Reporting Live from VA

I completed my second 6-hour voyage down to Virginia this afternoon. The landscape is beautiful, particularly once you cross into Virginia, and it happens to be the perfect time of year to do some leaf-peeping (except for the fact that I was driving, but, you know, details). The reason why I'm blogging now, as opposed to attaching myself to Sean limpet-like, is that he has homework to accomplish before we go out to dinner. Old English, boo!

Driving the scenic route out to Target the other day, I decided that bright yellow and deep red are my favorite fall leaf colors. When we buy a house someday, I think I'd like to shop in the fall so I know what kind of leaf colors are on offer. No, I (probably) wouldn't base my decision on something like that, but it wouldn't hurt to see a house attractively framed by foliage, either. If there were two equally suitable houses, and one happened to have trees that turn red and yellow in the fall, well, that would settle it. Along the same lines, if we were shopping in the late spring, I'd like to see a house that has, or is near, lilac bushes. Of course, in that case I know I can always plant the lilac (or honeysuckle, another favorite of mine) on my own if the house doesn't come pre-equipped. Trees are a little more difficult.

Deep Thoughts: Firth and Vermeer

Against all odds, I really am enjoying this TA business, which is in no small part due to my fellow TAs. The following was part of an email exchange regarding the making of Friday's AWW slideshow:

Amy: I added the vermeer "lady writing a letter with maidservant" pre "Allegory" to briefly show them what Vermeer is actually known for. If anyone feels strongly about a different example then feel free to change it. I don't particularly love him and his chicks are homely.

Agnes: I like the movie "Girl with a Pearl Earring" with Colin Firth, or maybe I just love Colin Firth.

Me: I have to disagree with you on the movie (though not the Firthness). I say we just show Colin Firth as a slide.

Agnes: See the attached photo. I've added it to Friday's slideshow, to stimulate our discussion of Vermeer.


Me: I will see your Firth and raise you one costume drama.

Beat THAT, Agnes.

The Early, Rainy Day

I woke up at 5:45 this morning to be on the train to school before seven. It was still dark. I can't remember the last time I've had to be up and out so early; it reminded me of winter mornings in high school, when I used to get up around 6:30. The fact that it was raining also made it less pleasant, but at least it wasn't cold.

After my experience in corralling, counting, and then collecting money from 40 rambunctious art students on a moving bus, I have a deeper appreciation for grade-school teachers who do this kind of thing a lot. Standing on a moving bus is hard, especially in a bumpy city like Philly where bus drivers apparently feel they should drag-race from the stop lights on every block. Jasmine sent me with her less well-behaved class, although she said it's one kid in particular that ruins the bunch, and after five minutes' ride I knew exactly which one he was, and I wanted to smack him upside the head.

I had also forgotten how crowded and loud the Met is on a Saturday, particularly a rainy one. That, combined with getting up early, made me feel tired more quickly. Oh, and the fact that the museum is just huge, and you could easily get a workout trotting from one gallery to another. I did have a fun time, though; I went to the 19th century European paintings gallery, which I rarely visit, and the American wing, which I've never been in. Once Heather showed up, we poked around the medieval galleries and then briefly the Renaissance ones upstairs.

If you recall, a month or so ago I posted an image of two crazy-eyed cats fighting that was painted by the Spanish master Goya. Imagine my delight upon entering the Velazquez/Goya gallery to behold this gem:


Let me just focus your attention on this bit right here:


This image, like the other one, could be Lolcaptioned. I think it's pretty clear that one thought would suffice for all three wild-eyed felines: NOMS!

A more aesthetically pleasing experience was had in the Lehman collection, which contains a pretty impressive collection of works amassed by a single individual (and who must have required the Met to display everything as a group instead of assigning objects to their chronological galleries). Perhaps the most beautiful of the paintings was Ingres' Princess Broglie:

In person, the satiny texture of her gown and the creamy purity of her skin are incredibly tangible. Yet, I can understand why some people view Ingres in terms of cold sensuality; although the textures are there, you certainly don't feel invited to touch. Her gaze is perfectly calm, but also aloof.

