, and it didn't take long for me to consider 213 E. Sedgwick my home, just as 46 Cliff St had been before it. 51 Whitney seems a long way in the past, now. Sometimes I count the years in terms of how many my mom never saw; it always surprises me to remember that she never saw 2007. I've found myself so many times imagining what she would say to this or that, what she would think of where I'm living now; I imagine giving her the grand tour and the way she would nod with that little smile of hers, not really saying anything, just quietly approving, and of course, how eager she would be to get back in the car, where Rocky would have his face in the window, and go home.

It's always difficult for me to play the what-if-game with my dad, to imagine how life would have been if he hadn't died. He was so much more the polarizing figure in the family, and I was only 14, still pretty malleable in terms of the future. Things could have been--would have been--wildly different, and I'm certain it would have been worse than the way it was without him. It seems a terrible thing to say, doesn't it? But I think of how angry and depressed he was, the fights we had, and how often I told myself I hated him and would never be like him, and I look at Jen now, who had a harder time with him and has still never forgiven him for, as she tells it, making her feel bad about herself every day. I never felt that way, and even if it's true I know that was never his intention. For every time he was mean or made me cry over some little thing, I remember a time of him telling me how smart Jen and I were, how we could do anything if we wanted to. I know he took out on us the stress he was under and the way he felt he'd failed us, which was never true anyway, and I forgave him for that a long, long time ago. It makes me feel sad for Jen that she won't let go of that bitterness, and that it's poisoned her memories of him, even the happy ones. I know he loved us, but I can't prove that to someone who doesn't want to believe it.

It's easier with my mom. She was there for college, she knew Sean, she saw me become the person that I still am--a far better and less bitchier daughter than the one my father ever knew. If he came back now he'd hardly know me. Conversely, I knew my mother better than I ever knew him, even if she was and will ever remain a mystery. So it's her I mentally inject into my new life, wondering about what her opinions would be about things.

I don't believe in a divine plan for human life. So often in hindsight it's tempting to see a pattern, to discern the guidance of some force where there is none, but I no longer attribute the timing of either of their deaths, the curious way in which things seemed to work out, to some larger cosmic scheme. I was fortunate. That's all there is.

I spent a lot of time in a post that's ostensibly about the past year talking about my parents, but I'm always thinking of them more at this time of year. Every year that passes carries me one year further from the time that they knew, as if they were frozen there, in 2000 and 2006, with an outdated version of me. Someday I will have changed so much from when I was 20 that I'll realize that my mom, too, would no longer know me. Or maybe she would have always known me; she was my mom, after all. All those years I was observing her, trying to figure her out, maybe she was observing me right back.

So here's to 2008, another good year, another year of being alive. And here's to 2009: may it live up to and exceed the bar set by its predecessor.

Still Carless

I just called the mechanic and apparently Toyota has not even sent them the new brake lines yet, and may not for another couple of days. Which is fine, I don't really need to go anywhere, although this means paying $10 to take the train into school tomorrow to sign one stupid piece of paper at the graduate school office and hand it over to the bursar. It's for my tuition-free-ness, which I do appreciate, Temple, I do, but they won't just mail me the piece of paper and let me sign it that way. No, I have to actually come in and take it up two floors and put it in someone's hand. Why? Who knows. Anyway, as I told the mechanic, as long as I have the car back by Friday, the day I'm heading back to CT, it's OK. He told me that he's just as interested in getting my car back to me, because it's his responsibility under his insurance as long as it sits in his lot. I hadn't thought of that.

I'm always hesitant about mechanics, not just being a woman, but because Heather C. told me stories of the terrible scams and shoddy work her boyfriend's coworkers used to perpetrate on the unsuspecting, like telling someone they need new brakes when they don't, and then producing a set of used brakes from some other job when the customer demands to see for themselves. But another benefit of living in a neighborhood like this one, according to Phyllis, is that they have to do good work for a fair price, otherwise word will spread quickly and they lose business.

