Turkey Day

Gerome, The Snake Charmer, 1870

I'll make this brief, since I purposely got up at 7am today to get some work done on my Eakins paper, but it is that day of the year when I'm reminded of all the wonderful things I have in my life. Or, rather, I'm reminded of them more frequently than one day out of 365, but on this day I like to write them down.

As my best friend and other half, Sean's what I am most grateful for in this world. Even though we have to be apart so much of the time, I still feel so incredibly fortunate to have found the guy I want to be with for the rest of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm also lucky to have a group of good friends, as well as a wonderful family (yes, even my sister!). Actually, make that two families, because now I get to sneak my way into Sean's, too! Muahahaha. Finally, I'm grateful for everything that's going well in my life right now--grad school, living with Phyllis, hell, even this Eakins paper isn't going too badly. Life is good, and I appreciate that.

Yesterday, Today

I'm slowly becoming more of a nap-taker than I've ever been before in my life. I have taken perhaps four or five naps this semester, which is probably equal to the number of naps taken prior to that in my 24 years of existence. Still, I can only nap when I feel absolutely wiped, as I did yesterday afternoon for no apparent reason. I slept for a couple of hours, woke up and worked for a couple of hours, and then settled down for an evening that included a bag of chips, the new Star Trek movie, and about half a bottle of wine. Healthiest dinner ever, probably not. I did stand in the kitchen for a few minutes contemplating the question of whether taking the entire bottle of wine upstairs made me a de facto alcoholic, but let's face it, I was going to want more than one glass anyway, and I really would rather not have to exit my toastily warmed room and descend into the cold depths of the kitchen for a refill. So now the bottle is sitting on my windowsill, waiting for night to fall so I can finish it off. Muahahaha!

This morning I had to go to the PMA to give tours to my students. Modern art tours, no less. I was a little bit more nervous than on our first trip, because the Penn museum is small and not usually very crowded, but the PMA on a Saturday is full of people--including other tour guides who are trying to yell over you so that their 65-and-up group can hear what they want to say about Monet. Once we got into the 20th-century galleries, there was a really loud installation art piece across the hall that involved recordings of people yelling out the names of the week. So I'm trying to get the students to tell me what they remember about Analytic Cubism above the squawks of "MONDAY! FRIDAY!"

My favorite moment of both tours was watching the looks on their faces as they came out from looking at Duchamp's Etannt Donne. I really wish I'd had a camera to capture the looks of confusion, horror, disgust, and general weirded-out-ness. One of my themes for the tour was that we can't always expect a pleasant experience with modern art, nor can we expect a clearly defined and accessible meaning, and I think that piece was the perfect place to end.

King of Kings

Jean-Leon Gerome, Napoleon Before the Sphinx, 1868

We looked at this picture a couple of weeks back in my Eakins class, and I forgot to post about it, but for some reason it popped into my head in the shower today. This is a work by Eakins' master at the Ecole in Paris, the famous Neoclassicist painter Gerome. Gerome did many paintings touting the exploits of Napoleon, which suited the era--this was the time of the Second Empire in France under Napoleon III.

Most people in the class saw this as a propaganda piece, but I think it can also be read as a suggestion of the ultimate fate of any empire. Think of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" of 1818 in relationship to this painting:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

New York, New York

Yesterday I attended a workshop/roundtable/symposium at Columbia that addressed the issue of research in Venice and the Veneto in terms of what's left to be studied, and what needs to be re-examined. The scholars on hand included my advisor, Tracy Cooper; Guido Beltramini, who runs CISA, the Palladio center in Vicenza; David Rosand, probably the foremost Titian scholar in the field right now; and Deborah Howard, who teaches at Cambridge and literally wrote the book on the architectural history of Venice. Despite the august crowd, it was fairly informal, as each shared their ideas on how wide the field still remains. Howard ticked off a list of problems she feels haven't been addressed by her own generation of scholars, while Rosand gave us a look at his current research on the painter Veronese as an architectural designer, which involves re-evaluating some of his own conclusions on Veronese from decades earlier.

They also focused a bit on 'ways and means': finding (or stumbling upon) a research topic, and the trials and tribulations of archival research. Dr. Cooper told us that the sign-in book at an archive or library is your best friend--skim through it and see if anyone you've always wanted to meet is lurking in the reading rooms somewhere, and then go track them down (I personally would imagine that eminent scholars might not totally appreciate being jumped in the stacks by an eager junior colleague, but that's me). She also advised scoping out for local scholars who speak the language and probably know how everything works, and asking for their help in getting situated. Jasmine (who attended with me) was called upon to talk about her experience with the Medici Archive Project's online paleography course, in which every week she and two dozen other scholars around the world do a round-robin translation of a 15th century document. It's a pilot program right now, but one which I hope to participate in in the future before I enter archives myself.