I was really wiped by the time 4pm came around, when I bid Heather goodbye in the rain (which makes it sound more rom-com than it was) and tried to ignore the annoying student all the way home by turning up my mp3 player and reading Babbitt (I'm rediscovering my fondness for this book!). It was pouring by the time we reached Philly, and Jasmine was kind enough to give me a lift home, during the course of which we encountered flash-flooded roads and I soaked my shoes getting out of the car. But I'm home, warm under a blanket, so all is good!

Awesomeness

Last night I bought our tickets for our trip to Italy in March! We're flying Air France, which means a layover in the fearsome De Gaulle airport in Paris. Sean has a hair-raising story about he and Mike Barrett having to be rushed to their plane by golf cart because it was so far from their entrance terminal; so, to be safe, I chose a flight that has a five hour layover in Paris on the way out (the other option was a mere one hour). We'll fly into Milan and get there around 3, which means between getting into the city and taking the train to Brescia, we should be at our hotel by 5. Then we'll fly out of Venice the following weekend, and that flight I picked a shorter layover, because you never care about missing flights as much on your way home. I wouldn't sniff at spending an unplanned evening in Paris! Jasmine has already agreed to cover my classes the day that we leave, in exchange for covering some of hers while she's in Venice the next month.

I found out yesterday that my Friday sections next semester will be at 11 and 12, instead of this semester's 9 and 10, which is excellent. No more waking up at 6:50 on Friday! Tomorrow I have to be up even earlier, though; I agreed to help Jasmine wrassle her two big Heritage classes to the Met, where I'll be meeting up with Ms. Flanagan. I have to be on the train at 6:54. Ugh. Plus I have to do the fun stuff like collecting money and taking attendance. At least this isn't a high school trip and I don't have to worry about keeping order...

Just Yes

So, as those who know me are aware, I am often easily amused; Sean likes to mock me for getting a huge kick out of the ridiculous-ness that is Lolcats, for example. Thus, I admit to being tickled this afternoon when I was looking for this image of Michelangelo's Temptation and Expulsion scenes from the Sistine Chapel:


and this came up on the search engine:


Yes, it's kitty!Michelangelo.

You can see the original site here; the artist is a woman named Susan Herbert, and her ouevre manages to be broad and yet entirely feline-art related: you can find everything from Napoleon to Humphrey Bogart in cat form, if you so desire it. The Michelangelo piece is listed on the gallery for 1750 British pounds; you can get her version of the entire Sistene ceiling for 7500. Once the momentary 'ha' wore off, I had to wonder: is there really that much of a market for this kind of work, that she would produce so much and charge such prices? Who the hell is framing this in their dining room?

And do you know what her Michelangelo is missing? Adam's semi-erect penis, which is much too close to Eve's mouth for comfort. No, I'm not making it up, go look! Also, a couple panels down from this on the ceiling, you also get to see God's well-toned glutes:


You knew Michelangelo was famous for a reason.

Happiness is a Paper, and (Maybe) a Thesis

A couple of days ago I came across some interesting frescoes in a book I've been translating that once decorated a merchant's early 16th-century suburban villa. They're not in great condition, but the variety of scenes depicted is fascinating, and both the artist and patron are individuals I've recently become interested in as a microcosm of the art market in this city. Unfortunately, the book only published (in color) six of thirteen, and, since it's an Italian book, there were no footnotes or photo credits. After an intense round of Googling, I was able to download a pdf of the first article that published them (which happens to be the only other one), which dates from 1911. There were all thirteen in black-and-white!

