On Wednesday’s seminar, the class was introduced to the movie “The Girl with a Pearl Earring,” Professor Kahan showed us clips of the film along with the actual painting that inspired it. The clips of the film were quite intriguing.The simplicity of the costumes and nearly unrecognizable, and understated Scarlett Johanson allowed for the dialogue of the film (or lack there of) to shine through. As Professor Kahan explained the background of the clips, it was quite amazing to see that during the time period the film was based on (circa 17th century) women were only seen as modest and presentable to the public when their hair was under a bonnet. Besides their husbands,no one could, or at least should, see their hair. This reminds me of an essay in Ways of Seeing  where one author describes how in most paintings the appearance of hair signifies sexuality. Therefore, the presence of hair would take away any innocence belonging to the woman depicted. I assume that these head pieces were worn for relatively the same reason.

The class also discussed what we felt about Edward Hoppers style. Whats coincidental is that the topics we are discussing about style in my seminar class, happen to relate to my cinema class, where we are learning how to find “oeuvre”a french term referring to the style of a film directors entire body of work. Much like the “style” we discuss in seminar we recognize what certain repetitions in films say about a directors oeuvre.

Wednesday, our class was also given the opportunity to attend a gallery being held at CSI. Prior to this gallery, Dr.Charles Liu made it a point to speak to us and explain how his love for science and the arts could truly coexist. By explaining that the pieces we were about see were based off this exact idea (where science meets religion) I was able to have a background to the gallery. In most of the paintings I was able to see how the two meshed well together. Ultimately, I enjoy and support how galleries like the Expanding Frames of Reference: Art, Science,and Religion in the Physica Sacra of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer can open up the minds of its spectators prove how two relatively different ideas  can truly coexist.