Deborah Howard really endeared herself to me not only in terms of being absolutely adorable (a trim, proper little Englishwoman in a grey ensemble with pearls) but in terms of her sheer, bubbly enthusiasm for art history and research. I'm sure she's more reserved when she gives formal presentations, but she was practically bouncing in her chair as she told us about a time when she was in Venice studying documents referring to this destroyed 16th-century building and thought she would just go to the site and check out the area, only to find that the building had never been destroyed at all! She "discovered" a building that had been "lost" for centuries, just on the basis of people forgetting what it was and then later scholars, many of whom didn't have the luxury of just walking across the city to check, relying on an incorrect document. The coda to this exciting anecdote, she told us wryly, is that today no one remembers that it was ever lost, much less that she was the one to find it again.

Howard also contradicted the received wisdom that discourages working on a topic that another student or scholar is pursuing. She pointed out that you'll never wind up saying the same thing as someone else, and if you publish books simultaneously, you can be reviewed together and add to each other's prestige. When she was preparing to write her book on Venice and the East, she found out that Rosamond Mack was planning a similar project; they got together and informally divided up the material (Howard took architecture, Mack material culture) and then when their books came out, they were reviewed jointly and were both tremendous successes. She also pointed out that sometimes someone "lays claim" to a particular topic (which you do by publishing a topic or abstract in CAA or another major association journal) and then never produces anything. You can't copyright an unformed idea, so I see her point.

As Jasmine and I said our goodbyes to Dr. Cooper, she suggested (read: instructed) that I introduce myself to Beltramini and ask him if he had any contacts in Bergamo. I looked over--he was in conversation with Howard and there was already another student lurking hopefully off to one side. There is nothing I hate more than the awkward self-introduction in a crowded room, especially when you have to introduce yourself to someone who is more important than you and whom various other people are also eager to meet. I countered Dr. Cooper by saying perhaps I would just email him, and she said "That's fine. Now go introduce yourself and tell him you're going to email him!" Sigh. There was nothing to be done at that point, and seeing him begin to move off in the room I flung myself in his path, shook his hand, told him who I was, and asked him about Bergamo. Turns out, he knows nothing about Bergamo, he's never worked there, but he said "your idea is good" (I bet they have to say that to all the students) and rattled off some scholar's name who works in Brescia and might know something. Now I just have to get Dr. Cooper to decipher my scribbling of this name, and who knows, I might have something.

The session was only two hours, but I came away from it much more enthusiastic about research and my scholarly future in general. One of the points that Rosand, in particular, was emphatic about is the continuing importance of Renaissance studies as "the place where it all began," and about the fact that we need to combat "the rolling-up of history" that places all the focus on the most recent events and neglects the past. It reminded me, if I really needed reminding, that what I'm interested in is deserving of study. The humanities are all-too-often placed in the position of having to justify themselves as fields, but I feel confident in saying: The Renaissance is fun! And what's more, it's where we begin as modern society. Studying the past is studying ourselves.

Mirror, Mirror

Today in class we were discussing how mirrors function in paintings--that is, how something that is already, by its nature, a re-presentation made with paint on canvas is affected by the presence of an object that also re-presents. Mirrors question the idea of presentation and re-presentation, especially when their relationship to what is being mirrored is unclear. The chief painting we were focusing on was, yet again, Las Meninas, because in a class on spectatorship you can't get away from it.

Picasso, Girl Before a Mirror, 1932

We looked at a number of other images, though, including this Picasso. Interestingly, one girl in my class said this reminded her of the idea that mirrors show truth, while I looked at it and thought "that girl has body dysmorphic disorder!" Besides distortion, it could also suggest the mirror's ability to show a side of yourself you'd rather no one else see. And mirrored images can be disturbing--twins, for example (think the Shining!) or threatening, like a doppelganger.

What this painting really reminded me of, though, was Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror." I could only remember the last couple of lines during class, but the mirrored image seems to fit the simile of a "terrible fish."

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

~Sylvia Plath

Homage

Tomorrow marks the three-year anniversary of my grandfather's death. Unfortunately, the only reason I know that is because I had put it in my Gmail calendar!

At any rate, here's to the man who used to light his cigars from an open gas range, sported a mustache that made him look like an aging Nazi, and hit on Polish women at funerals by telling them that he grew up a poor Polish boy in Chicago. A man whose favorite nickname for me was Long John Silver, who lived on his own for thirteen years and never learned to work the oven, a man who objected so strenuously to having his house cleaned for him that we would have irritated messages beginning with "You people..." on the answering machine when we drove home. A man who on their first meeting told Sean an awkward story about groping my grandma, and then invited him to come back to visit with or without me. A man who lived a devil-may-care life for 89 years and still managed to die in his sleep after living long enough to see his beloved Red Sox win the Series. Here's to you, Poppa.

