I think you'll do fine Hippie! You have just the right attitude to do well in such an environment with those challenges.
Match made in heaven :D
——
My sword project has his a small snag: the pure silver wire that's supposed to wrap the hilt of my swod snaps when I'm in the process of twisting it. It twists beautifully, but the untwisted strands held in the clamps I use for the rwisting frequently break. So I have wasted pure silve wire that's good for nothing.
Next up I've ordered some stirling silver instead, it should be a lot strronger!
If that fails too though I will resort to stainless steel.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion
2015 Rant/Share/General Discussion thread
Friday afternoon I had a little surgery… I couldn't move (or wasn't allowed to, anyways) for about 8 hours… So they kept me overnight… but the next day my cellphone could not be found… It's possible that they will find it, but somehow I don't feel too optimistic about it… except for my surgery, I feel a lot better…
tupapayon wrote:I know this feeling all too well. I had surgery myself a few years ago. I took the option for a spinal anesthetic because if I had gone with sleeping gas I would've suffocated due to having to lie on my stomach for the surgery.
Friday afternoon I had a little surgery… I couldn't move (or wasn't allowed to, anyways) for about 8 hours… So they kept me overnight… but the next day my cellphone could not be found… It's possible that they will find it, but somehow I don't feel too optimistic about it… except for my surgery, I feel a lot better…
Imagine hours later… your bladder is full but you can't relieve yourself due to the anesthetic blocking the function of certain muscles. Thanks to the nurse's suggestion, I never appreciated the power of gravity more than I did that day. T_T
tupapayon wrote:
Friday afternoon I had a little surgery… I couldn't move (or wasn't allowed to, anyways) for about 8 hours… So they kept me overnight… but the next day my cellphone could not be found… It's possible that they will find it, but somehow I don't feel too optimistic about it… except for my surgery, I feel a lot better…
Glad you're feeling better now, tupapayon!
ozoneocean wrote:
I think you'll do fine Hippie! You have just the right attitude to do well in such an environment with those challenges.
Match made in heaven :D
Thanks, oz! It's always nice to get a little vote of confidence. :)
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My readings for this week are crazy! I have to do the normal readings for my Russian history course but then I'm also doing a presentation the following week on that week's readings, so I want to have both done a week from now. And then the readings from my other classes on top of that. Usually I break up my readings day-by-day and it's not so bad, but even having done that it's only the first day and I'm behind. D: It always takes longer to read things that I have to engage with more deeply, i.e. write or present on.
—
I just finished reading a really interesting book for my Curatorial course called Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art. It's always a treat when I get to read non-academic books for classes! The guy who masterminded the con seemed like a complete sociopath who lured a lot of vulnerable people into participating in his crimes. The public seems to have largely forgiven the forger himself, which is kind of nice as he seems from the book and other readings like an alright guy who was in a tough situation. They've even given him a few TV shows. I really enjoyed it, but as a history student/museum lover it was kind of painful to read about people tampering with artifacts and archives!
HippieVan wrote:I haven't - that's what I should do! The Brothers really does require more time than I have…!
KimLuster wrote:
You're making me want to read The Brothers Karamazov again!
Always a good choice! Have you read The Double? It's really atmospheric and creepy, one of my favourites of Dostoevsky (and much shorter than The Brothers Karamazov!).
HippieVan wrote:
I just finished reading a really interesting book for my Curatorial course called Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art. It's always a treat when I get to read non-academic books for classes! The guy who masterminded the con seemed like a complete sociopath who lured a lot of vulnerable people into participating in his crimes. The public seems to have largely forgiven the forger himself, which is kind of nice as he seems from the book and other readings like an alright guy who was in a tough situation. They've even given him a few TV shows. I really enjoyed it, but as a history student/museum lover it was kind of painful to read about people tampering with artifacts and archives!
I haven't read that, but the history of the 20th century attitude to all art is pretty interesting and not often questioned too closely:
My is Leonardo da Vinci so famous now? What's the big deal with the Mona Lisa? Why is Van Gough so celebrated? Those sorts of things.
As young students we're led to beleive there's a holy progression of art from a begining towards some sort of enlghtenment… Which is all a completely silly, totally artifical narrative. There is no progression, just changes in style according to fashion, cultural influence (mixing with other cultures) and cultural needs (religion etc).
In the 20th century people would write about the art that happened to make it into museums and major collections and base their theories on that, not wondering WHY those peices made it into the collections, which is more important in many ways.
Van Gough and daVinci are two great examples of artists where attitudes towards them have been driven by collectors.