I was unable to force myself to do much German work today. Ok, any German work today. Although I'm not one of those people who works well under serious, down-to-the-wire pressure, I'm learning that I do work best with some kind of a deadline in mind that I can threaten myself with, even if it's a far-off one. Alas, winter break furnishes none of that, and so I have trouble kicking my ass into gear. My deadlines are all fairly far off at this point. This is my to-do list for the next year and a half:

1.) Pass the German exam this semester, or I can't take comps in the fall
2.) Apply and get into the Rome program in February
3.) Once I'm in, read the following required "super-fun" texts in preparation for the course:

• Selections from On Painting, by Leonbattista Alberti

• Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster

• Selected writings by Teresa of Avila

• Selected poetry by John Donne and Richard Crashaw

• "The Analytic of the Sublime" from Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment

• Selections from Four Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan

• Force Fields, by Martin Jay

• "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" by Louis Althusser

• The Inhuman, by Jean Francois Lyotard

4.) Finish the rest of wedding planning, including seating arrangements and all that jazz.
5.) Do my semester work
6.) Try to develop an idea for my master's thesis so I can do research in Rome
6.) Get married and go to Rome (my personal favorite to-dos)
7.) Come back and spend two months cramming for comp exams
8.) Take comps in the fall, do courses, and figure out my thesis
9.) Write my thesis next spring
10.) Get the M.A. and move on into the PhD

It actually does seem more manageable once I've written it out like that. The things I'm most concerned with are German and the comps, although finding an idea for my thesis is also a constant, nagging thought. I'm not particularly looking forward to the readings for Rome. If you'll notice, there is but one art-related reading, despite this technically being the "Art and Culture Seminar," and that one reading is Alberti, which means we're probably going to read the part about single-point perspective. Whoot. Meanwhile, I have to read freaking Lacan. I got an introduction to postmodernism from the library and I couldn't even understand the summary of his work! Even the Wikipedia entry was kind of confusing, and that's you know there's a problem.

Alright, I'm going to go read a book on Spanish art of the Golden Age...Jesus gave it to me junior year and I never opened it *guilty*

Near-Death Experiences and a Hatred of Fondant

I exaggerated the first part; I didn't know that it could have been a near-death experience till afterward, so that kind of limits the mind-numbing terror aspect, although there was still some of that. Basically, my brakes went out yesterday as I was parking at the PMA. I had to push them all the way to the floor and even then the car kind of coasted to a stop. Luckily, I found this out when there was no one in front of me, not on I-76 where I had been moments before. Since I was already at the museum, I went in, but I only stayed about an hour and a half because I was worried about rush hour traffic later. Stop-and-go is a bad game to play when you can't stop! Anyway, I made it home driving about 35 miles an hour on the highway, and despite one car being pulled over in my lane on Lincoln Drive, an extremely dangerous and curvy road with no shoulder, plus two people who thought they'd like to run across the street in front of me, I didn't kill myself or anyone else. Another bit of luck for me is that there's a mechanic's shop two blocks from my house, so I was able to drop it off and walk home. The mechanic's first words to me when he called back were "Miss, you're a very lucky young lady..." because apparently, my brake line had ruptured, and if I had kept driving any further I would shortly have had no brakes at all. So it's going to cost a couple of hundred dollars and I can't have my car until next week, but--again fortunately--I don't actually need my car until I go home next Friday. I have a library and a grocery store (and a liquor store!) within walking distance. I'm set.

As for fondant, I don't exaggerate there. I don't like it. I'm looking for a baker to do our wedding cake (translation: our wedding cupcakes, although I'm realizing that a real baker will probably refuse my Funfetti idea) and so many of the cakes they offer are just sculpted fondant. Yes, I know that it looks fabulous and you can do anything you want with it, but it seems like cheating somehow. I mean, it's just edible sugar clay, and I don't even particularly like the way it tastes. Of course you want people to admire the cake, but you also want it to look edible, not like it's a sculpture that might contain a tiny bit of cake at the center. I'd love for our cupcakes to have our initials on them, although I suppose I'd have to specify "M & S" so we don't wind up with "S & M" cupcakes. After all that just wouldn't fit the theme!

