dropspots

My friend Sammie showed me something interesting and I think many people sould get in on this.
Check out this site:
http://www.dropspots.org/

I think this is certainly worth a try, who kows what extraordinary things could happen.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

An Ancient Gesture
I thought as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron;
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture, - a gesture which implied

To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.

He learned it from Penelope...

Penelope, who really cried.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 - October 19, 1950) was an American, lyrical poet. And a personal favorite of mine. And when I say favorite I mean it. I only obsess over two poets and they are her and T. S. Eliot. I find her work exceptional and incredibly moving. I mean, the flow and prose is simply wonderful.

She was born in Rockland, Maine and her mother was a nurse while her father was a school teacher. Where her name is derived from is intersting; apparently her middle name - St. Vincent - comes from the name of a hospital where her uncle's life was saved just days prior to her birth. Later she insisted on being called "Vincent", she thought it plain.

Her parents divorced in 1904 which resulted in her, her mother and her sisters (Norma and Kathleen) moving from town to town. And despite being poor and in nearly constant motion her mother was never without her truck on literature that she often read to her children, this collection included William Shakespear and John Milton. Eventually Millay and her family settled in Camden, Maine.

Here is where she wrote her first poem.

Her literary career really began in 1912 whe she netered her poem Renascence (I'd post it if it weren't 214 lines long) into a poetry contest in a magazine called The Lyric Year. This actually ruffled up quite a controversy. It was widely recieved as the best submission but it was ultimately placed 4th in the contest. Even the first place winner (Orrick Johns - who I encourage you to also read up on) felt Millay should have won. Almost immediatley following this strange ordeal for Millay her poem was recited at some sort of banquet that so impressed a wealthy woman; Caroline B. Dow, that she paid for Millay's college education at Vassar.

In 1923 she won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and was the first woman to be honored for this. This is when she gained a lot of popularity in America, though her reputation was soon damaged when she wrote poetry in suport of the Allied effort during WW2.

During her time in college she was a bit...promiscuous. This was with both men and women, and this influenced a great deal of her poetry. But in 1923 she married Eugen Jan Boissevan, though their marriage was an open one with both taking many lovers. One of her lovers was a fellow poet George Dillon, she wrote several of her sonnets about him. Such as -

Sonnet II: Time does not bring relief

Time does not bring relief, you all have lied

Who told me time would ease my pain!

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,

And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;

But last year's bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear

To go - so with his memory they brim.

And entering with relief some quiet place

Where never fell his foot or shone his face

I say, "There is no memory of him here!"

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Her husband died of lung cancer in 1949, and then she was found dead at the bottom of her stairs in October, 1950. The cause of the fall was unknown. Her work is still widley celebrated and she is considered on of America's greatest female poets.

Her most famous poem is First Fig from A Few Figs From Thistles.

An intersting bit is that mathematicians recognize her sonnet Euclid Alone has Beauty Bare as an expression of mathematical beauty.

To me her work respresents something quite beautiful. Every time I read An Ancient Gesture I feel an acheing in my chest. I tend to overlook her somewhat risque love life as it influened some of the most beautiful poems I have ever read. I feel as though her words twinge and tug at my heartstrings. They both agonize and writhe with lust, love, and a dull, throbbing heartache. I am often at a loss for words when I try to discuss her work.

Its just so wonderful.

The Graduate

In my film class we watched "The Graduate". Having never really watched the film, but having a rough idea of the plot I knew what to expect. Well, I thought I knew what to expect. I had anticipated a film that mirrored what we see with films like "American Pie" today, but this hit something on a much deeper level.

I feel as though this film is both underrated and exalted at the same time. What I mean is that it seems to me that people make way too much of the movie without really understanding the truer or deeper meanings of the film. Many aspects of this are overlooked.

For those who don't know the plot, I will sum it up. A man named Ben (Dustin Hoffman) comes home after recently graduating from college to spend time at home before he picks a graduate school. This stress weighs on him a great deal. The relationship he has with his family isn't really confronted too much other than the fact that they don't listen to him very often and assume they know what he truly wants. They throw a party for him and there he runs into Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). She is an unsual and semi-innapropriate woman and asks Ben to drive her home as she has had a bit to drink. Once they reach her home she bullies him into coming in and propositions him. He is uncomfortable and leaves as soon as he can, which happens to be when Mr. Robinson comes home. They eventually begin an affair which lasts the entire summer. As time wears on a bit more and no one being any the wiser, Mr. Robinson sets Ben up with his daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross), much to Mrs. Robinson's dismay.