The book I have said they were in a private collection in a certain town, and since I knew that the name of the family who had owned the villa last was also the name of a well-known property in the same small town, I figured that they probably still owned both property and frescos. But how to find out? It's not like they just have property records online, and since the second property is also home to a separate tourist attraction, most websites only offer information about that. Yesterday I was getting ready to email the tourist office in this town to ask them, which probably wouldn't have even gotten me an answer; however, I happened to come across an article from a theater company in the town that thanked the contessa and her family for generously allowing them inside their home. Bingo! I was also able to confirm this by finding a Whitepages listing for a woman with that family name who was listed as the doorkeeper for the tourist attraction on their property. So there is still a family of the same name occupying the same home, and as of 1998 when my book was published, they had the frescos. Obviously the book's author was allowed in to photograph them, as well.

So of course, my long-term goal is to get these people to let me in so I can have color photos of all thirteen when I'm there in March. In the short term, I pitched these frescos to Dr Cooper yesterday as a potential project for her class, and she not only approved, but when I explained my broader idea, said that I might, just might, have enough for a thesis. Whee!! She also said that once I've gone as far as I can go with research, she'll put me in touch with a friend of hers at the Met, a scholar whose PhD disseration I am currently laboriously going through, who might have contacts in this city. She also warned me that if I get in touch with any Italian scholars, I should be distinctly wary about how much information I give them about my project, because they have different ethics, shall we say, about taking people's ideas. Hence why I have named no names here, even though my blog is not even searchable on almighty Google.

Anyway, this is so exciting! Now for more translating...

Two Poems from a Book in the Kitchen

Decade

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

~Amy Lowell


Wear Me

I want you to wear me comfortably,
as you would a dress,
or the silver necklace you wear around your neck.
Comfortably, so that I am always next to you:
but most important --
something you decide each morning to select.

~Robert Kogan

Changes

A couple of days ago I decided that I couldn't bear to forsake my cell phone for a newer model, not yet, so I ordered a new battery, which came today. With any luck, the days of multiple recharges in a 24-hour period are over, at least for a couple of years. I also recently needed to replace the USB cable for my mp3 player, which died unexpectedly (who knew that cables could even die?) so for $10 on Ebay I got a new USB cable plus a wall charger and a car charger. Not a bad deal--plus, the wall charger works a hundred times faster than charging it with my laptop.

The cold season is now unpleasantly upon us; I heard it already snowed in Connecticut yesterday, but in Philadelphia it's just been freezing rain, blowing right in your face thanks to Philly's ever-present wind. My teaching wardrobe, which consists mostly of skirts and a couple pairs of dress pants, is not compatible with this weather, not when I have to wait outside for the train and then walk five blocks to school. My solution for today, which may become habitual, was to wear jeans and sneakers over nylons (which did provide a nice added layer) and then change at school. That required me to bring my skirt in my bag, but as I've started keeping black and brown heels in my locker in the lounge I didn't have to worry about shoes. Today was more of a particular hassle, because the train was a little late, meaning I got in at 8:30, had to change, and then went to print out my lecture notes and discovered I'd emailed myself the wrong ones, so 15 minutes before class I was hastily typing up a list of the slides and important themes I wanted to cover. Then some kids annoyed me by blatantly leaving their notebooks closed, as though they were certain that nothing I was going to say would be important enough for them to record, but that's another story. Damn kids!

Anyway, the change in season means our house is now freezing cold and will stay that way for a loooong time. Sigh. I love Phyllis, but times like this, I think of the mere possibility of Sean being in Philadelphia for his PhD and I think yeah, I would move out if it meant AC in the summer and heat in the winter! But the only reason I would go would be if Sean were here, because despite the drawbacks (cough, Thomas, cough) I do love the house.

In response to the cold weather, warm layered clothing and space heaters have been deployed, but even a space heater can't do a whole lot for my front room. The huge space that I enjoy so much in fine weather is a weak point in cold; the windows are large and I don't have curtains to keep in heat, nor do I have a carpet on the floor (the open space is 12 by 12 feet, and an 8-foot area rug at Target is $150). Thus, the room where my desk is is eminently unsuitable to be a working space during the winter. Tonight I moved my desk into my bedroom, which pained me, aesthetically speaking. One of my chief joys about my bedroom is that it gives me the sense of having basically nothing in it but a bed. I remember reading in a magazine once an article about how to incur less stress in your life, and one of the suggestions was to make your bedroom just that--a place for sleeping, a retreat from the rest of life. My bedroom is my castle, so to speak, and though Sean will probably chuckle at this, I really don't like to see it cluttered. So moving the desk in here was a big deal, and of coursenow this room looks more cluttered to me, while the front room looks oddly unbalanced with only my little Forrestal chest taking the desk's place by the window. But I keep reminding myself that this is the practical solution.