One-Fourteenth of the Way...

Or at least, that's how close I am to my PhD if you think of it as seven years. It could be longer, but I'm being optimistic. Anyway, I'm done with my first semester of grad school as of last night, and I got an A on my largest seminar project! No word yet on the other two; I just handed in one paper yesterday, and my other professor is doing our grades from Cairo.

Right now I'm attempting to make banana bread for the Christmas party this afternoon, and I was reminded of how annoying it is to try to bake for the first time in a kitchen that's not your own. I mean this is mine now, but I don't know where Phyllis keeps half the stuff, and I couldn't exactly call her at work to ask. For example, I could not for the life of me find the Pam spray. It's possible that she doesn't have it and uses lard or something instead--she's pretty old-school Italian when it comes to food. I'm sure she wouldn't approve that I used soy milk in the recipe, but that's the only milk I have, and I was not buying regular milk just for 1/4 cup. Hubbard had whole milk in the fridge the last time I was in New Haven, and I skipped Cheerios rather than come into contact with that. Once you've gotten used to the thinness of soy milk, regular milk seems freakishly thick.

Oh, apparently I haven't quite learned my lesson when it comes to what to expect from Dr. Hall--she was in her office yesterday, so I thought I'd ask her about the comprehensive exams for next fall and whether there's any kind of reading list that I could start thinking about. Her response was "No. In fact, don't read anything! Just look at all the pictures!" This was of course accompanied by her patented Cheshire cat grin. Sigh. The other girls and I are going to start a study group next semester. The way past classes have done it is that each person takes a professor and goes to them for an idea of what they're going to include in the exam, and then does research and compiles an image list, and then we combine them. Jasmine told me last night in the car that it's a good idea to choose a professor who's not in your area, so that you really research the crap out of it. For me, that would probably be modern/contemporary or 19th century (blech).

And if the seven-hour comps exam was not enough to look forward to, the prelims for the PhD are actually two days of exams, and then an oral exam. At least I have something to say back to Jen every time she reminds me that grad school cannot be that hard because I don't have to take the bar. Well, the bar is only one day, biotch! Alright, I'm not going to seriously contend that law school is easier than art history grad school; I'm pretty sure it's harder. They're very different, though--law school is all about memorizing laws and precedents, while grad school is all about forming new ideas and arguments.

Finally, as of last evening I'm the new treasurer for the grad student organization...whoot. Lol. Me, Agnes, Juliet, Nicole and some other girl I don't know who's in the Arts Administration program are the new officers. Juliet told us a very amusing tale of being in Harold Bloom's bedroom, completely stoned, last New Year's at a party thrown by his son, whose nickname is apparently "Bloomie." Harold Bloom, obviously, was not present. Anyway, all hail the new regime!

Because I Had To...

What do you get when you have an art historian arguing how easy it would have been for Palladio to make his tempietto into a mere copy of the Pantheon, which he considered the most perfect building of antiquity? Me + Microsoft Paint = awesome disastrousness! Yet, despite the obviously shoddy quality of my hypothetical panthietto, I am for some reason inordinately pleased with it, and will totally be including it in my presentation for tomorrow (and just imagine, you can really see how awkward an image it is when it's blown up on a five-foot screen!)

Ironically, making this altered version only cemented my appreciation for the actual building. When I started working on it, I thought the campanili or bell-towers looked incredibly awkward and out of place, but now I see that it would kind of be a boring building without them and without the lantern topping the dome. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out where he sourced the campanili from, but I do know he inspired someone else:


The tempietto was built around 1580; in the early 17th century, Carlo Maderno got the bright idea to stick little bell towers on the Pantheon, too, probably using Palladio's example. (Their existence is usually blamed on Bernini, but they weren't actually his doing.) The Romans immediately hated them and called them "asses' ears," and with typical Italian promptness they were torn down in the 19th century. Palladio would have had a heart attack and died to know that they defaced his favorite piece of architecture, especially if his work was used as the justification. Poor guy.