I just finished Genshiken and Genshiken Nidaime. Great slice of life about otaku. Not necesasrily laugh out loud but well drawn characters who actually change over the series and grow because it takes place over years from Comicfest to Comicfest ro college graduation. It's also refreshing to see college characters as opposed to everyone stuck in 9th or 10th grade.
The references to other anime are funny as all get out when you notice them. Genshiken was done in 2006-7 and Genshiken Nidaime (second generation) was done in 2013 but it follows the story line chronologically only happening a year later. But what a year! Watch for the Easter eggs and how one character is based on Rika from Haganai (who I love. Gotta love an enthusiatic pervert who subverts everything into her own fantasies) And there may be more to come as the ending was kind of open implying that life goes on… An ending that isn't really an ending, just the climax to that chapter of life.
Glad to hear you're on the up tupapayon.
Van Gogh, or at least a version of his life story, came to represent how people understood modern art and artists for some reason. It's a story loosely based on fact that makes it very difficult to look at his work objectively.
The same is true for da Vinci, who is supposed to be this renaissance genius who invented the modern world before anyone else thought of it. This seems to come from interpretations of his doodles well after the fact - they had no influence on science. His anatomical drawings are deservedly famous. The most interesting thing about the Mona Lisa is all the parodies it generates. Dali's is still my favourite.
Dali. <3 I will forever cherish his episode of What's My Line, in which he basically refuses to answer "No" to any question.
ozoneocean wrote:
I haven't read that, but the history of the 20th century attitude to all art is pretty interesting and not often questioned too closely:
My is Leonardo da Vinci so famous now? What's the big deal with the Mona Lisa? Why is Van Gough so celebrated? Those sorts of things.
The book definitely raises some interesting questions about these things! There's one interesting bit where one of the forger's works is declared by the buyer to be the artist's greatest masterpiece, and he still sort of believes that even after it's revealed as a forgery. But of course it loses all value both to collectors and galleries once it's exposed.
The forger also becomes very cynical about galleries and art collectors, as they jump to buy his forgeries because of the signature on them even when they aren't very good. At the same time I think he enjoys having his work displayed, having failed as an artist in his own right.
—
Being in a class with art history students is going to take some getting used to. Their form of history is a lot more touchy-feely than my usual history classes. And they talk about art with this real reverence - I love art, but my interest has always been mostly in things like comics and storybook illustrations. So when they're talking about how art is an expression of the soul and whatnot, I find myself a bit skeptical.
Thank you all for your good wishes… and yes, I feel I'm getting somewhere… either recovery or grave. but somewhere…
HippieVan wrote:I once met this art student, told him I liked drawing… we talked a little about art, classic artist… when he saw my drawings he said with certain desdain: Oh! They're cartoons… we never became friends… go figure…
Being in a class with art history students is going to take some getting used to. Their form of history is a lot more touchy-feely than my usual art classes. And they talk about art with this real reverence - I love art, but my interest has always been mostly in things like comics and storybook illustrations. So when they're talking about how art is an expression of the soul and whatnot, I find myself a bit skeptical.
I tend to be a little cynical with some modern abstract art of the 'sloppy' variety. Pollack paintings, for example. I really do love looking at them - but I don't feel it takes any true special talent or deep inspiration to splatter paint on a canvas. I know, I know… I'm a Philistine, one of the unenlightened proles…! "You just don't get it" I was told once, when observing a painting that was a splotch of red on a white background. I 'failed' to see the 'tortured strokes' extracted from the memory of the artist who once served as a combat medic, when he saw never-ending white bandages, soaked in red. While I did appreciate the history, it didn't help that I mentioned the painting brought to my mind a used tampon! Don't get me wrong - I LOVE some abstract art and surreal art (love Dali and Picasso), but sometimes, with 'sloppy' abstract art, I think it's like the Emperor's New Clothes - we see he's nude but are afraid to say it!! Not me - I'm the child that shouts "He's Naked!!"
tupapayon wrote:I had that experience in school but then in all seriousness I told them I saw the world as a very silly and cartoony place…
I once met this art student, told him I liked drawing… we talked a little about art, classic artist… when he saw my drawings he said with certain desdain: Oh! They're cartoons… we never became friends… go figure…
And they'd admit that they spent their summers drawing caricatures on the boardwalk.
That wasn't as bad as my laughing out loud at the end of Catch-22. Super serious existentialists just couldn't appreciate the utter ridiculous hilarity of Yossarian attempting to escape the war by rowing from Italy to Sweden.