Sean told me last night that my birthday Snuggie is still in transit. I have a feeling that once I have it, it will rarely be leaving my body until spring!

Gross Clinic in the Lab

Yesterday my Eakins class went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's conservation lab (which is in the gorgeous Art Deco Perelman building across the street from the museum proper) to see this painting, Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic of 1875. It's about to undergo cleaning and restoration in the lab following its joint purchase (for $68 million) by the PMA and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, where Eakins was once a faculty member.

We met with the head conservator, Mark Tucker, who was much more of a scholar (fancy suit and all) than the lab-coated scientist I had been expecting. He took us into the lab, where the 8x6 painting was propped up on a stand against once wall by a window. Like every time I've come into contact with a work of art that I've studied in reproduction, the original was beyond comparison. The dramatic effects that come across fairly well in reproduction just pop when you're face-to-face with it. The blood, for example; seeing it in full color, I understood a little better why contemporaries were horrified by its perceived brutality and violence. That led it to being rejected for official display in the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and was only accepted for display in the US Army Medical exhibition because Gross had been an army surgeon during the Civil War (ironically, today it's often considered the most important painting in American art). In person, you'd be hard pressed to believe that it's pigment and not real blood on the canvas, it's that shocking a color. Eakins also reserved the very purest tone of white in the entire painting for the highlight on the blade of the scalpel, so your eye couldn't help but be drawn in that direction.

Tucker told us that we were among the first people to see the painting in natural light since it was in Eakins' studio (which was our first field trip of the semester). It's been in a hall at Jefferson Medical College, where Gross taught, since the Centennial. He also showed us an incredible slideshow that showed the damage that overzealous conservators had wrought on works by Eakins over the decades; in many cases, they thought they detected brighter paint under a dark film, and, assuming that Eakins must have intended it to be brighter, they tried to scrub the dark layer off (sometimes with steel wool, if you can believe it). Unfortunately, they'd get so far and realize, whoops, that dark layer is part of the painting. Eakins liked to lower the tonal range of the painting so that the highlights would be, well, high. He showed us examples of what one of Eakin's paintings looked like after undergoing this disastrous early 20th-century 'conservation,' and it was pretty blah--then he showed us the painting after it had been meticulously restored, including the dark layer, and the difference was quite simply stunning, even though Eakins in general is not my cup of tea.

This applies to the Gross Clinic because the same vigorous cleaning was applied to its surface, particularly in the background where two figures are framed in an entrance passage. Originally, that passage was extremely dark and the figures even more shadowy, while now there's a red-orangey tone there that sort of distracts your eye from the otherwise muted values of the rest of the composition. It's possible for conservators to have an accurate idea of the relative tones in the original because Eakins produced a drawing of the painting for publication as soon as he finished the painting. The original drawing is in the Met, but there's a reproduction on the wall next to the painting in the conservation lab.

I think it goes without saying that this was my favorite of all the Eakins-related trips we've been taking this semester. It's not often that you get to see a painting like this in an informal setting. In the future, when it's been restored to its original condition and is hanging in the PMA, I'll be able to recognize the difference firsthand!

You can see an amusing (and surprisingly informative) rap video about the Gross Clinic created by some UPenn students here.

LOL

For some reason, last night I decided to track down my three favorite LOLcats of all time, which I will now preserve here for posterity...





This is definitely my number one favorite:


It still makes me laugh. Heehee.