Behind the Times? Or, In Which I Don't See the Point of Twitter

Blogger is approaching its tenth anniversary, and I myself have been keeping this particular slice of the web warm for the past six and a half years. Now, though, blogs of all sorts are apparently being outperformed by Twitter, who was just approached by Facebook for a $500 million buyout (they declined). But I fail to see the point of a service that basically publishes a text message. What can you really say in 140 characters? Doesn't that just teach people to think and write in fragments, little shallow pools of ideas, instead of really delving into what they think about anything?

I can't even properly call myself old-fashioned in this opinion; I'm sure there are still plenty of diarists out there who scorn clacking away on a keyboard for the tried-and-true pen and paper method. I'm certainly not trying to be the 21st-century Samuel Pepys; a quick review of many past entries, especially in what we will call the "early years," reveals that a lot of what I've written down is stupid and trite and not very thought-through. Still, at least I have the option of writing at any length I so desire. I don't have to sum up my thoughts in haiku-length snippets.

Maybe I am just getting old after all. Damn kids! Get off my (metaphorical) lawn!

In Which I Learn to Be Careful With Puckish Profs

I had a meeting with Dr. Hall today to go over my paper, which I presented on Monday. Happily, she liked what I did and didn't think I needed to change anything, which led her to ask "So when can I have it?" and I, foolishly, responded, "When would you like it?" Her answer: "Well, now would be fine!" Er, this paper was technically due next Monday. Luckily there's a color printer in the lounge, and I happened to have my laptop with me with my final, fully spell-checked version. In the future I'll remember not to answer so quickly when she asks me a question...

However: two papers down, and my Palladio paper is not only fully written but a little too long...ironically, it's harder to write a 10-page paper than it is a 25.

Holiday

Yesterday, in an absurd coda to an otherwise lovely holiday weekend, I spent eight hours in the car trying to get from CT to Philadelphia, a trip that should normally take about three and a half to four hours. I spent four of those eight hours waiting to cross the Tappan Zee bridge. It took me four hours to get twelve miles. Unbelievable. Then my housemate calls, and I find out that she's two lanes over from me in the same gridlock. She said it was the worst traffic she'd ever seen, not counting her first Thanksgiving when it took her eight hours to get home. This was at 4pm, when I still had some hope of making it home before 7 or so. Ha, no. Eight hours it was. She got home an hour after me because she got off the road after the bridge to eat something, but I just couldn't bring myself to stop the car once I finally, FINALLY could go above one mile per hour.

Besides that, I had a great holiday! We went out for pizza with Sean's friends Wednesday night (Pepe's, naturally) and I met Santore's girlfriend, who was visiting with him from Florida. Thursday we went up to my aunt's for dinner and they wanted to know all about the wedding, so I showed them the inn, and the bridesmaid dresses, and my dress, etc. etc. Friday evening was our high school reunion, which was not particularly well-attended. They threw us in with the 10 year anniversary class, and the food (for which we paid $35) was Mexican food prepared by the cafeteria staff. I kid you not, make your own tacos! They even charged for water or soda, in addition to the crappy wine and margaritas. Nice, Northwest, very nice. Meanwhile, Sean's reunion gets catered by Lucibello's.

