Memento

Once again I feel like deviating from the original topic of this blog to talk about a movie. Memento is a pretty interesting movie. The way that it's made is cool too. Memento is made from the end to the beginning. It starts off with Leonard, the anti-hero, killing the guy who raped and murdered his wife. Or so we believe. As the movie goes backwards we see how he gets up to the point where he kills John Ghammel, AKA Teddy, the guy who killed his wife. Now what also makes the movie interesting is that Lenny, that's his nickname, contracted a memory condition. He can't make any new memories. So to make up for that he takes pictures to remind himself of the people and places that he meets and goes to, respectivly.

In the end (beginning?) we see that things become clear and that everything unfolds (in the reverse order which does make it confusing). We see that Leonard is taken advantage of by various people that are supposed to be helping him. we also see that in his quest to obtain justice, and the end of the movie (the beginning of his story) that he possibly makes up his desire to kill John Gs inorder to just keep on living. The only way to really understand (????) the movie one must watch it though. 

Existentialist Movie

During our last Humanities class we learned about a philosophy called existentialism. Existentialism (it's a mouthful to say) is about the purpose of people on earth, which according to the idea is that there isn't one) and about the person's self. By that I mean that part of existentialism is believing that the person's personality comes after the action. For example: a person who believes in Freud's ideas (damn i don't know how to get rid of this black) about the human mind would say that a person does things based on the person's subconscious. The person's Id and Superego governs his/her life. People do things because there is a predetermined mind set based on the person's environment and the person's early life. In existentialism people are born without a mind set. A baby only does what it can to survive. A person does things just because that's what the person wanted to do at the time. these are some of the ideas of existentialism. So now to get back on track. Today I'm deviating from my normal theme because I feel existential (can this word be an adjective???) today. Today's post is about an existentialist film that is very down to earth. The movie is Groundhog Day. I saw it last year and was actually looking for a list of such films. I was trying to find something I saw so that it would be easier and found that Groundhog Day was existential. (Now that I think about it I think that Ms. Seltzer mentioned it).

Groundhog Day is about a guy named Phil. He is a weatherman who dislikes his colleagues and viewers. However he hates the groundhog at a small town called Punxsutawney more. It's Groundhogs Day and he is to go to that town to cover the story along with two others. So he goes and does his thing to try and be done with the job as quick as possible. After he finishes the job his crew and him try to leave the town during a blizzard. It fails and they are forced to go back to town. So when they get to the hotel they go to sleep. The next day Phil gets up and when he leaves the hotel, finds out that the day just repeated. He goes crazy at first and tries to leave or see if it's all a big joke. It's not- he is living the same day over and over again. Its interesting to see how he tries to live the same day over and over again. He starts of depressed and then realizes that there are no consequences in his life since he repeats his day over and over again. You can imagine what he does with that. He starts to rob banks, drink, smoke, and basically just do whatever he wants. After while of doing that he decides that he's had enough and wants to get things moving again. So he tries a number of things. He tries to be a good guy, tries to kill himself and tries to kill the groundhog (which is funnier than it sounds). After he realizes that it doesn't work to do that, he tries to spend his time bettering himself. He still steals some money from the bank, but now he uses it to take lessons in dancing, sculpting, painting, and many other things. And after about a years worth of time of doing all that he wakes up one day and finds that his life is moving again.
At first glance the movie is a classic comedy and tries to teach a basic lesson, but after learning about existentialism it is a bit more. The fact that the day repeats itself kind of symbolizes the fact that Phil feels that there is no meaning in his life. So the day keeps repeating until he finds his meaning in the world.
  

Russian Avant-Garde

During the early 1900's, Russia was having a revolution. This revolution changed the entire world and Russia especially. One such change was the paintings of Russia. This movement that originated as a french term was called the avant-garde, which literally means "vanguard." A vanguard is, in this case, a term used to describe people, in this case painters, who create styles and ideas ahead of their time; those who are the first to try out a new style. At the time of this movements awakening the Communist party took over Russia and began to spread its propaganda. The communist party wanted use art to help them achieve their goals of total control of their citizens. SO they encouranged pro-communist/Russian art while srictly banned paintings from anywhere else. They wanted people to be proud of their nation and culture. Here is one painting that is quite interesting:

The Dancing Soldiers

By: Mikhail Larionov

The Dancing Soldiers is a painting that has a russian, and slightly communist, feel to it. It's definatly not clear, unless one can read Russian, but there are three men and a dog. One man is dead drunk and is playing the accordionwhile the other two are cursing and playing cards. Although a realistic scene it's in an unrealistic setting. The 2-D plane makes it appear a bit as if the objects, including the people, are floating. Also the faces and figures of the people and objects are strange and distorted. And for some reason there is a horse in the background, which doesn't exactly make sense with the scene. The characteristics of this painting are completely Russian. There is a fauvistic color style here with only colors of Russian folk-art. Larionov actuall encouraged other Russian artists to stop copying western forms and styles. He wanted them to look towards traditional Russian styles and take bits and peices from there to create their works. However, maybe what Larionov really wanted to do was to show people the life of Russian soldiers. I mean come on, these guys aren't exactly living well. Yet he used purly Russian styles to appease, there's Mike's favorite word, the communist government so that he could get his art published.

Romantic Art

The Romantic Era started during the 1850's and ended in the mid-90's. The romactic era emphasized nature and the natural aspects of humans. Trancedentalists like Thoreau and Emerson complained about modern life. They believed that people should live according to nature and they wanted people to live simply. Trancedentalists thought that technology hindered mankind and deveated them from nature. They wanted people to live of the land and in solitude. I think that they just didn't like people. Since the romantic era was so long, there isn't really just one idea or even behind it. Well, there was one idea, but it was just the force behind the movement, not what started it. However, the time around which this period spawned trancedentalists was the industrial revolution, the early 1900's. During this time, machines, powered by steam and later electricity and gasoline/oil, became used. Machines like the car helped to replace horses, especially in the 20's where cars were sold on installment. Cars let people live further away from their jobs and allowed them to travel over long distances in private. Inventions like the vacuum cleaner, iron, and the lightbulb all became norms used to help with chores and increase leisure time. Now people had more time to do other things. And this time became a driving force in trancedentalism. People no longer had a simple wake up-go to work-come home routine. Now people had time to do many other things they wanted to do. Trancendentalists felt that this time was a bad thing to society and complicated peoples lives. Also they believed that this was all unnatural so we should all revert back and forget all these luxuries. Sadly much of the Romantic period is mostly based in literature so I can't really find a good american romantic painting. However, here is one just for the heck of it:

     Liberty Leading the People (1830)

Eugène Delacroix

Although the Romantic I was talking of was the American Romantic, this painting is part of the earlier European romantic.  

Neoclassicism Paintings

The neoclassic time period was from 1750-1830. This term literally means 'new classic' so we can assume that we are talking about some kind of rebirth. In fact this rebirth is of ancient Greek, Roman, and Renaissance art-especially paintings. This movement spread across Western Europe, but was only really used in France and England to express nationalism, courage, and sacrifice. This is due to the fact that during the late 1700's England was fighting the U.S. rebels who were trying to make the 13 colonies into a free nation. Also later on England fought the Americans in the war of 1812 and lost. So we can imagine that their paintings would show the bravery of their soldiers fighting the evil American savages. It's funny because later on, about 100 years later, England and the United States are best friends. Can we expect another British invasion anytime soon? But back to the topic. Neoclassic painting emphasized  rationality and traditional styles. Most figures were that of ancient Greek subjects from myths and liturature like the Illiad and the Odyssey. these artistists of the time took great care to try and depict scenes as accurate as possible based on those myths and peices of liturature. Here is a sample of a Neoclassic painting:

Napoleon Crossing the Alps

By: Jacques-Louis David

Although I only mentioned the English wars, Napoleon was on the move as well in France. He was conquring territory quickly and eventually controlled much of Europe before his exile. This painting depicts Napoleon as a man of men. He is telling his troops to continue onward through the Alps, a mountain range in switzerland, to get to Genoa in Italy to reinforce it for an Austrian attack. He didn't make it in time but eventually beat the Austrians out of Italy and regained control. This painting shows the paitriotism of the french, showing their armies diligently moving to protect France and it's territories from invading nations. It makes Napoleon look like an awsome guy, one worth fighting for as he is in front of the army and bravly moving through the snow covered mountains, risking his own life and limbs for the saftey of France. This painting, if you noticed, also doesn't emphasize color and shadow. The colors on the horse, where they are darkened, shouldn't be that color. Also the shadow is virtually non-existant. This is the effect of neoclassical paintings. Much of the emphasis is on the actual shapes and the realistic conditions and atire of the scene. So from this we see the revertion of Extreme realistic paintings to a more object/scene focused subject. And this the the Neoclassic time period.  