Yawns and Freud

Grading is tedious work, especially when it consists of counting students' absences and filling in a Scantron sheet for their mid-semester reports. I also had to put in the exam grades for my second section, and I was puzzled when I couldn't find one kid's name on the list. Turns out, he withdrew, which I didn't even know you could DO this late in the semester. This happened to be the same kid who failed his paper after he admitted to not going to the museum, and who I then had to have a stern conversation with about cheating. Um, apparently, I scared him off. Ironically, he got an 85 on the exam.

I also had to spend a couple of hours reading a loooong (exactly 100 pages) essay by Michael Fried about Eakins' Gross Clinic which was not only highly theoretical but also Freudian. I have such a suspicion of Freudian psychoanalysis! I have to admit that all my knowledge of Freud comes from secondhand sources, including pop culture (Oedipus complex) and, shockingly enough, Lacan (the Wolf Man, castration anxiety, the phallus as supposedly-non-gendered organ). I can accept the whole id/ego/superego structure, and the idea that we're primarily motivated by drives, but I'm skeptical of the Oedipus (and Electra) complex, penis envy, and castration anxiety. Penis envy didn't play into Fried's analysis of the painting, but the other two....

According to him, you can read the painting as displaying Eakin's Oedipal resentment of his father (who becomes Dr. Gross), his rejection of his mother (the woman in black hiding her face) and his own castration anxiety (the bloody knife in his father's/Gross' hand, himself as the patient on the table); Fried also claims that the painting goes on to resolve the Oedipal complex in the correct Freudian manner: Eakins finally identifies himself, as painter-creator, with Dr. Gross and thus, with his father. Freud apparently liked to use the term "family romance" as a euphemism for these types of relationships, so Fried follows suit.

I think what bothers me in this, as in any attempt to psychoanalyze a historical figure, is that 1) it's being applied to dead people; 2) it's being applied to dead people from another century, and we don't necessarily think and feel the way they did; and 3) a painting is being relied upon for information, as if it will simply reveal the subconcious workings of an artist's mind. This despite the fact that art historians constantly belabor the point that "every work of art is a construction." I've been reading Vernon Hyde Minor's book on the historiography of art history, and the chapter on Freud indicated that it's not even practiced much by psychiatrists anymore; it's become primarily a critical tool in the humanities. Should we still consider it a viable method of analysis if the discipline for which it was developed no longer sees fit to use it? That seems strange to me.

The Semi-Productive Weekend

I was so on the ball yesterday, despite a false start that included getting rained on on my way to the library and getting sweaty trying to wrest open the door to the AH lounge. I set up camp in the lounge with my laptop, so I wouldn't have to be chained to one of the desktops in the offices. Peace and quiet all day, plus snacks and Pellegrino left over from last week's meeting, makes for a productive me. Today, however, despite getting up at 9am, I've had such difficulty getting myself down to task. The goal I set for myself was to get through Bergamo negli anni di Lotto, but hours later, I'm on page 27. Granted, this is a huge folio book, and I'm both translating and taking notes on it, but that is still just not an acceptable rate of progress. I should have gone to school again today, but I stayed home in my pajamas, bundled up in like four layers because it's suddenly gotten cold again--a cold that Phyllis doesn't feel, apparently, because she regarded me like a crazy person when I appeared in the kitchen at 5pm in a bathrobe with cravat-style scarf around my neck.

I'm also facing a dilemma right now in terms of my cell phone. My battery has become completely unreliable, and I can't have a conversation for more then 20-30 minutes without it needing to be recharged. It's more than two years old, so I'm eligible to get a new phone free from Verizon, but they no longer carry the Chocolate as an option, and therein lies the rub: I love my phone! It's exactly as slender and uncomplicated a phone as I could ever want. I do not want a faux-iPhone, faux-Sidekick, faux-Blackberry, or any of the other overly-buttoned models that they have on offer. A new battery costs $25, but the phone itself is beginning to show the wear and tear of its age, and I'm torn between getting a new battery to prolong its life, or just sucking it up and getting used to something newer. Another consideration that leads me toward keeping the Chocolate are my photos; I have 170 of them, and since I don't subscribe to the internet on my phone, I can't offload them. Yes, eventually when this phone dies for good, they'll be lost, but I'm somewhat loathe to discard my Chocolate before its time. (Also, its name is Chocolate. Unless they have a phone called "Smartfood Popcorn" or "Diet Coke," this rules).

