New Beginings All Around

Out of all the chapter, i was most excited about this topic. The word gothic has many different meanings but you can ask a group of people what type of picture the word “gothic” paints in their mind and I’m sure there will be similarities like darkness, black, and an eve presence. I never went through the “emo” phase or gothic phase in the teenage years as most people say you go through, but gothic influences have always caught my attention in art, film, and structures. I have always been a vampire fan even when I Was younger,watching the movie “the Little Vampire” the home that the characters stayed in were there’s great big stone homes that looked like castles. They had strep and pointy roofs with dark colored stained glass. Their clothing were these immaculate threaded gowns that had tiny details that made the gowns look like they have hemming of gold. The buttress piers i think are the location of the gargoyles you see on the movies when they play the intense piano music and have the wolf howling in the background. The cathedrals that were built with Gothic style are very neat with their vaulted ceilings. I love hearing acoustic versions of music in cathedrals because of the sound and would love to hear it in one of these cathedrals. When you think of gothic, it almost seems like that and a church shouldn’t be in the same object, but then I think that the evil perception that follows goth was all an interpretation from us as the viewers. Just like how people each have their different interpretation of a portrait of statue and have their own meaning for it, that is where the evil and scary views of “gothic” style may have come from.

While reading this chapter, all I could think was that I wish I knew more about religion, took a class, or was more involved with the religious classes when I was younger because it would have been much more helpful understanding who these different people and saints are as well as what they stood for and what they did. But moving forward, I did not know that movements, and campaigns had so much to do with are and how certain cultures came together which led to a civilization and then they added their own touch of their culture to their land that they walked and founded, which was their art and art style. I did learn that from the information that was talking about the pilgrimages that the Christians would take part in heading to other churches.

Sainte-Foy on page 186, looks immaculate. It almost reminds me of a movie and it makes me think how these places are actually real structures, full of statues like the Reliquary statue. I thought it was interesting that Saint Faith willingly suffered through death just because she did not want to worship the gods. That is a strong lady and it surprises me that when people talk about women who were strong and stood up for their rights, that they don’t come back to Saint Faith and start with her since she was so long ago but also she died for her personal belief and reason.

The detailing in the “Last Judgement” is very intricate and I want to know how long it took someone to complete it. It has so many details, all the way down to the snake that winds around the legs of the people on the bottom of hells side and around the devils. I wasn’t really sure what they meant by they did flat art. The art that is in the pictures Is very 3D as well as having depths and small details that you wouldn’t be able to notice unless you looked close up.

While reading, just like with the Egyptian and Roman art, the book goes into talking about the direction of the feet and how the hips are positioned. It was talking about how Saint Matthews feet were flat and vertical and then they said that it showed how he has no support. Art and the way artist position their figures shows so so much more that what you actually see. I really like that about art and I am just discovering it. It’s literally a picture that you can look deeper than what the big picture is and pick out different things like what it is made up of, dots or shapes, if the figure is showing movement on how its hips and body is positioned, and also if they are leaning to a certain side. I didn’t ever pay attention to more than what the actual picture was until now.

Reading about the Middle Ages had many different points to the reading. It has information about the artwork and how it was looked at as evil and also the artwork in the structures that were built. There were many different interesting topics in the reading along with those points as well.

The first thing I came across was how the Islamic culture looked at scultpures as the work of satin. I was wondering what parts about the sculptures caused them to think of it as satin, was it the expression or that sculptures took on the figures of bodies. While i thought of that it made me connect that to the Amish culture and how they do not allow their dolls to have faces because they believe satin can find his way through it and also they do not allow themselves in photos because of the devil being able to possibly reach their souls.

The next thing that caught me was about the mosque. The height of the columns threw me because you walk into churches and structures from the past ages and the size and height is the first thing you notice, they seem like the go on forever. So to see that Córdoba had columns that were only 9ft tall was what threw me off. The color of the arches with red and white reminded me of a festival and in Spain, they have many of them so it does reflect its culture.

Chapter 10 was a fun chapter to read. There was a lot of connection that I could make to my personal life, where I grew up, and the places that I have visited.

In Dickeyville, we were not the home of any type of mascot or person, in Dickeyville, we were known as “The home of the Grotto.” I knew right away looking at the small photo in the left hand corner, what path that the reading was going to lead down.

