Today in Seminar we continued to discuss the importance of style in an author’s work and the importance of the different “ways of seeing” when analyzing artwork. I have to admit, this has been not only an informative and eye – opening class for me so far, but it has been interesting and new, and I enjoy going to class.
We first viewed some clips of “The Girl with the Pearl Earrings”, during which we saw on screen what has been happening for most of us in our Seminar class. One of the main characters, a young girl who befriends an artist, begins to see the world in a new light, and realizes that not everything is black and white, that there are multiple ways of seeing things, it all depends on a person’s own perception. From that, we continued our discussion from last week regarding the style of Edward Hopper. After hearing other people’s opinions, I think that Hopper has a very interesting way of portraying different scenes of American life. He seems to take real objects and real instances and transform them to be something menacing and dark, and in conjunction with my own idea, realistic.
This leads me into my thought for the day after sitting in Seminar. I truly enjoy learning and analyzing different styles of art. I think it is an interesting and fun experience to see things through someone else’s eyes. When we see a work of art, we are seeing what the artist created through that artist’s eyes, his or her perception of the world. Whether we like it, dislike it, find it menacing or light – hearted, it is an escape from our own reality and our sometimes narrow ways of seeing things ourselves.
After our discussion, we listened to a lecture by Dr. Charles Liu, who, in so many words, passed on the wisdom that while people usually dedicate their lives to studying a particular field or subject, that does not mean that they have to only study and enjoy that one subject. A person can learn about, take interest in, and excel in many different areas of life, areas that sometimes overlap or complement each other. We then saw Dr. Liu’s words put into reality at the Art Exhibit in the Performing Arts building. It was a collection of paintings by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. This man seemed to take religion and science, and their two different yet not – so – different ideas and combine them in his paintings in order to get his point across. My favorite of his paintings was #3 in the gallery, which depicted the power of the sun. You never really think of the sun as being so powerful and yet, to stop and truly reflect, you find that there are all sorts of natural powers that are not obvious, but that exist in our world.
It seems that today’s class wrapped up our discussion of different “ways of seeing” when analyzing art. I know I have definitely learned much from this experience, and I can only hope to use this experience in order to keep an open mind about the world around me.