Sigh

I should never have come to campus so early today! I forgot that the GAHO-sponsored talk for the first-year students is not until 6:30, which means I won't be leaving here until 7:30. And I've been reading essays about the history of the silk industry in the Veneto in Italian all day, which is about as interesting as it sounds.

Last night I spent three hours hunched over my desk, grading the second batch of exams. The kids did decently in both classes; my averages were 77 and 79, but a lot of kids got 90s and there were a couple of 100s. The second section of the course, which we've just begun, is much harder, however; now they're going to be expected to be able to distinguish between styles (like between Early Christian and Gothic, for example), they have to learn all sorts of architectural terminology, and woe betide anyone who isn't familiar with Christian iconography because now it's all Jesus, all the time! Tomorrow, in what will likely be the least coherent lecture I will ever give, I have to show them an example of a Greek nude statue, explain what happened between the Prima Porta Augustus in 80 CE and Old St. Peter's in the 4th century, and then what happened between that and Chartres Cathedral in the 13th century. In there I need to explain the expansion of Christianity, Gothic building techniques, and how you make stained glass. Then I have to show them the Arena Chapel in Padua from 1305 and explain Giotto and the turning point in Western art history that he represents. That's only, what 12 centuries or so of history? Oh yes, and I need to do this in 35 minutes, so that I can go over their exams. I don't care that they couldn't spell Epidauros, or Polykleitos, but 90% of them could not spell the word Colosseum, either. Sigh.

October Already

I haven't posted here in almost a week, which is increasingly unusual for me lately, but it's been rather busy. In addition to the anti-festivity of Sept 28, there was also my birthday (yay!) on which I didn't do anything particularly exciting. Sean is on his way up right now, so tonight is my unofficial birthday celebration, which includes dinner, a movie (he refused outright to see "Zombieland," so we're probably going to see Ricky Gervais' new movie), chocolates, and, at some point in the future, my Snuggie that is on order. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

The other big drain this past week was grading those 60 papers/quizzes, which were largely just awful. The average grade in both classes was failing for the quiz; we were more lenient on the papers, but there was so much marking-up required--formatting, spelling, grammar, plagiarism, etc. First of all, half of them thought "visual analysis" just meant "describe the object" and/or "include my gushing praise of this object as the greatest artifact of all time." One kid did make me chuckle, because after he described a Greek vase featuring Hercules slaying the Nemean lion, he waxed eloquent on how this vase was inspirational to him, and that from now on he would think of himself as Hercules and his difficulties as the lion, and, presumably, would thus slay them. Another girl actually made me *facepalm* when she described the texture of an Egyptian monumental gateway as "much smoother to the touch than I would have thought." She got her paper back with a big "DO NOT TOUCH MUSEUM OBJECTS" on it.

And then there was the kid who didn't go with me to the museum, who wrote about a stele in the museum but described the one in the textbook (they're different), who blatantly plagiarized off some Geocities page about Egyptian goddesses, who handed in this travesty two days late, and who then, upon being asked for his museum receipt, told me outright that "oh, I didn't go to the museum, I just did research online." Oh, the perverse joy I felt in telling him "You understand that you've just told me that you failed?" The look on his face = priceless.

If we'd actually taken off points on this essay for plagiarism, though, they almost all would have failed, because they all a) copied right off the museum labels, in big chunks, with no quotation marks, and b) thought a single citation of the label in some random spot at the beginning of the paper (and in some cases, next to their own name) would be sufficient. I had told them to look at the paper assignment, which included a sample footnote at the bottom, and lo and behold, three or four of them copied that same exact footnote, which was for some random statue of Bastet that was certainly not what they were writing about.