On him and Elaine's first date he takes her to strip club and humiliates her. She starts to cry and runs off, her feels guilty and apologizes. He ends up kissing her and they build a relationship from there. He actually falls in love with her. When Mrs. Robinson finds out she threatens to tell her daughter everything so Ben races off to tell Elaine first to give his side of the story. This all blows up in his face and he is forbidden to se Elaine and Mrs. Robinson as well as Mr. Robinson is furious. The families fall apart. Elaine goes back off to college and Ben follows her. She feels disgusted knowing what she does about the affair, but still has feelings for him. Shes a bit wishy washy. Turns out that she is engaged to another man, Carl; and plans to marry him, though Ben also proposes and she says 'yes', well, more of a maybe. In the end Elain goes off to mary Carl and Ben crashes the wedding and Elaine runs off with him. They catch a bus and head off, we aren't exatly sure where they are going and neither are they.

(sometimes I am just god-awful at summarizing things)

Lets start with the characters:

Ben- all the characters seem to be cloaked in various stages of misery. When we meet Ben he is confused and somewhat of a pushover. A girl in my class says she liked him in the beginning and hated him in the end. I completely disagree. I found him to be a bit repulsive in the start of the film. He was weak-willed and had the audacity to have an affair with a married woman. He also would not confront his problems and simply pushed them to the back burner. In the end he never did choose a graduate school. He is sniveling and cowardly. But as the movie progresses he developes a bit of a back bone as he wants badly to be with Elaine. He eventually puts it all on the line in efforts to win her. He redeems himself in pushing forward with what he wants. Yes, he is reckless in his way of executing these things, but love certainly does that. He beats on the windows and screams her name, completely making a fool of himself in order to pull her back to him.

Mrs. Robinson- she is the most miserable of the characters. Stuck in a loveless marriage and clearly starved for affection, though I don't imagine that was her first affair. She seems malicious in her intent but I don't imagine it was her goal to destroy Ben's life. Though I am certain she was quite jealous of his potental as well as Elaine's. In fact when Elaine is running off with Ben and Mrs. Robinson wants her to stay with Carl and live a miserable life as well.

Whether her intentions towards Ben were cruel or not, in the end she is still the antagonist and creates a good portion of the conflict. But we can't take all the blame off Ben.

Elaine- her character isn't too developed. She is a pretty girl and a smart girl and clearly a good match for Ben. She is fickle and easily manipulated, very quickly swayed however. She seems to fall in and out of love and just as unsure as Ben is about what she wants. She also seems quite childish, screaming like an infant when Ben says something that upsets her. When I say screaming I mean shrieking, a sort of blood-curdling scream.

My class ovelooked the moral dilemmas and the significance of these types of relationships. No one could look past the drama of the situations to really dive into the intricate ties between all these characters. The jealousy, latent rage, embarassment, and indecisivness. This film can speak on so many levels. This isn't just another film about a turid love affair gone awry.

The soundtrack is pretty wonderful as well and played inot nicely to the drama. The pairing of the songs, the fading or getting louder in al the right places. Spectacular.

Doodles: Birds

As I have said before, I like to sketch and doodle. As of late its been birds, birds, and more birds. I don't claim to be all that good at it, but I'm exponentially better than I used to be. My use of line has greatly improved.
I dare say my use of line has greatly improved.

I must get a better angle on color though. I love it dearly and I am afraid it eludes me at times. Someties I go a tad overboard and I am never fully satisfied. Though my friend Joshua Berardi helped me in discovering the root of this.

Until I can really tackle a piece on a larger scale that isn't just a master copy I need to stick with my smaller pieces and work my way up. I have a habit of trying to say too much in just one piece and never completely expressing myself. I feel its a common problem. I think I'll just start a small series or study soon enough to hone my skills. I feel like such an amateur...my confidence is wavering.

(I realize these photos aren't the best quality but my poor scanner is on the fritz)

My disdain for Mark Rothko

As both an artist (not a very good one, but still) and an art history researcher I often come across artists that are exalted for their ground breaking work. Most of the time these artists should be recognized for what they do, other times I'm more than taken aback by what some people consider great. Mark Rothko is one of the latter, along with artists like Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner.
So, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was a latvian-born american painter and printmaker. Though classified as an abstract expressionist he labeled himself simply as an abstract painter. While I could delve into his childhood and travels, I sort want to jump right ahead to his work and influences. He developed his style around 1936 when he began writing a book, which ne never completed; about the similarities between the art of children and that of modern artists. While his ideas about how children draw and how we all start is accurate, as he continues to develope his ideas he seems to get more and more...outrageous. It is as if he is fishing for reasons to explain his own work. His most famous work is classified as color field painting. The characteristics of this genre of painting are as follows:
--large fields of expressive color
--non-objective
--simplified, essentialized compositions
--"subtle nuances"
--tragic subline; collective unconcious: collective unconcious was a theory developed by Carl Jung. It is based on his observation that there are universal symbols that are present across different cultures. These occur in dreams and myth to reveal a deep unconcious connection among all human beings.
He also abandoned the idea of naming his pieces. The first 3 characteristics I see, the other 2...well, I'll leave you to judge that for yourselves, but I believe they are empty words hes throwing out to give his work more meaning than it holds.