The Grotto, if you have not visited, surround our Catholic church on main street. When I was young and my friends and I would ride our bikes around town, we would always ride up to the church and ride through the Grotto. The Grotto are these walls that stand about 8ft tall and create a path that you can walk through and the walls are made up of different colored stone, broken pieces of china dishes, cherubs and Christian figurines. In one section, there is a half dome that surrounds Mary and has steps leading up to the feet of her where you can worship and pray beneath her.

The walls of the basilica and the artwork that shows in the reading, behind the religious figures it shows bright colors representing the importance of the person as well as the  representing the heavenly light in some. Behind the statue of Mary as the Grotto, the stones go from the center being the brightest, in yellow, to orange, and then to blue, it accentuates Mary in the middle of the work.

With Dickeyville being known for a religious attraction, many people around me as well as the friends that I grew up with either went to the catholic school, or during Wednesday nights, they would attend religion class, I never attended either so I was a bit foreign to any religion. The only time I attended church was for weddings or funerals. Learning about some of the Saints and who they were in this reading was new knowledge to me as well as how some of the artwork was interpreted.  

During my first year at NICC, I made a few new friends and we were hanging around Dyersville waiting to meet up with some others for a party. I have always heard of the Basilica, but didn’t know what it was for, besides the pope, where it was and what it meant. While we were waiting, the friend I was with decided to show me around town so first we went to the Field of Dreams, also never been before, and then he thought of the Basilica. This was in the beginning of December so when we went into the Basilica, it was decorated with poinsettias and walking through the entryway, the small arches, and then it opened up, it was breathtaking. The artwork that lines the walls and ceiling, decorated with gold highlighting the religious figures, was definitely something I have never seen before and also beautiful, thinking about the time it took to create and the story behind them.

I really like that the main source of information about this civilization is from the tombs, in relation to how there was a lot of information found by the tombs in the Egyptian culture. The certain things that they took from other civilizations was interesting to me because it was something as little as the position that the sculptures were in and what they were doing. I understood that style was something that traveled from civilization to civilization, but I did not know that they paid attention to the position that they were putting their sculptures into until I started focusing on Ancient Greece because they started becoming less 2D like with the Egyptians. My first reaction when seeing their sculptures was style picked up from the Greeks but the temple reminded me of an Asian/ Chinese style.

It makes me a little curious about their acceptance of death. How they would identify the urns if they were male and female but also they made the urns into something that you were supposed to like the look of. Although it is a little odd to me, it is very creative. The thought of that being the resting place of a loved one from cremation does make is a little less depressing. I used to think that it was rude for people at funerals to laugh and I never understood why people did that, joke about life and laugh at the past, when it was such a sad time. When I got a little older my mother explained to me that it was the way that most people like to cope, instead of crying, they like thinking of the happy times and it helps their minds feel at peace during such a sad time and im starting to think that this was maybe their way of making light of a dark situation.

Looking at the sarcophagus’, I think they believed the afterlife to be a very relaxed after party. With the sculptures being relaxed, looking like they were making a toast, it was not an afterlife of seriousness. I like that idea because it is like the person is still there sending themselves off, celebrating with the people around them letting them know, they lived a good life and now it is time for them to go . It surprises me that the tombs they found were still in decent shape, it ties in with the articles, that since they were left in the elements of nature, they took care of themselves and did not have the elements from humans like fake light and unnatural temperature changes due to the amount of people around them.

Ancient Greece has always been said to be the civilization that was the foundation for everything that we have now such as government money power and systems. Ancient Greece was the home of gods and goddesses, their beliefs and rituals were much different than the past civilizations that we had learned about. What i thought was the biggest difference between the Ancient Greece and other civilizations such as the Egyptians is that when one of them died, they did not preserve the body but instead created what we call Head stones now and created a resting space rather than offering them to the gods.

The art that the Greeks created was much more modern that than the past ones we have looked at and quite advanced. You can see how there is more detail in the physique of the statues and also the features such as the hair.

In the beginning of the chapter, you learned that these civilizations had little to no concept of hand written language. Most of the researchers now are not able to interpret what the civilizations were about because of the lack of communication through handwriting. What we can go on is their work of art. They made the idols that were sculpted out of marble. Looking at this artwork and comparing it tot the others, i noticed that the lack of body detail was present on the idols compared to the sculptures of the Egyptians and other civilizations.

What was a different tone was the sculpture that was the lady holding the snakes. In one of the civilizations it referenced the Greek god Zues and his relations to the creation of a Minotaur. Here the lady holding snakes was a sign of fertility and positive meanings, but back with the age of the Greek gods and goddesses Medusa had a head full of snakes and turned people into stone when their eyes met. That connection led to to foreshadow that some of these civilizations may have stemmed from the world of the gods and goddesses.