Anyway, the reunion was fine. No one had really changed much, appearance or otherwise. Oh, except Dan Luddy, who had six months' worth of beard after hiking the entire Appalachian trail! After a couple hours (and the strange feeling of wandering the halls of high school with a wineglass) people filtered out; most went to Black Bear, but a bunch of us went to the Cheesecake Factory instead, which turned out to be more fun than the reunion proper, I thought. Beside the four of us, it was Pace, Annie, Chris Swetckey, Andrew Stanton, and Tim O'Rourke, who I don't think I ever actually had a conversation with during high school. When we said good night it was weird to think that at least a couple of them I probably won't see for another five years, if I go to the ten year reunion at all (I really, really don't want to pay $35 for crappy Tex-Mex again, kthanxbai). Sean and I realized that at the ten year reunion, we will still be in graduate school, so it's not even like there would be anything to update anyone on!

Saturday Sara and I saw Twilight. Best/worst movie ever. It amused me highly and the Edward actor is delicious to look at, but these kids have got to be some of the most untalented actors I have ever seen. It was pretty ridiculous, especially considering that I heard they've been offered $15 million each for a sequel. You could find kids in a middle-school play evincing more complex emotions than the girl who played Bella. Also, this movie's message to tweens about relationships is seriously flawed, as I think just about every review has emphasized. Their attraction can be summed up as follows: She smells good plus he looks good equals a whole bunch of NEVER LEAVE ME EVER I AM NOTHING WITHOUT YOU IN MY LIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE. Jesus. And yet--will I see the second movie? Um, probably. He's really pretty. Sometimes, it's all you need.

Booyah!

Guess who just finished her Renaissance seminar paper? It clocked in at 24 pages, which seems so short to me now that it's done. But the important thing is--it's done!

My title , which I'm not entirely liking: "The Ties that Bind: Depicting Family Memory in Quattrocento Florence."

Now I just have to trim this down into a presentation version that I can do in under forty minutes, and finalize my slides, and then I can finally turn my attention back to my poor, forgotten Palladio paper. :-) :-)

Ghirlandaio Is My New Dead Artist Crush

This is his Visitation, c. 1491:


Look at Elizabeth's drapery! I just want to dive right into it. I'm pretty sure he used orpiment and realgar to make the yellow and reddish-orange. They were both extremely toxic and very expensive, but they make an incredible picture.

This is the Nativity altarpiece from the Tornaquinci chapel in Sta Maria Novella:


Even the donkey is pretty believable. I love the way Mary's robe pools around her, too. The expressions are what's really awesome, though--Joseph looks like he has a migraine, and the pointing shepherd seems to be "Dude, look! No, seriously!"


This may or may not be a self-portrait of the artist. He's incredibly alive, right down to the stubble on his face. In fact, I kind of think he looks like an older, peasant version of Patrick Dempsey....

Anyway, my paper is no longer triumphing over my life: I'm up to 23 pages and just about done. Tomorrow I have to get up at 6am for the Met trip (sigh) but there's a new exhibit on Love and Marriage in Renaissance Italy, plus the new medieval galleries and I never saw the Greek and Roman galleries after their renovation, so it's all very exciting. My sister even mentioned the Renaissance exhibit on the phone, and I was completely surprised that she remembered that's what I study. Of course, she then proceeded to inform me that no one else finds it interesting. Thanks, Jen.

Snowfall

There was snow on the ground and in the trees this morning when I woke up, and I didn't feel any excitement, just a little "hm, I hope there aren't leaves freezing onto my car." Just me blearily gazing out the window at 6:30 in the morning, imagining how freezing it's going to be getting from the station to the library--the tall buildings lining the street manage to function like a wind tunnel in the morning when you're walking uphill. No childish glee. As Eliot would say, I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Things to Do When Hiding From Your Research Paper

...update your blog, I suppose. Right now I'm trying to write a section on Florentine portrait busts as compared to their Roman antecedents and it's really kicking my ass. I have class in 45 minutes, which is starting late because someone had their PhD defense today. I should have gone to see it but I convinced myself I should go work on my paper instead, and I think I wrote less than a page in the four hours I've been here. Sigh. I've decided that I will get up ridiculously, insanely, cruelly early tomorrow (meaning 6am or so) and be at school working by 8am with at least eight hours to kill before class. I will also probably be a zombie by that time, since the portrait heads are trying to eat my brain!