Oh, and after all explaining all this and many other basic, fundamental facts pertinent to being a college student and writing papers for four years during class on Friday, I was horrified to find out from two different students that a tutor from the Writing Center told them just one footnote was A-OK. What?! I sent the assistant direct an indignant email, but have yet to hear back from them.

Anyway, the exam is on Monday. God only knows how much fun that's going to be to grade!

Mrs. D-Day

(I have to give credit to Sean for coming up with the idea for my mom's anniversary. Alternate names include "The Storming of Heaven," and "The Last Time JTD Ate Pie in Heaven.")

Tomorrow marks the third anniversary of her death. It's difficult to believe that it's been three years already--except, of course, I say the same thing every year, both about her and about my dad. There's not really much to say now that there wasn't last year, except that I miss her, how I'd really like to have one of her iron-grip hugs, or even to get poked in the ribs by that sharp little finger! Between Sean and me (and occasionally Jen) our jokes keep her spirit and her memory alive, and I'm glad of that.

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

Yawn

Wow, teaching owned me today. We had our first quiz, which I would almost qualify as an 'unmitigated disaster' except for the fact that at least a third of my collective 60 students did well on it. But grading, oh my god, is there anything more mind-numbing than writing the same damn comments on sixty papers? For example, even the kids who did well generally answered the question of "why was the Parthenon built on the Acropolis?" with some mix of "it's really high up and easy to defend and it's close to the gods and you can see the whole city from up there!" I think I wrote the phrase "The Parthenon replaced an earlier temple destroyed by the Persians; it celebrated Athenian victory and democracy" at least fifty times. I kid you not. I may dream that phrase tonight. Also, the Acropolis does not mean "city of the dead," the Pharaoh Akhenaten's images were not destroyed so that "people wouldn't steal them," and you cannot call someone who tries to force monotheism on the polytheistic culture of Egypt "way ahead of the curve."

And even now, after all 60 quizzes have been graded and entered into the labrynthine online system, there are still 60 museum trip papers to read, grade, and comment on. At least now the comments are mostly different, but here's the next phrase I'll be writing 50 times: "You must use a citation each time you use outside information, whether that is the museum label, the book, or me, even if you're just using a single source throughout the paper." Yes, the Parthenon phrase was much, much shorter. Hand-cramps are in my future.

Velazquez, Dos (or Tres, Actually)

Pablo de Valladolid, 1635: One of Velazquez' gifts was his ability to combine both vulnerability and gravitas in his subjects, no matter their social rank in what was a highly stratified court society. Here, he uses a full-length format, one generally reserved for kings and nobles, to depict a much lower-ranking member of the king's court: one of his jesters. The seriousness of the format, the subject's pose (an approximation of a Roman oration pose, perhaps) and his face combine to make what could have been a mocking portrait into one of surprising monumentality.



Surrender at Breda, or Las Lanzas, c1635: This painting serves as both document and propaganda for a recent event in Spain's military history, when the Protestant part of the Netherlands rose up against their Catholic Spanish overlords. This was a long, unpleasant conflict, and eventually Spain kept the Catholic portion while the Protestant portion achieved independence, but in the meantime, Spain laid siege to and conquered the city of Breda. The leader of the Spanish forces is seen in the center, accepting the keys of the city from Justin of Nassau, while the smoke from the battle rises in the background. So much is fairly documentary. The propaganda appears most clearly in two aspects: first, note the difference in organization between the Dutch troops on the left, with their listing halberds and scruffier appearances, and the stiff uprightness of the Spanish lances on the right, together with their spiffier appearances. In each camp, Velazquez has provided a figure who looks out at us, perhaps inviting us to sympathize with their side, but of course the outcome is already decided, and the Spanish, with their greater force of arms and (implied) righteousness, have carried the day. The second bit of propaganda is in the positions of the central two figures: Justin of Nassau is prepared to surrender on bended knee, but the Spanish general, Spinola, stops him from making this humiliating gesture by placing his hand on his shoulder. Thus, the Spanish are shown to be benevolent in their victory, even toward disloyal subjects.