Here is the first example I have of his. We see 3 fields of color, 2 shades of red, one panel of a cream color, a rough brown border and dividing lines. This. Is. NOT. a great piece of art. Where are these mystical, "subtle nuances", where is the tragic subline or collective unconcious? I just see red.

Some might say I need to expand my mind, others say I don't understand. Well, the truth is I don't understand. While I will agree that his assesment that as children we first step into the art world by using color to express ourselves. I can remember taking crayons and scribbling vast panes of color all over the page. But from there I grew, we all grow and develope. I feel he is spitting in the face of all those artists who strived to create the masterpeices we all know and love today.

I will say his use of color is powerful....that is all I see. I just see fields of color, undeveloped and lacking any semblence imagination or passion.

Gods in Art: Saturn/Cronus

I became fixated on a particularly dark painting recently, or more re-fixated. This piece is Saturn Devouring his Son (1819) by Francisco de Goya. It made me consider the various ways the gods are represented in art. They are shown in a godly way, shown as all powerful and to be feared beings. And on the other side we can see them depicted as malicious beasts. To understand the meanings behind these various depictions we need to know the history and story of Saturn or Cronus.

In Roman mythology he is Saturn and n Greek mythology he is Cronus, not to be confused with Chronos; the personification of time. The story behind him is roughly the same in both cultures. He was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of the Titans. The Titans were the descendents of Gaia/Terra (goddess of the earth) and Uranus/Caelus (god of the sky). Saturn/Cronus was the god of agriculture, justice, and strength. He was the deity of the harvest and often it is attributed for him to be holding a sickle in his left hand and a bundle of wheat in his right.

Gaia/Terra asked for help from Saturn/Cronus because Uranus/Caelus was placing some of his children under the earth, as he hated them - mainly the children with the fifty heads. Saturn/Cronus waited for his father and castrated him with his sickle. Fro the blood sprang forth the Giants, a fourth race of monsters, and the Furies whose purpose was to punish the sinners. They are referred to as "those who walk in the darkness". Aphrodite/Venus emerged where the member was cast into the sea.

As he desposed of his father he became ruler of the universe. He reignd with her sister, Ops/Rhea, who he also married, One day it was prophesied that he would lose power when one his children would rise up and kill him. To prevent this from happening he would swallow each of his children following their birth. Upon the birth of their 6th child, Jupiter/Zeus; he was spirited away to the island of Crete and Ops/Rhea placed a stone in swaddling cothes and tricked him into swallowing it. As Jupiter/Zeus grew up he was taken care of and aided by his grandmother Gaia/Terra. Once he reached adulthood he secured a job as cup-bearer to Saturn/Cronus and gave him a potion that caused him to vomit up Saturn/Cronus's five siblings; Vestia/Hestia, Ceres/Demeter, Juno/Hera, Pluto/Hades, and Neptune/Poseidon.

This started a war that nearly destroyed the universe. It ended with Saturn/Cronus being defeated and him and his brother being imprisoned in Tatarus, a dark region at the end of the earth. Jupiter/Zeus then took the throne and ruled. Another myth ends with Saturn/Cronus fleeing to Rome and establishing the Golden Age.

The myth and legend behind Saturn/Cronus paints various pctures about him. First he seems caring by helping his mother and siblings with the murder of his father, but it seems as though it was done to though selfish means. Then he becomes monsterous as he devours his children. And there there is the possibilty of him becoming a great leader in Rome. These conflicting views sotimes lead to confusion in how to show him in art but each artist figures out he wants to exemplify this god.

This is Cronus and Rhea (475 - 425 BCE) attributte to the Nausicaa painter. It is painted on a greek vase. Here we see Rhea handing over the stone for Cronus to swallow. This trickery among the gods is not umcommon in legends and is often depicted in the art world, but this story is the most commonly reference one. There is another depiction done in a relief sculpture.
This is Kronos and Rhea (Kronos is another accepted spelling). Artist is unknown.

Rhea is considered somewhat of a heroine for this. Had he known what might have he done?

He isn't aways shown this way, he often shown on his own as well.
This is Saturnus (1546) by Caravaggio. It is a drawing and shows him as a god; strong and powerful. This is a piece where Cronus/Saturn is exalted and adored. It looks similar to many of the statues adorning the Temple of Saturn located at the western end of the Forum Romanum, the heart of the commerce for ancient Romans.

This place is often visited during the festival of Saturnalia in ancient Rome.

The most interesting of pieces depicting Saturn/Cronus are the ones showing him as the mosterous being I imagine him to

be. Here we see Saturn Devouring his Son (1819) by Francisco de Goya. I love that here he seems primative and horrific. He grasps he body and literally tears it limb from limb. The blood and he look on his face is captivating. There is some weaknes in him eventhough he is the one devouring his son. It is as if he is completely fueled by fear. His twisted body and wide eyes leave me feeling uncomfortable, but I can't look away.

All in all, no matter how he is shown the general feeling is always the same, one of fear and power.