Review: The Story of Art

Realised I need to do a quick review of the history books I have been reading this summer.

I read my copy of EH Gombrich’s The Story of Art, which I loved, and another 3 history books on world history in general. I’ll start reviewing my Story Of Art first.

I think Gombrich’s style of writing endears his readers to his book because it distills the more abstract concepts of reading art in a simpler, more natural way – instead of writing in terminology he tries to put in layman’s knowledge what a layman would instinctively feel when faced with the work of art in question, and then progress to highlight the major concepts in art history from there. It offers a good overview of the history of art (to a layman such as I) so that now I understand better how western art ideology (so to speak) developed over the centuries.

Another good thing about Gombrich is that he has a policy of not writing about works he cannot show, and the glossy, quality coloured prints of art works are not only keepsakes in themselves but also give the reader a good, primary source material reference when he/she needs to trace the developments in art (‘Now let’s see: it progressed from symbolism in… now where was that work he mentioned? Page 198…’)

I discovered a number of artists whose work I liked at the same time, and a number of them quite astonishingly so since, prior to reading about their philosophy of art, I never really appreciated! I came to recognize the beauty and skill in Greek sculpture, whose Roman copies are already so wonderfully exquisite (can one imagine how the real copies must have been?), learnt to appreciate that their beauty lied primarily in how extraordinarily real they looked, yet so unreal because nothing in nature seems so astoundingly beautiful and whole! Thus the artworks are sublime… Saw a painting by Fra Angelico and appreciated his Byzantine symbolism and his radiant mix of colours. Loved Michelangelo’s genius, appreciated Raphael’s use of colour. Saw Bosch’s wonderfully heinous depictions of hell and the spiritual realm and laughed with Bruegel’s portrayal of human folly. Admired the reality of Dutch 17th century still lifes and their luscious texture. Loved Holbane’s The Rake’s Progress for its use of art as a social medium. Appreciated Renoir for his love of all things beautiful, dappled, with unclear borders. Liked Magritte’s dreamlike musings and his rather comic sense of humour. Loved Titian’s colour, found Correggio’s play of light and its use in arranging the composition of picture instead of according to colour and size and subject matter interesting and novel. Thought Turner brilliant for his revolutionary style of landscape painting.

The surprises came mainly in the form of Rembrandt, Cezanne, Goya and Dali. To some extent even Gauguin. Rembrandt, because I never really appreciated his I thought too-drastic contrast between light and shade. But Gombrich made me see that Rembrandt’s rendering of the human face rendered something that even the best portraitists cannot do: the soul beneath the face. It wasn’t only lifelike, it was that expression that revealed a person’s personality and being, as it were, just like how the best novelists were able to paint a vivid picture of a character solely by description. Cezanne, because of his noble aims and perhaps, more astonishingly, how he managed actually to fulfill them. He wanted to paint both reality as the eye saw it, as little dabs and spots and reflections, and yet retain some features of reality as we perceive it, that makes it understandable – clarity of structure. So in his own unique and masterful way he accomplished a midway between relativism and certainty. Yet in trying to achieve both his ways he was curiously able to always stay true to nature. Goya, for his fantastic paintings of the horrors of war, even though I never liked his too bold style. Dali surprised me because I never quite agreed with his demented images, but I realized I shared his surrealistic tendencies – he makes my dreams come to life.

What I didn’t like was Baroque and Mannerism. To some extent also the pointless innovations of post-Michelangelo artists. Baroque was too much style without much content, and so was Mannerism, which in my view is worse, since it painted a false heaven. I am sure heaven will not be an idler’s paradise as Watteau’s paintings portray the idyllic nobles’ lives to be. Despite that, I do have a qualifier… my dislike of Rococo doesn’t prevent me from strangely being attracted to Watteau’s The Swing, although I still feel rather put off by the coquette and her skirt-chaser!

Little book update

Just updating a list of books I’ve been reading since the holidays started (about a month and a half now) and a possible description following:

The Brother Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky – commented on this blog already

Kant: A very short introduction – More accessible than the original The Critique of Pure Reason, but I had a hard time with it, both in terms of understanding and also in keeping up with the reading itself

Who moved the Stone? by Frank Morison – if you’re into apologetics for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you would probably like this.