I went to New York Thursday night so I could go to Columbia's Palladio conference on Friday. It was a very long day in an uncomfortable chair, but I got a chance to hear from some of the best scholars in the field, so that was cool. Also, Dr. Cooper presented a paper on "Palladio and the Politics of Magnificence." She was the only woman on the entire panel--architectural history is a bit of a boy's club.

One of my classmates, who also went to the conference, took a train from Philly at 6am on Friday and went home right after the conference to maximize her working time. I, naturally, spent two nights in New York and then proceeded to get absolutely nothing done on Saturday when I got home. However, I did have a chance to have dinner with Sara, Meredith and yes, my sister on Friday night. We were supposed to meet up with Heather too to see her new blonde bob (very new--she was having it done that evening) but her hair appointment took five and a half hours, so sadly, it didn't happen. Luckily we're going to see her (and Rae!) in a week and a half for our high school reunion. Sara and I have jokingly decided that we will pretend to have lost touch over the years so we can "catch up" if we don't feel like talking to other people. Ah, good friends.

Ugh, I just remembered that I have to go BACK to New York this weekend to visit the Met with my medieval class. That means catching the train on Sunday at 7am, joy. All the more reason that this paper must a) get finished and b) DIE.

$116 Worth of Boooo

That's how much I had to pay to buy a new power cord for my laptop, which mysteriously gave up the ghost last night. I suspect it might have had something to do with the outlets at school, because it was acting funny there yesterday, but if there was a surge of some kind, wouldn't my computer itself have been affected? I should be thanking my lucky stars on that score, I suppose. Although my laptop is five years old, I'm extraordinarily fond of it. It's not just that I don't want to spend money on a new one--which I certainly don't--it's that I don't want to have to get used to a new one. This one and I are good friends now.

Anyway, the cost was so high because I had to buy a universal adapter, since Best Buy doesn't sell ones for Dell only. If I weren't attached to my laptop at the hip, I could have waited and ordered one from Dell, but I am, so I couldn't wait. In fact, I was out the door at 9am this morning to see if Target had one, and I learned that Target is a nice place early on a Sunday. No crowds for once. Alas, Target failed me in my quest, so I had to drive a few towns over to the Best Buy. It was a fabulous day to be out driving--blue skies, bright sunshine, plenty of leaves still on the trees but enough swirling around in the street to remind me of how much I loved fall when I was a kid.

In happier news, something awesome happened yesterday! I sent Sean a picture of a painting that I thought he'd like, and he did. He liked it enough to put it as the desktop picture on his laptop, which means little to most people, but Sean hasn't changed his background picture in all the years I've known him: it's always been a default image of trees in autumn. Now it's this:



This is St. Jerome by Ghirlandaio in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence. I thought Sean would like it because he just looks so scholarly--in addition to the Latin in the open book, there's Greek and Hebrew writing on the pieces of paper on the shelves. His pose and expression make him seem real in a way that few Quattrocento paintings have ever done for me. Doesn't he look like he's just paused in writing some letter because he can't figure out how to phrase what he wants to say? He's looking out at us like, "A little help here?" Or maybe he's just itching to tell us to get the hell out of his study, who knows.

Anyway, the important thing here is that Sean and I have agreed on a piece of art! This is extremely momentous. Jerome will always have a place in my affections from now on.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.'

First (and Last) Post From Indiana

So, the reports are true; Indiana is quite flat. Notre Dame is also very, very large in addition to being flat. Yesterday was a game day and from the 12th floor of the library we could see into the stadium, which was overflowing with people.