People who blab on about an emotional connection to art don't really understand it. Unfortunatly a mythology has developed around artwork… it's basically the amatuear way of connecting with it because people who weren't educated in art had no way of understanding the history or the conceptual decisions behind it. They were told that it was valuable and special so they connected with it in the only way they knew.
Modern art is fine. The only issue is that you need a degree to be able to understand it. It's not really relatable unless you read the same texts as the artist. And even then most of the value in art is created by criticts and collectors. It's a market that involes a lot of inflated, artificial worth and speculation.
HippieVan wrote:
Just lost a bid on ebay for a beautiful vintage compact…it was unused, gold with a peacock etched into it. So pretty. :( I think ebay auctions are too stressful for me.
That's a real shame hippie! Sometimes you're just unlucky… The best and most stressful way to win is to wait till the last 10 seconds to put in your main bid. Really gets the hear racing and the sweat pouring. Juist DON'T be tempted to exceede your limit in that moment. :(
I won a beautiful antique Edwardian frock coat the other day. I can't wait till it gets to me. It was a cool win too. The auction was ending at 3am so I put in my maximum bid at 1.30am and went to sleep. When I woke up for work I found I'd won it and it didn't go anywhere near my maximim! I got it super cheap. That almost NEVER happens.
Hello my darling Drunk Duck friends:
I know I have been missing from these forum discussions and pretty non-existent, save for the main page for Monday news and features every other week. I have a legitimate reason, I swear! I have been studying for a four hour exam over the last few weeks. I have been preparing for it and balancing out my stress by limiting time spent procrastinating.
Anyway, today was exam day and I am now waiting for the final results. I arrived at the testing site two hours early and I managed to take the entire four hour exam with NO BREAKS! I even raised my hand, twice, to signal the proctor that I needed a break. I felt nauseous immediately after the exam period and I had to sit in my car for a few minutes before I could safely drive out of the test site. I have already received the scores for two sections, and so far it looks promising. I will just be a bit on edge until the results for the third part are graded.
I have been watching the fake documentary show on IFC, Documentary Now!, and it is pretty funny. It's a show about fake journalists that give reports and interviews on events in Mexico/Iceland/Nunavut that never happened. It gets so ridiculous at times that I laugh out loud.
After fifteen years, I finally was able to watch Ninja Scroll from beginning to end. The scenes are still very graphic and quite disturbing, but I am finally an appropriate age to watch it now. The first ten minutes of the anime alone make me question the person at the video store that allowed me to rent it when I was still a minor.
@Ironscarf- that is a GREAT Dali of the Mona Lisa. I am always going to be partial to Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. version mainly because it reads like "Elle a chaud au cul" which translates to "She is hot in the ass"
@Bravo- Genshiken!! I have not seen that since college, but I remember when I would watch it with my University's anime club, it hit really close to home and it was like staring into a mirror. I think it was very relatable to anime fans.
@Kim- Jackson Pollock is one of the few abstract artists that resonate with me. I was flipping through my art history text book one night and his Lucifer piece stood out and I just stared at it for a while. I think it was the unusual title that made the work take on more meaning.
@Ozone- Congratulations on your antique Edwardian frock coat win! Can I just say that you probably own the most unique wardrobe out of everyone on Drunk Duck?
@Hippie- I have never used the auction option on eBay because of the stress of not winning the item. I usually just Buy It Now and check out instantly.
@TuPapa- Let's hope for a steady recovery. I never ran into many elitist art students in college. I lucked out because my college mentor in art history was really into comics and even drew her own webcomic. I even had several professors who would incorporate comics into their lectures.
And oh my goodness, the Pope is currently stateside. Hopefully, he will use his powers to send a counterattack against that Baphomet statue in Detroit, Michigan. It would be like chess in real life!
I hope you did well on that exam, Kawaii. :)
Great. I start a new game of The Sims 4 after finally getting its first expansion, and I find that a new world's been added. It's completely devoid of any buildings, but you can still build there. I guess the purpose is to add your own collection of Sims to the place? While I'm sorely tempted to create Sim versions of DDers to add to the game, I'm pretty sure that will creep them out. So instead I'll just load them from the Sims 4 community gallery. :)
ozoneocean wrote:Kind of like commodities trading. I overheard a friend during his exhibition in a gallery compare the art market to that.
Modern art is fine. The only issue is that you need a degree to be able to understand it. It's not really relatable unless you read the same texts as the artist. And even then most of the value in art is created by criticts and collectors. It's a market that involes a lot of inflated, artificial worth and speculation.