The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich – oh my gad I just love this book. Art history for dummies, with really beautiful glossy pictures to go with.

DK’s History of the World – because I couldn’t find a good one-volume on history I resorted to this picture book from the library’s juvenile section. It’s a pretty good starter that helped me with general world history knowledge, and a useful timeline-table at the beginning of each chapter (It goes chronologically) listing out what happened in that period in all five continents of the world, so it’s also like a comparison. But it can be haphazard, and sometimes the historical flow of events for one country between different time periods can be confusing.

Christianity for Dummies – Reversed my initial assumption that it was going to be sketchy and incomplete. Read the chapters on the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches in detail for sunday school lesson planning and found it comprehensive, and written in a simple to follow and rather entertaining manner.

Rick Steiner’s Scandinavia 2006 and Rough Guides’ Norway – for information on Norway. Rough Guides is more comprehensive. I recommend internet searches for more info on this elusive country, the national tourism websites are replete with pictures.

Now reading: Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon – interesting read, but attempt only if you’ve read some works by the authors he discusses. Argues for the canonical writers, strongly against all attempts to de-centralise western literature from the canon. Can be annoying at times because of his obviously biased stance, but if you understand where he’s coming from and take it with a pinch of salt, you will appreciate some of his arguments for the brilliance of some of these authors’ works.

Would like to read: A more comprehensive one-volume history. I’ve been recommended Straviano’s A Global History, would probably check that up. Also, a one-volume Chinese history, in chinese. A web search recommended a good zhong guo tong shi. Some theological works dealing with issues of predestination, the Trinity and Christology, and perhaps a commentary on Revelations. The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis and Where is God when it hurts? by Philip Yancey.

Back again, hopefully for long

I think of my long absences from this blog with a tinge of pain. This is supposed to be a lifelong project. After all, it’s a learning journey. My second, subsidiary one, alongside my major, be it studies or, in future, work.

So I am glad that I’m attempting a comeback.

I say hopefully for long, because I don’t know how much energy and more importantly, willpower, I have to complete this project. I also doubt the urgency of it and may abandon or water it down as I see things more clearly in the future.

The project that I’m embarking on is one that I’ve been taking for a long time, which is to read the bible thoroughly. I mean critically. I return with renewed fervour because I think I have been shown a source that can supply me what will meet my needs.

Now I need sustenance.

Following I will endeavour to post whatever I have gleaned as a record for myself and for any who may wish to benefit from this experience. My next entry will deal with my notes on Dr Constable’s Notes on Genesis.

Music Fundamentals

For someone who only had a brief touch with music theory, this was rather essential.

So what is music? At its simplest level, music is organised sound played for an audience. Although I kind of dislike the definition, it seems to take the beauty out of music. Organised. Sound.

Some basic elements: Sound, Texture, Pitch, Interval, Melody, Harmony, Scales, Keys, Chords, Rhythm, Dynamics.

Sound is pretty obvious, and there’s not much to summarise here.

Texture – I don’t see a clear definition, but that’s okay. The way a piece sounds can be attributed to whether the piece is staged in monophony, homophony, chordal homophony, polyphony and round. What are these? I don’t think he bothered to give them an umbrella term, but…

Monophony: just a single melody line. Can be a solo or group performance, but all are singing the same tune.
Homophony: music that moves by chords. The most simply form of it is song texture, where a solo voice has chordal accompaniment, as in the case of a singer who is accompanied by someone playing chords on the guitar. Chordal homophony is typified by a choir singing in harmony: there are more than 1 line, but all of them move together in harmony,forming chords.
Polyphony is incredibly complex (to me). It occurs when one hears more than 1 distinct musical line sounding at the same time. Much Western classical music is like this, the flute might be playing an entirely different tune from the violins, yet, strangely, they complement each other.
A round occurs when the same line is repeated 3 or 4 times, each time a little after the other, but in a harmonic way, as when one sings ‘Row, row, row your boat’ in succession.

Pitch – in choir I understood this as the note at which you’re singing. Sound is formed by vibrations, and pitch, technically, is the frequency (rate of vibrations) one hears.