My voyage here wasn't bad, except for my flight from Philadelphia leaving an hour late. Naturally, when I got to Detroit and had half an hour to make my connection, the gate was at the other end of the airport and the express tram was broken. There was running, but I made it onto the tiny puddle-jumper airplane that took me to South Bend. My flight out leaves at 1:30, and Sean insists that we only need to leave here at 12 because the airport is ten minutes away and it's South Bend so it's not like there's a line, but I have such a fixation with being over-early for things like appointments and plane flights that it was quite difficult for me to agree to head out less than two hours beforehand. I have a 2.5 hour layover in Detroit this time, which is fine because not only do I have three articles to read for Palladio class, I could also use some time to brush up on my Italian verbs, as my translation exam is tomorrow.

I'm sad to be leaving Sean here, even if it's only three weeks till he'll be coming to Philadelphia (it had been five weeks since we'd seen each other this time). Maybe it's because his apartment is so reminiscent of the Fairfield apartments, but I've had the strangest feeling like we're back in school together, living on the same campus, and I've just been too lazy to walk back to my townhouse the past few days.

Today, of course, is also my mom's two-year anniversary. Sean and I decided it should be called "Mrs. D-Day" in honor of my mom's hostile takeover of heaven, although "Operation Overlord" was also under consideration. Here's to you, mom--we miss you.

D.C. and the National Gallery

Yesterday I got up at the (literal) crack of dawn for our trip to D.C. It was a lot of fun; I haven't been to Washington since our family vacation in sixth or seventh grade, so it was amazing to see how little my memories of the layout of the Mall corresponded to the actual thing. For one thing, the National Air and Space Museum is directly across from the National Gallery; totally didn't know that. The bus driver tipped us off that the best food was to be had at the cafeteria in the American Indian museum, so several of us went there for lunch and afterward walked from the Capitol down to the Washington monument. One of the girls, Agnes, is from Poland and this was her first visit to Washington, so she was really excited. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to make it all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial, which I remember being incredibly awed by as a kid.

The National Gallery is purely amazing. The building itself is unbelievable--when you walk in the main entrance of the West building, you could be forgiven for thinking you just walked into the Pantheon. The main difference (aside from lacking the Pantheon's amazing multi-colored marble decoration) being that here the massive, coffered dome is supported by monumental columns of a dark green marble.

The galleries themselves are likewise beautifully constructed, although a bit labryinthine; Agnes and I walked around in the morning before lunch and thought we had hit most of the Italian and Flemish galleries. Um, no: we managed to miss the Raphael room, the Titian room, Bellini's "Feast of the Gods" and van Eyck's "Annunciation." D'oh! The latter painting I had no idea was in this museum, or even in North America--I expected it to be in Europe. It's really quite marvelous, but much smaller than I imagined: less than a foot wide by a couple of feet tall, maybe.

There was so many incredible pieces to see that I really felt I was only about to see about a quarter of them. After our group met with Dr. Hall I used the last 45 minutes to dash madly through the galleries taking photos of my favorite pieces with my cell phone. I hadn't even thought to bring my camera, but they're so much more relaxed about photos there than almost any other museum--I'm looking at you, Metropolitan! (Actually, the weirdest attitude toward photos was definitely the National Museum in Athens; they're OK with photos of the objects, but you're prohibited from taking a photo of yourself with the object. Sean and I asked a guard why after we saw him yell at this couple trying to photograph themselves with a statue of Neptune. His answer was basically that the artwork is important and part of history and you have no business putting yourself in there with it. Um, OK.)

Oh, and in the room with Canaletto (who I love for the reason everyone who's visited Venice loves him, for the picturesque tourist-postcard quality of his paintings) I saw this painting by his nephew and pupil, Bernardo Bellotto (who confusingly and perhaps fraudulently sometimes signed his own paintings with the name of his famous uncle):


I'm looking at it and thinking, that looks familiar. Then I read the title, "Campo dei S.S. Giovanni e Paolo," and remembered that that's where we had lunch with Jasmine when we met up with her in Venice. I got a porchetta sandwich from the excellent shop that was across the bridge you can see in the picture (and which was sadly closed when we tried to go back the next day, a Sunday) and we sat on those canal steps and I asked her every question I could think of about Temple. Talking to her was really one of the most influential factors in my decision to choose Temple, really, so seeing this tickled me.