Egypt, like the instructor said, is one of the most familiar civilizations that we have talked about so far. I believe it was fifth grade when we went in depth about the Pharaohs of Eygpyt were the kings and they would dress with jewels when they would be buried in their sarcophagus.

Pyramids themselves are pieces of artwork. Still to this day I wonder how they were created by the slaves and laborers of Egypt.

Movies like the Mummy have brought these pyramids and the structures of the Sphinx to life. Even though it is Hollywood, it showed the parts of the pyramids that were used as burial grounds for the kings and their queens.

The Egyptians drawing of the men and rulers were very two dimensional. Along with the structures of the body in the past civilizations, how they draw them with their hips broad to the viewer with the feet and head in one direction, it shows a similarity between the civilizations that makes me wonder if they learned from each other, or if it came from a common denominator.

In the very first piece we ready about, with the organization trying to save the natural artwork and they ended up ruining it, with the travelers and known locations of pyramids and the Egyptians ruins, it surprises me that there are still the many artifacts and structures that we still have today.

This chapter has given me a lot of new destinations that I want to visit. The Neolithic Era was said to be where skills changed from hunting and gathering, to more of how to take care of the land and animals to be able to live off of them. With this change, it was easy to understand because in the Midwest, it is huge for farming and agriculture. Since they were able to learn about the irrigation and finding a control with a certain government outline and being able to have the civilians obtain jobs, that was how they starts to actually create a town and community. Agriculture is a major part of the community in the Midwest. Back when I lived in Wisconsin, majority of us were born into a farming family, or knew somebody that was. Everywhere you drive, you were surrounded by the fields of corn, hay, and beans, and it makes you realize how many jobs agriculture creates.

Mesopotamia, was the first civilization that I recognized while reading. The name was very familiar but I was not completely sure of what they were all about and what they were known for. I thought it was interesting how it was the land between two rivers which made It and easy target for war but also a good target for trading. I believe that it probably why they were taken over, because it was a good location for trade and then the civilizations that populates it could make a good coming.

The cylinder seals were really cool. Back in middle school for our art class we were given a rubbery square piece that we had to carve out certain designs, and then we would imprint them onto a piece of paper. We did that project because we were learning at the time how they created the prints with the raised designs. It was a bit difficult at first because you had to carve out the space you wanted to be imprinted, so it played a little mind game because to me I though you would want to carve out the minor details, so to see that they did this back then and how their impressions were made was really cool.

I have chosen the Venus figures as my research topic. In the book as well as the text read on the web, most of the figures only support the body parts of the breasts, stomach, and genitals of women. People have related the figures as a symbol of fertility. Other theories I have read are, examples of self portraits, their realistic picture of women, a real goddess, and also an early form of pornography. I believe that it is a symbol of fertility, but it also has much more of a meaning. Most of the sculptures do  not have feet or hands. I believe this is a symbol of how women are not to work with their hands, no manual labor, and they do not have feet because it symbolizes how they are not to leave or move on from their life, they are solely in life to serve a man for please and reproduction, which I highly disagree with.  

Chapter 3 Overview:

I thought it was interesting on the evolution of how art was created from when they started in the Stone Age with rocks and sticks and blood even, to now where we are printing 3D sculptures from a spool of fiber. Back in the stone age and prehistoric time, they are said to have made pigment out of plants and animal matter. I think that is very gory but quite impressive. The carvings and paintings that are found in caves are interesting, I love how it shows where they can see the motion in a drawing based how it was created, like the “Hall of Running Bulls.” Being able to show movement on a flat surface with color that was made from materials found from animals and plants was a creation then and had been the reason to evolution now. 

Stonehenge:

This location has been on my bucket list since I saw it in the beginning of a movie. Some people look at it and think, whatever, it’s a bunch of rock standing up. I think of it a little deeper like how they got there, how did those massive things stand up? I am always curious as to what types of rituals or ceremonies where held here is any. I may think it looks like this beautiful place to visit, but little could I know, it was a place they may have done sacrifices. Astronomy and how the stars align are an interest of mine. The civilization is said to have used this as a possible sundial, which is incredible, and makes me wonder how they were to think like that. They are the real geniuses. They started with scratch, somehow managed to put all of these rock together and create a way to tell time based on the way the sun casted a shadow on them.