Notation: our darling bars and clefs. Clef is the French name for key, and so the clef is the key to which notes are written. Interestingly, the treble clef symbol is actually a stylised G, and the central spiral goes around the line that denotes the G note. Whereas for the bass clef, the top two dots straddle the line representing the note F, and the bass clef is actually a stylised way of writing the letter F.

Figuring Out Blogging Frequency

Lest any reader should be alarmed, this is another one of those addresses to my blog.

Okay, I haven’t been blogging regularly, and rather much in spurts, like 3 entries at a go.

I’ve got into some (fortunately minor) trouble with my blogging frequency (‘Why are you always online?) and I’ve figured that this is too time-consuming (‘You’re not using your time well.’)

Initially, I’ve wanted to put up everything that I read here for keepsake, for other interested readers, and for strengthening the memory of everything that I’ve read.

After all these months, I’ve realised that there are few who would like to read, and even fewer who need to, but that has not discouraged me – what has is really the realisation that I don’t need a detailed summary for keepsake.

Keepsake is a strange thing. It’s the fear of not letting go, but really, what is most important, most impactful, stays with you. There is no need to blog about the Parthenon and the Doric order of its columns, and its position in Athens, Greece, in that famous acropolis – it is embedded in memory.

When there is the memory, there is no need, really, for the physical counterpart. (Unless we are preserving for future generations, but this isn’t the purpose of my blog. Information is everywhere.) Just like vacation keepsakes. All that’s precious, is stored in the memory, and the pictures and the referrals aren’t really flipped everyday.

The last rationale for blogging still stays, I still want to reinforce what I’ve learnt. But I guess my approach will be a bit different. Less details, more summaries, although I’m still extremely nit-picky with dates and eras.

And before I forget, a reminder of the things I should blog about:
The Story of Art: Greek Sculpture from 5th BC – ?
Modern Art and the Death of A Culture: the impressionists, Gauguin
Mathematics: The Irrational: square root 2, the pythagoreans, math and music, the irrational implying the impossibility of algebra
Terra Nostra: Fuentes’ attempt to write all novels, a diabolic (?) attempt at re-creating meta-history, his first chapter, narrative styles
History of Architecture: 2 forces – tension and compression, materials, corbelled construction! =), prehistorical architecture
World History: early Eurasian states, rise of civilisations 3000-1750 (?) BC