Also, I think this church was on the route between our hostel in the remoteness of Castello and basically everything else in Venice, so it was one of the few landmarks that began to look familiar as we routinely got lost and walked in circles. That, and Rialto. That damned bridge!

Yay Kids, Learning Time!

Tomorrow I have my first class presentation in Making of a Renaissance Painting. All of the presentations are about articles detailing conservation efforts on particular works of art; the one Jasmine and I are presenting dealt with the 1967-9 cleaning and restoration of Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne" of 1520-3, now in the National Gallery in London. This is the painting as it was in 1967 with cleaning tests:



And this is the painting after it was cleaned and restored:


Pretty amazing, right? The article pointed out how hard it must have been hard for people looking at the painting in the "before" stage to recognize Titian as a master of color and paint. The culprit here, in addition to age, flaking paint, and dirt, was the layer of varnish that yellowed with time. It wasn't the original coat of varnish by any means; this painting had seen numerous cleaning and revarnishings in its lifetime, as it was possible to determine thanks to the detailed records of the National Gallery (they had records on this painting dated 13 years before they even bought it--how English!) While it's impossible to know if Titian originally varnished it himself when he was finished, varnish has been applied to virtually every painting up until the 20th century, both as a protection against the environment and also for the pictorial effect it has of giving everything the same sheen. Unfortunately, every couple of decades it turns yellow and has to be painstakingly removed and replaced.

The other focus of the article we're discussing is the set of scientific tests performed on the painting before beginning the restoration process. This includes X-rays (they can show damage to the paint layers and also changes made to the composition by the artist), infrared photos (they can show you underdrawing by reflecting off the carbon in black ink or pencil) and paint samples, which were extracted via syringe near areas of damage, photographed and blown up 200x so you can actually see the layers of paint and analyze the pigments contained in each.

For example, in the X-rays of this painting the figure of Bacchus was quite clearly defined, while the figure of Ariadne was an illegible mass of white. Because X-rays bounce off the lead contained in white paint of the time (which they unsurprisingly called lead white) it can be determined that Bacchus was probably painted early and not changed, while Ariadne was re-positioned, painted out, and re-painted while Titian tried to figure out what to do with her body, a process involving much more lead white than with Bacchus, hence the blot on the X-ray. The paint samples supported this conclusion by revealing in the Bacchus sample just a few thin layers of pigments over the gesso ground, while in the Ariadne showing first the ground layer, then layers of paint for the sea and sky, which were topped by several layers of flesh colors interspersed with lead white from the re-painting.

Chemical analysis of the pigments themselves can also provide interesting results. In this case, the conservators determined that not only was Titian using the fanciest, most expensive pigments, he was also using them in their purest form, which contributes to the boldness of his colors. The blues, for example, are depicted using ultramarine (crushed lapis lazuli, practically more expensive than gold at the time) for the sky and the cheaper azurite for the sea; the really cheap blues, indigo and smalt, make no appearance whatsoever. This makes sense considering the fact that he painted this work and two others in a series of Bacchanals for the Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara; the patron had deep pockets and wanted the best.

So that, in a nutshell, is what I'm going to be presenting in class tomorrow. As it was pointed out in our class last week, since conservation info is rarely, if ever, included on a museum label, you have to be careful in writing a painting off for looking dingy or having dark, faded colors, as it may simply be in dire need of restoration; although on the other hand, it could be a Leonardo and then the smudgy darkness just all part of the "sfumato" effect.

I do find the topic of restoration quite interesting, although I would go insane if it were my job, both from the stress of worrying that I'm going to destroy a world-class painting with the wrong cleaning solution and from the amount of patience required to sit there for hours on end pressing down individual paint flakes with a heated spatula. God bless those people, because it's only through their efforts that we can appreciate a painting like this one in the way it was intended.