Mars, 1639-41: This painting is simple, and yet it's not. The god of war is unclothed and literally disarmed, his shield and breastplate lying unheeded on the ground, while he leans disconsolately on one elbow. He seems to be tangled in sheets or robes of some kind, yet he's wearing his helmet, and one hand seems to be on a club or axe half-hidden from view. One reading of this painting is that Venus, Vulcan's adulterous wife, has already come and gone, leaving her lover strangely unsatisfied in her wake. Whether that means he kept his helmet on while they were in bed together, or whether he paused in redressing in order to think for a moment, is anyone's guess.

Taking a Moment for Diego

Several of the articles on theories of vision and spectatorship that I have to read for my Baroque class deal with Diego Velazquez' famous painting Las Meninas of 1656. My first contact with that piece was mediated, oddly enough, by a Dali painting that was part of an exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum when I was in the art club in high school, called Velazquez Painting the Infanta Margarita, Surrounded by the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory. At the time I was completely unfamiliar with the source material, but as I recall I wrote a poem about it that had something to do with a nuclear explosion (who knows).

At any rate, I have, just recently, had the pleasure of seeing Las Meninas in the Prado (and Sean, for his part, very proudly reported a few days ago that he recognized it on a poster in a TA's office). It's spectacular, certainly, and I understand its centrality in discussions of representational theory (for complicated, Michel Foucault-related reasons I won't get into here), but it is far from my favorite of Velazquez' works. And that is why there is no picture of Las Meninas here, because I am the teensiest bit tired of seeing it and reading about it. Because I am horrible with artists' dates, I had to Google Velazquez to check on him, and in the process came across a site with a collection of his works, many of which are in the Prado themselves, and I was pleasantly reminded of "Oh! I loved that one! And that one! And..." so on, and so forth. So here I'm going to put up a few of my favorite non-Meninas Velazquez paintings.

The Feast of Bacchus, or Los Borrachos, 1629: Of primary attraction to me in this painting is not so much the Caravaggesque god himself, but his followers. Spanish peasant men have replaced the convential female Bacchantes, and their treatment is both "realistic" and good-humored:


The Forge of Vulcan, 1630 is another fairly early work:


It depicts Mercury arriving at Vulcan's forge to tell him that his wife, Venus, is cheating on him with Mars (ouch). Although the boyish messenger god seems to be the focus, thanks to his brightly colored robes an the light of his halo, it's really the muscular bodies of the forge workers who draw the gaze. Vulcan is unattractive, as befits someone who was supposedly lamed when he was thrown off Mt Olympus by Zeus as a baby. I like both his expression of surprised irritation and his rather handsome assistant:

Mrow

Doing some preliminary checking on a possible paper topic for my Eakins class, I was going through the Prado's online collection of Goya paintings and saw the one above, the Catfight of 1786-7. According to the information online, this was a study for part of a dining room's decoration, and was likely intended to go over the doorway. Here's a detail:


I really can't think why you'd want this scene looming over the place where you eat your meals, but perhaps 18th century Spanish nobles had different ideas. Then again, this is Goya, and he certainly had rather dark and enigmatic tendencies in his work.

On a less scholarly note, part of me wants to LOLcaption this image, perhaps with "The noms are mine!"

Late(ish) Night for a Free Dinner

There's a guy coming tonight to lecture about an archaeological database of the ancient world that he and his computer science students created, in conjunction with archaeology students. Eventually, you'll be able to search for any of about 100 terms, like "cemetery" or "church," and a Google map will pinpoint every instance where your keyword applies; then the database will kick in and give you all the information relative to whichever point(s) you click on. This will apply from the Early Bronze Age up to the dawn of the Ottoman Empire (that's several thousand years) all throughout the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. It's an impressive feat. Of course, it won't directly help me or my research in any way, but there's a free dinner in the faculty club involved, so....

ETA: You can see the first operational "node" of the database, the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land, here. You need a Google Earth plug-in, but it's pretty cool!