Marie Antoinette: The Movie

This was on a list of films that a film person recommended me to catch, which I could actually find in the local library.
I was quite surprised to see it was in monochrome. The first part of the film was admittedly a bit of a disappointment when the young Marie Antoinette clasps her hands together and exclaims, “Imagine, Mama, I’m going to be Queen of France!” I thought, ‘Why am I listening to an airhead?’
The movie kind of charts the growth of Antoinette though, as she weathers the storms of political life in the courts of France to her final doom at the guillotine. Or, maybe, as I felt, it showed the viewer the resilience, determination, and, would you believe it, the purity of character behind the wanton airhead that we were introduced to in the first half of the movie.
I missed a bit of the film at the lengthy romantic swoons between Antoinette and her lover, it was just too much. But overall I think the film did make its way into my list of pretty good films. Probably the first film that ever made a dramatic 180 degree turn from unfavourable to favourable. But then again I haven’t watched a lot.
What the movie was good for: I liked its human portrayal of the French Queen, in all her strengths and weaknesses. Marie can be somewhat irritating for the sensible, what with her extravagant hand gestures, frequent gushings and, in the early part, her wantonness (kiss every member of the opposite sex in the social circle). Yet it is mysteriously beautiful when one sees the affectionate and pure (as in unspoilt) character underneath all that ‘airheaded-ness’ – however much of a block of wood Louis may be, Antoinette is perhaps the only person who sees and feels the simple loveliness of the guys she marries, and who, likewise, loves him truly, deeply and purely in return. It’s not the love one expects between lovers but then again, Antoinette, and Louis? The love she has towards her Swedish lover (if he is indeed Swedish, never stayed long enough to know his name) is beyond mere romance. Her motherly love towards her two children is touching and humane.
I love her resilience and strength of character. I’m not a big fan of gushy types, but I appreciate a person who may be an airhead on the surface but who is so much more. Come on, it’s intriguing: ‘You mean you can fit all that into you?’ And it’s not even a split personality. The most intriguing part of it all is, it’s only something that females can do. Viva la femme fatale. She is intelligent enough (though not enough to save the French monarchy in its decomposition as she makes her doomed entrance into its courts), witty in her speech, and bears the rapid tragic spiral pretty well for a girlish Austrian princess whose first action in the movie is to clasp her hands with elation at the thought of being a French Queen. Think about it. Born and bred on a silver spoon. And in France, what do you have? A block of wood for a husband. A schemy cousin-in-law who attempts an affair. A powerful but ailing father-in-law for King and his bitch of a girlfriend. And the Life that is Paris. And after that, the mob that is France’s most impoverished, with the poverty divide way beyond comprehension.
It is exciting. Even touching in certain parts. Leaves you helpless sometimes as well. It was a struggle to keep emotions in check. In places it left me wondering what could have been done, but the answer was, nothing. Antoinette and Louis lived in an era when more intelligence was demanded of them than had been given them. And, perhaps, social factors were deep-rooted and too age-old to change in the twinkling of an eye. You can’t fight poverty and the difference between the splendour of the monarchy and the wretched plight of the poor in one monarch’s reign… or can you? I didn’t think it possible, at least not with the royal couple presented before me.
Why the movie didn’t succeed at making a big hit on my list was because, at the end of it, it never tried to appeal to me, by leaving that constant horror in my mind… The impact was dulled by the intervals in which one saw other aspects of life at court (or at prison), things like comic relief, but not quite – I suppose just relief. And the first part of the movie, what with all the extravaganza, wasn’t my cup of tea. It was lovely seeing the typical Hollywood glamour, but there has to be more to a film to make me like it. The first and second part of the movie (separated by the interlude) seemed like two separate films. The linkage was probably the storyline. In the first I saw Antoinette livin la dolce vita. In the second I see Reality in its morbidity and cruelty. But I guess, that’s Life. And interesting it is a true account of how Antoinette’s life (in cinematic conceptual reality) must have been: Glamorous. Then Grim.
So, all in all, it did leave me thinking. Which was why I’m staying up to write this though it’s way past my bedtime. Catharsis… But it wouldn’t make my head ache. Perfect for the type of person who’d like to watch something with a more serious tone to it, but not… too much.

Socratic era?, Plato, Aristotle

More than just Socrates…

Protagoras, a Sophist, probably shifted the tide of philosophy from the One Big Question to something more concerned with ethics… He introduced the concept of cultural relativism by questioning how, in a world of diverse beliefs, anyone would know their own beliefs were right. He claimed that ‘Man is the measure of all things’ – no objective truths, only subjective beliefs.

Socrates vastly differed from him. I kind of admire this guy, if he’s even real… Nicknamed the Gadfly, he was an Athenian old man who was popular with the youngsters. His trademark was the Socratic dialogue, which consisted in asking questions about everything, sometimes in a way that pointed out the other party’s logic flaw, which no doubt would have agitated many parents. To Socrates, true moral wisdom lay in the self, thus ‘know(ing) thyself’ was very important, and he believed that virtue is knowledge. He met a tragic end though, accused of corrupting young Athenians and made to drink Hemlock (a poison). But he met his death bravely, a believer in the eternity of the soul.

Plato was his student, who founded the school the Academy. Plato believed in Innatism, that knowledge was found in everyone and learning was recollection, or Anamnesis. He demonstrated this by questioning a slave about whether he recognised a triangle. I think it bears strange resemblance to this article I read somewhere about a group of researchers going into the jungles of central or south america to see if tribesmen had an innate understanding of mathematics. Turned out they did. I kind of believe this without the research anyway so it looked redundant and suspiciously condescending to me.