My all-time favorite exchange between him and Jen:

Jen: You're old!
Poppa: You're ugly!

Best. Grandpa. Ever.

Grad School Saturday

I opted not to go into school today to work due to the ongoing strike, which has rendered the regional rail schedules extremely unreliable, so I spent most of the day in my pajamas working on my paper for the Eakins class. It's not hugely interesting, but then, I don't find Eakins hugely interesting, so it's not surprising. After dinner I did the readings for Dr. Cooper's class and came up with a couple of discussion questions, which I posted to the discussion group around 8pm. Yeah, I'm now that girl who spent her Saturday evening reading Svetlana Alpers' discussion of competing systems of epistemology in Las Meninas. Damn you, time stamps. Another hallmark of the grad student? I just finished up putting the latest exam grades into the system, looked at the clock, saw it was nine o'clock, and thought hey, I could get in an hour or so of organizing my Zotero files before I get really tired. Sigh.

Two Centuries in Fifty Minutes

Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing, 1766

While today's fill-in-the-gap lecture was nothing compared to the one where we covered the fourth to twelfth centuries, it was still a challenge to explain all the myriad artistic developments that came between the Baroque, where Dr. Cooper left off, and the late 19th century, where Dr. Silk will pick up on Monday. The Rococo is pretty fun to talk about (and I highly recommend this video, an advertisement for "Rococo Puffs"), but Neoclassicism and Romanticism can be, in my mind, a little bit dull. I tried to liven things up as much as possible by telling the most dramatic stories, like Napoleon's self-coronation, his escape from exile on Elba, the triumph of crossing the Alps, etc. These kids have so little knowledge of history! My question about what happened at the end of the 18th century in France that would have made an aristocratic style like Rococo unpopular, for example, was met with blank looks. I'm finding that they have only the very broadest sketches of major historical figures like Napoleon, so I tried to emphasize that although today he's become something of a caricature of the short-statured egoist, in his time he managed an imperial conquest on a scale that hadn't been seen since Alexander the Great. Yes, it ended ignominiously for him, but still, for a few years, Napoleon ruled most of the 'civilized' world.

Since I won't be there next week to hand back their exams, I also took the opportunity today of pointing out the errors that I've seen most commonly. To my complete and utter disgust, more than a few students identified Chartres Cathedral and then couldn't tell me what city it was in. This DESPITE my warning in class that I'd better not see this again, after the issue with the Theater AT Epidavros on the first exam. Spelling was also a big issue--I'll grant that spelling Velazquez isn't easy, but c'mon, you should be able to spell the word tempera! Especially since we had a specific reading dedicated to it. "Tempera" is egg-based paint. "Tempura" is Japanese fried batter. "Tempra" is....I don't even know.

Despite this, they did markedly better on this exam since the first; one class' average rose from 77 to 82. I'd like to think that this is thanks to me and my knowledge of this period, but let's be honest, it was probably just an easy test.

My First (Big) Lecture

I gave the review for the second part of the AWW course today, in the big lecture hall in front of 200-plus students. And it went OK! More than OK, actually. I said everything I wanted to (I write an outline and then practice what I'm going to say at least once, with the result that I mostly don't have to look down at what I've written when I'm actually speaking), I finished perfectly on the 50-minute mark, and the other TAs said it was a really good comprehensive overview. Go me!

It was also, somewhat surprisingly, less intimidating than I expected. Yes, the four minutes between when I got down to the podium and set up the slideshow and when I actually began class were sort of awkward, because all of the students were looking at me and I just looked around the room and tried not to make eye contact with my own students. I felt a little bad for them because they had definitely heard exactly what I said today in section for the past four weeks; I wasn't offering them anything particularly new. Of course, the question is whether they listen in section and/or take notes (and many of them don't bother to take notes, I've noticed.) Overall, though, it was really no more intimidating than lecturing to 30 students. Oh, and I had a microphone, which was pretty cool.

I'm glad I had the experience, but luckily it won't be one I have to repeat often. Next semester I may not even do the section II review, as one of the new TAs coming in is another Renaissance person, so she'll probably do it to get the same experience. It's divvied up by who is most familiar with the material, so this time around Amy, who studies Roman art, did section I, and Erin, who does 19th century art, will do section III. After that I might move on to Heritage, which would mean no more big lecture classes, just whiny over-privileged art students. Hm. Trade-off?

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.