But as for needing a degree to understand modern art? That broke me up because some very cogent analyses of modern art has come from children. If anything education can often stifle someone's appreciation of art. You overthink it. I recently walked through a contemporary art exhibit in Philadelphia talking with one of the curators. Sometimes a modern piece means nothing because it was just the artist experimenting with shape. The artist didn't intend any meaning, the viewer puts it there. Or it was the artist having fun. Kind of like a Haydn compostion. Joy, release and a good time flinging stuff at the canvas.
Sometimes understanding a modern abstract piece can be as simple as mimicing the motions the artist made while creating the brushwork. Or just knowing what negative space and symmetry are. There are times I put my nose right up to the canvas to appreciate the motions of the artist's brush and body while creating. I've done it with Pollack.
If you get a chance go to the Andrew Wyeth museum in Brandywine Penna. And if you can get the tour from his granddaughter Victoria. His brushwork is amazing and sometimes that's all it was. His brush interpreting what he saw and how he was going to get that on his canvas. (Or whatever media he used.)
But that's just me. I don't care about critics I get into what the artist did and how he did it. And often the historical context has nothing to do with it because the guy created without caring about history because he wanted to create.
I have a degree in art history, and in all honesty, there was a time that I could not step foot in a museum because of the snob appeal that was attached to it.
Academics have made a distinction made between Modern Art and Contemporary Art even though there is some overlap in the dates. The late Albert Boime, a modern art history professor at UCLA, introduced his course starting from the Napoleonic era of the early 1800s ending with the Impressionists in the late-19th century. Contemporary art usually means that the artist is still alive today or that it was created post-WWII.
When studying or writing about modern art, it is interesting to understand it from a social approach rather than a formalist reading of the paints and canvas used. Modern art was a reaction to its predecessors and was used as a commentary on what constituted "art".
Contemporary art, on the other hand, is a mixed bag of avante garde to kitsch to cutting edge performance art. I have been to contemporary exhibits where wall was painted yellow accompanied by a wall plaque. There was another exhibit where the art was a pile of paper and the viewer could interact with it by taking a piece home. There have been many times where I have accidentally touched a white painted wall or sat on an unmarked bench before learning it was the art exhibit.
I am a bit of a kinesthetic and visual person. I like to figure out how something was done. It's the art student in me wanting to appreciate the form by emulating it. The old "hey I can do that. I'm an artist and creator and that's how I look at stuff.
I'll never forget the moment I was in an Impressionist exhibit and realized I had been portraying nature precisely the same way without ever realizing. And I was aghast but in a flash of insight understood the movement. I looked closely at the brush work and flowed with it. That was something I had never gotten in lectures or reading.
But again that's me and it is often a very personal experience.
@Kawaii: I hate that it seems I'm stomping on something dear to someone else…! I, too, enjoy looking at Pollock paintings, and I do sometimes feel like I'm drifting into them, almost mantra-like.
.
My eyes will chase and follow the patterns and lines, sometimes shapes will start to form… The problem is… the EXACT same thing happens when I stare at the stipple-patterns on my bedroom ceiling! Or the faux rock-grain patterns on my vinyl bathroom floor! Or tree leaves! Or clouds! I simply don't think there's any purposefully meaning in Pollock's paintings! By that I mean what he was trying to do. I do think he was aware of the viewing eye's (and mind's) propensity to create 'meaning' from chaotic shapes and patterns, and that's something, but I don't think it takes any special talent or insight to do that…
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"Yeah, then why don't you go do it yourself and make millions?" I've been tauntedly asked. Well, lightning in a bottle…! Anybody that does so today will just be called a Pollock-wannabe ;) I wish I could come up with an idea that didn't take much effort, but everyone thought was genius, and I'd make millions! :D
I know what you mean, Bravo.
Slides or photographs are never able to fully emulate the experience of seeing an actual painting up close. I love standing six inches from a Piet Mondrian painting while noticing the light pencil lines and faint shades of gray that are difficult to see in a photo.
The first time I went to the MoMA in New York was an overwhelming experience for me because I was able to see Starry Night (van Gogh), The Sleeping Gypsy (Rousseau), and all the Mondrians. There were paintings that I had known since I was a young child, but only saw through poster prints. My memory from that day is pretty blurry from the tears that welled up in my eyes.
And KimL, no need to worry about stomping on anything near or dear, Pollock is nowhere near my favourite artist. His works are perfect examples of disorder and chaos that I have used as a contrast against other works of order and simplicity.
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