Plato also formulated this (dubious?) theory of the Ideal Forms. Forms are like perfect templates, and the particular things we see here on earth are imperfect copies of the Ideal Form. An example:
Particular thing: Chair
Ideal Form: Chairness (whatever this means)
To Plato, only specially trained people called Guardians can see these forms. To me it sounds like Mysticism. Plato illustrated this with his Cave theory about a coupla men who were enslaved since a young age in a cave, their backs towards the opening where sunlight streamed in, with no knowledge of the world outside apart from the shadows (ie particular things) that moved on the wall of the cave. One day one of them had the courage to break free and experienced firsthand the real substance (Ideal Forms) of which the shadows were just reflections.
Plato’s most famous work was The Republic, in which he expounded his concept of a Plutocracy, a society ruled by philosopher-kings, because unless a society had wise rulers, evil would continue in existence. His main goal was to create a utopia. Nice intentions, but for us living in the 21st century, we know where that sort of authoritarian superior elite kind of dictatorial rule gets us to.

Aristotle studied in Plato’s Academy. It strikes me as strange how this pair of teacher-disciple can be so utterly different, yet Aristotle seems to have loved being in the Academy, as he spent 20 years there until Plato’s death.

Aristotle invented the syllogism, a deductive argument that goes like this:
All men breathe. (Premise)
Socrates was a man. (Premise)
Therefore Socrates breathed. (Conclusion)
The powerful thing about syllogisms is, if you follow certain rules, like not letting your conclusion fit in more than your premises, and if your premises were true, the conclusion is guaranteed.
I did attend a lesson where we saw a syllogism go wrong though:
All cows eat grass.
All sheep eat grass.
Therefore all cows are sheep.
Where did it go wrong? Squeezing in more than the premises in the conclusion??? Is it even a syllogism anyway?

Aristotle didn’t agree with his teacher on Ideal Forms, and thought that Forms were only ‘natural kinds’, or ‘species‘. This guy was quite into science – he believed that the scientist’s job was to find out what the special properties of these kinds were. This was where he recognised the importance of Induction, a form of argument which allowed people to make generalisations of the whole (say, of species – eg, frogs in general) based on premises that were observations of the part (the specific – eg, a frog). So something like… These frogs can swim… Therefore all frogs can swim. The thing about induction is that, unlike deductive reasoning, it cannot guarantee that the outcome is true. Just because a part of a whole behaves in a certain way does not guarantee that the whole will behave in like way. In other words, inductive reasoning allows room for exceptions to occur, but deductive reasoning, reasoning from whole to part, necessitates that the part follows the whole.

Aristotle thought that only individual things existed, not forms. He also believed that everything had a final cause or potential function, like fire having the constant potential to move upward and heavy objects to fall downward.
Bringing this argument to its ultimate, he argued that everything has a cause, and so there must be a prime cause, a first mover… forming the Teleological argument.
This argument has its own attackers, from the book, the Darwinian theory of evolution seems to have dealt it a big blow.

Aristotle also felt that everything had essential and accidental properties. Essential properties defined a person, whereas accidental ones did not. This was in response to the question of what the world was made of, Aristotle’s answer was, everything was made of ‘unique ’substances”, some having essential, some accidental, properties.

As for morality, Aristotle felt it was a practical skill taught by parents to offspring… for the benefit of harmonious living in society perhaps. He did believe that humans had to access their moral ’software’ sometimes to choose the Golden Mean, though, the moderate path between extremes. Aristotle’s morality was somehow linked to happiness, he believed that the main pursuit of life was happiness, though not in the hedonistic way that we tend to associate happiness with, for happiness was to be gained in living a moral life, in the way of the Golden Mean.

Lastly, he disagreed with Socrates that Virtue is Knowledge. Being a moral person to Aristotle didn’t just mean knowing what the right thing was, but in choosing to do it as well, and accepting responsibility for one’s choice.

At the close of this era, the book borrowed a quote from A.N. Whitehead (a 19th Century philosopher) who suggested that all of Western philosophy after this ultimately consists of no more than ‘footnotes’ to Plato. For the rest of western philosophy, there was to be two tendencies:
Platonic tendencies – seeking for a mystical truth through the use of reason, or
Aristotelian tendencies – methodical and empirical

The Steps to Modern Art

Here I aim to summarise the book by Rookmaaker, ‘Modern Art and the Death of a Culture’. I believe the blurb. It is ‘illuminating’. I swear I won’t be able to look at an art piece the same way again.
Book starts with Byzantine art, trying to cover the periods before modern art so as to show the causes that set the foundations for modern art. Byzantine art is iconic. Rookmaaker says of a typical Byzantine painting of the Madonna that it is a sermon on Mary, if you like. It tells people that you can come to Mary with your troubles and she will help you. In other words it is not a realistic portrayal of Mary, or a sensational (what one senses) portrayal of Mary. It has a central message that it is trying to get through with its portrayal of Mary.
The quote to remember for this period of Art: The Message is in the Medium.

