Author: Julia Agee

Lower Manhattan (Broad and Wall Streets), 1907

Lower Manhattan (Broad and Wall Streets), 2009

While slightly varied in perspective and dimensions, the picture I took matches Hassam’s painting because both are of the same street, featuring as a main landmark the New York Stock Exchange. The vanishing point in both images is somewhere behind the building at the next corner with the columns. In both images the viewer can see not quite three columns on that building in front of the vanishing point. Hassam’s point of view while painting would probably have been up higher, as the painting features mostly the tops of people’s heads, while mine includes their faces. The artist may also have been standing further back. Right now a great deal of construction and scaffolding occupies the place where he probably stood. Sunlight graces the intersection in his painting, as well, creating another difference. His view of the Stock exchange also lacked the classic elegance of September 2009’s Budweiser advertisement.

0. While American writer and philosophy professor Barrows Dunham writes that, “the purpose of the fine arts is to produce things which are beautiful,” it seems to me that art is more than beauty. Art can reproduce, reflect, or comment on terrible events or situations, as West Side Story addresses the tragic consequences of ethnic tensions in mid twentieth century New York. Dunham remarks that the success of tragedy “negates its own pessimism,” but the “triumph” of the work does not seem to me to make it beautiful. Much about West Side Story is beautiful – the dance, song, and act – but the deaths of Rif, Bernardo, and Tony, the near rape of Anita, these are not beautiful. They pain the audience. Without the general beauty of art, it would not attract the public, but without the darkness of it; it would not change the viewers and listeners. It seems to me, rather than “things which are beautiful,” art is some unique translation of an artist’s human experience, a composite of pain and beauty.

1. To create, my favorite art form is photography, because I feel I have the most control in creating it. To observe, my favorite art form is sculpture, because it awes me that a person can scratch or mold that which inspires emotion into a piece of stone, or metal, or clay. But, I doubt myself while I write this. Paintings, music, dance, and of course, writing, these too inspire me so much they all must be favorites.

2. The Renaissance is my favorite historical period now, but I just took European History last year. Each time I learn more about one era or place, it seems so interesting I can not imagine liking another more. A class that covers the Imperial Era in China could easily sway me to love learning about that period more than about any other, at least for a semester.

3. Science is my strongest area academically, I think. I enjoyed physics, especially, for how straightforward it was. Non-academically, I love doing film photography, developing and enlarging my own film.

4. In general, yes. I can use a computer fairly well.

5. Although my writing skills have atrophied since the essay marathon of junior year and college applications, I think I am a competent writer. Sometimes time management, organization, and grammar provide challenges for me. When I’m constantly writing for school, I can pump out essays like the five-paragraph formula was built into my right hand as a filter for my standardized brain. When school and the incessant chore of arranging words for others fade a little, I’ve occasionally taken to writing journals and poetry.