I Doubted If I Should Ever Come Back

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

The typical interpretation of this poem is that the traveller took the road less traveled (perhaps one that was harder or less mainstream) and looking back, realized that was the best choice. It’s what I’ve always heard through all my years of public school poetry units. And then Kelly showed me a different interpretation. The traveller wasn’t glad he took the road less travelled: he lamented he couldn’t explore the other path, “knowing how way leads on to way.” What a totally different look at the poem I thought I had figured out in middle school!

That little seed of a thought grew as I was watching this scene from one of my favorite movies, “An Education”:

 

I began to think of past boyfriends and daydreams I had about our future. And then, like the speaker in the poem, felt a pang of sadness, knowing I would never experience any of those futures. It seems a bit silly, to miss a potentiality. Perhaps it’s an F thing. But now I’m remembering all the things I had hoped for with each boy: the places we would visit, the experiences we would share, the memories we would make. While I don’t actually want to take up with any of my former flames, I do ponder what might have been. I wonder what each one might have brought out of me and what we might have shared together. It’s a strange kind of nostalgia.

And now I think I’ll always have that connection when I see that poem.

Have you ever experienced nostalgia for what might have been? Have you ever had a moment that made you see a familiar piece of art in a new way?

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Sculpture by Basil Watson. (basilwatson.com)

 

 

Popularity Dwindling for Nudity in Art

It shocks me more and more to learn that paintings of nude figures are lessening. (See my previous rant here.) You’d expect the art world of all places would not be hung up on such a trivial issue. But this article in The New York Observer provides some evidence. I just wish they had further addressed the issue of why.

It may be hard to believe, but flesh is out of fashion. Nude portraits, long the cornerstone of an art student’s education and a hallmark of classical art, are being left unsold on gallery walls throughout New York. With a handful of exceptions—Lucien Freud, Jenny Saville and John Currin among them—very few prominent artists today paint or portray realistic or even vaguely abstract nudes. There’s fewer now, according to some artists and critics, than in the experimental 1960s and 1970s or the body-conscious-art era of the 1990s.

Back from my Blogging Vacation

Hi there. I took an impromptu blogging vacation. I started a new waitressing job on the weekends and it’s taken some time to get used to my new schedule. Here’s what I did while away:

• Started a garden! I planted onions, garlic, lettuces, and spinach. The lettuce seedlings and one garlic are beginning to sprout, but no action yet from the other plants. I plan to add herbs, tomatoes, potatoes, and maybe a few flowers in hanging baskets. I’m really excited to turn my back porch into a green garden.
• I modeled for my first and second sculptures. They look awesome. I’ve been working with artist Basil Watson for a while now and I really like his work. I also have been modeling for some painters and one student let me have his oil painting of me!
• Read The Hunger Games series. OMG. I haven’t been so absorbed in a story for a long time. I love stories about future dystopias and how they work, so thee novels were right up my alley. I’m tempted to read them over again because they are that good. Thanks so much to Kelly for recommending it and to the Dragon*Con librarians who told her about it.
• I did karaoke for the first time at a friend’s 40th birthday party. It’s a lot more fun than I expected and not as embarrassing. We had a crazy mix of songs from Johnny Cash to Kanye West to Iron Maiden. It was one of the best parties ever. It makes me really pumped for my 21st birthday next month!
• I’ve been playing Miss Moderator for the Atlas Shrugged Reading Group for ATLOS. It’s been going well and another ASRG has sprung up. So my group will now be ASRG 1. I really look forward to getting farther into the novel and digging into deeper discussions about the characters’ psychology and overarching themes of the novel.
• I completed teaching my second session at the local homeschool co-op. ASL class has been fabulous and I’m constantly surprised by the kids memory and ability to catch onto the language. Each class is energizing and fun. We have a great little group going. Next year I plan to break up the class into ASL 1 and 2, so I’ll spend the summer doing a lot of research on teaching higher level ASL.
• Had an awesome idea that relates to the blog and might turn a profit in the long run. More on that later.

Google Art Project

As if Google weren’t already awesome enough, it’s started an Art Project that’s really cool. The Google Art Project let’s you virtually tour museums and view high resolution images of their art. I’ve tested it out and while I think the touring function is a bit slow and clumsy, the artwork images are fantastic. I often look at art on the internet but find it hard to look at the details. The ability to zoom way in on a piece in the Art Project lets me focus in on small details of a painting and understand it better.

The only downside I’ve found on the site is you can only view sculptures from one side, rather than a dynamic all-around view.

The project also lets you curate your own collection of your favorite works. You can save paintings, add comments, and then share your collection! I can’t wait to post my own!

 

Good Art vs Bad Art: An Enlightening Article

I’ve only discovered the Art Renewal Center this morning and I’ve spent the better part of it reading through articles and looking at artworks. (Instead of cleaning up the apartment like I had planned.) There’s still a lot to find, but I really like this article I came across, Good Art, Bad Art: Pulling Back the Curtain. It’s a fairly lengthy article, but I definitely recommend reading it. It explains why art, when it reached the pinnacle of excellence in the late 19th century, was taken over by Modernism and all classic realistic art was condemned. It’s fabulous. Please go read it. Here’s a snippet from the site:

Modern and Post-modern Art is nihilistic and anti-human. It denigrates humanity along with our hopes, dreams, desires and the real world in which we live. All reference to any of these things is forbidden in the canonistic halls of modernist ideology. We can see that their hallowed halls are a hollow shell, a vacuous, vacant vault that locks their devotees away from life and humanity. It ultimately bores the overwhelming bulk of its would-be audience, who can find nothing with which to relate.

It has been called exciting and cutting-edge, but the sad truth is that it is incredibly humdrum and monotonous. Whether you glue together pieces of plastic or shards of glass, assemble metal scraps or piles of feathers. Whether you dribble little dollops of colors or drag fat uneven slashes of black. Whether you compile a mountain of paper or wrap the Statue of Liberty. The effect is always the same. MEANINGLESS PRIMITIVISM.

Modernism is art about art. It endlessly asks the question, ad nauseum: What is art? What is art? Only those things that expand the boundaries of art are good; all else is bad. It is art about art. Whereas all the great art in history, my friends, is ART ABOUT LIFE.

Squee!