Then came Medieval times, which scholastic theology had great influence upon. It drew a dualism between the realm of Grace and Nature. The Heavens were where Grace, the ideal, was found, and that is what mortals should aim for, but here on earth, Nature is all there is, and Reason reigns, by virtue of it being the only way we can perceive Nature. Reality is only understood by sensory perceptions.
In the Renaissance this was played out when people decided that since earth was where Nature is all that there is, God was out of the equation (relegated to the Heavens) and so Humanism was born. Everything became an attempt by Man to understand the world and achieve perfection in his Natural sphere…
This gave way to Enlightenment tendencies. This is the point where God becomes totally isolated from the picture. If reality is only understood by sensory perceptions, Man’s reason is the only tool to understanding the world. Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) was the central principle of the day.

This deviates a bit from the Art trend, but what happened after God was taken out of the equation and Reason was heightened was that the iconic style of painting disappeared. Rookmaaker did take pains to emphasise that Art was not about just the Aesthetic: Art has a central message that is depicted in the Medium.

So in the Renaissance period artists realized they couldn’t just paint an icon. Sensual reality became important as well. Rookmaaker uses Rembrandt’s Christ on the Road to Emmaus to illustrate: Rembrandt wants to show that Christ is the central figure in the story of his journeying with two believers after his resurrection to their place for supper, yet he doesn’t want to abandon reality by depicting Christ was a yellow halo around his head. Rembrandt wanted to paint a picture that would look real, befitting the actual scenario. So Rembrandt solves the problem pretty neatly by structural composition that makes it apparent to the onlooker which of the three figures is Christ.

In the Enlightenment sensual reality took an even more important row. Ideals as the Message disappeared. For instance, in the Renaissance, it was common for art to be done about Venus, the Roman goddess of Love and Beauty. Nobody believed she actually existed or worshipped her, but she stood for an Ideal: Love and Beauty. But in the Enlightenment there was to be no more of that. Everything had to be known through the senses. Why paint a picture of something that you did not believe in.

So gradually people painted what they saw. Be it landscape or portraits. A landscape by Turner entitled Rain, Steam and Speed painted, not pictorial reality, but what one would expect to see on a rainy day: an obscured, hazed, blurred vision of a train speeding along. The portrait example that I found most ridiculous (but also most powerful) was that of the evolved Venus: Venus paintings of Old were nude portraits of idealized women signifying Beauty and Love, but Ingres painted what a nude would probably be in reality: a very unabashed prostitute staring out of the canvas. She happened to be a figure of some notoriety, which, Rookmaaker surmised, must have shocked many contemporaries. But it made a point: Venus, the Ideals, were really and truly dead.

The preamble before I start again

Lest anyone who reads this should be flabbergasted, I am now going to address my blog, at the same time that I am addressing anyone who might be reading this.
Dear blog, I am finally writing again. It was an unexpectedly long break from posting anything here at 2nd learning journey.
From my time at JC till now I think I have in a sense failed at living up to what I wanted to do in my nine months before university: I wanted to read up as much as I could on all those topics of interest of mine, and blog about them. But there was a twist in the tale and I ended up spending four months away on a working and learning holiday without easy internet access.
I now return to blog about what little I have learnt in those four months, mainly on contract law, Dante’s Hell and Purgatory, a career-finding manual called What colour is your parachute and some similar tips from a book on how to write one’s resume. I learnt a lot more in these four months about other things on Life, but I guess I ‘compartmentalise’ my life too much and this is my blog, on academic knowledge, and reflections on them.
Dear blog (dear myself rather), after my four months out there learning from the greatest teacher (save from God) called Life, I have decided that, whilst I love blogging about whatever I’ve learnt on paper, I’ve since come to appreciate learning life skills and applying them in the real world. Therefore please pardon if I’m not going to be writing as regularly as I envisioned I would at the end of 2006.
Now on to the real thing.