Baroque Paintings

BAroque is an interesting time and style of of painting. It came about around 1600-1750 and it, once again changed art of all kinds. While the rennaissnace adopted a calm almost calculated and realistic veiws of the world, baroque paintings tried to evoke emotion. It tried to cause sadness, happiness, anger, and other emotions by using color, intense uses of light and shadow and a mesh of various other styles to appeal to the senses. Also, as opposed to rennaisance art, the baroque period made its art so that action was shown. For example: in the Rennaissance painters would often depict a scene right before a battle, fight or wedding. In the Baroque era, painters showed the battle or the wedding as it occured. It showed the emotion of wars, weddings, and other events as they occured so that the viewer could feel it too. Here is an example of a baroque painting:

The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

By: Claude Lorrain

We see that this painting has wide aray of colors in use, even though they are quite dull. However, the uses of lighting and shadow are perfect to create a scene that incites awe and anticipation. You can see people getting ready to leave their home to go travel to a distant land. And this painting makes the veiwer feel the same. When I look at this I feel small and in anticipation of a great journey. there is a feeling of great expectaion that come from the setting or rising (probably rising) sun as the ships finalize their preperations and are about to leave. So with this we that that at the time the Catholic Church was hopeful and anticiapted a new begining of its future. The pinting its self was part of a set for the Catholic Church and this one probably reflected the veiw of many Catholics as they wondered what was to become of their faith since the Protestant reformation.  

Renaissance Paintings

The Rennaissance was a time period of tremendous change. Huge things started to happen and people's lives and ways of thinking would never be the same ever again. The rennaissance was a period in which logical and thought out ideas and science gained power. No more did people think that certain phenomena occured because God willed it or anything other reason that doen't really explain things. People learned to think about themselves since indivisualism surfaced and spread. The Roman Catholic Church also began to lose much of its power. All this can be seen in the paintings that were drawn during the rennaissance. Lets take a look at this painting from the high rennaissance era, 1475–1525 (the rennaissance was broken up into 3 parts):

  

The Betrothal of the Virgin

By: Raphael (1504)

What do you notice about this painting that is completely different than Medieval art? If you said depth,  more realistic, vanishing point, and other realistic things, then you are right! During the rennaissance many techniques were developed to change the medieval ideas of religion and almost surrealistic figures. Rennaissance art captured the scene in all its glory. Due to the fact that science and logic began to resurface, paintings reflected that revival. Paintings were realistic. Shadows were correctly placed and the veiw was such that things got smaller the further away they were. Also, no single subject was painted to be the extreme center of the universe. There was always something happening in the background that had some relevance. In this painting the virgin, Mary, is being married to Joseph. It shows the group up close but there are people just walking by in the background. In Medieval paintings there would never be anyone just walking by Mary and Joseph. This completley symbolized the change in people's attitudes towards religon. People became more worldly, mundane, that they would just walk past Mary and Joseph getting married! No longer was Mary a revered being that was held by angels, she was now a person who was getting married and only a few people were invited-or cared! so this painting by Raphael is a perfect example of how the rennaissance changed people's ideas and attitudes towards their lives. Also this is the begining of a revolution. A revolution that made it possible to depict, through art, the lives and emotions of people. Even though people did do a kind of art like that before, it was eradicated by waves of religion that caused painters to abandon the world for the heavens and hells in their paintings. 
  Some people who read my posts may ask, "why are you posting about the history of paintings?" I say that I want to and these people, who painted these peices, want to have people know the society of their times. I was inspired by two things; obligation and intrigue. I have always looked at art work as oil or paint on canvas, but now I realize that people were painting the ideals and feelings of their societies, not just pretty shapes. And I hope that I'm helping to spread at least my interpretation of their ideas that are portrayed in these paintings.