The Modern

I do not appreciate most modern art. I find it frustrating and confusing that different colored stripes stretching across a seven foot canvas is considered art and is worth thousands of dollars. I could do that. Give me a blank canvas and paint and I could throw up some circle, blotches, or lines. These are the types of paintings that annoy me. One of the exhibits was titled "Ed Ruscha: Road Tested." To me, it looked like a collection of a bunch of photos a guy took on a road trip. Walls were lined with framed pictures of different gas stations and hotels. Several maps with certain towns marked were scattered throughout the exhibit. How is this art? I just don't understand.

Okay, I just had to vent a little about the types of pieces I don't really respect. There were lots of paintings that I loved at the Modern. A collection from the Fort Worth Circle incorporated vivid colors that drew the eye. One particular painting, The Celebrity by Cynthia Brants, especially interested me. It was a collage of different forms, faces, shapes, and objects. The longer I looked at it the more I discovered. The next piece that caught my eye was the Passover by Dennis Blogg. At first glance it looked like an enlarged photograph of a desert landscape. When I got closer, however, I discovered that it was actually oil on canvas. There was so much detail in the foreground. The plants and desert land were painted in brighter, lighter colors. In contrast, the sky and mountains in the background were dark and ominous, as if foreshadowing an oncoming storm. I love stormy weather, especially right before the storm hits when all is quiet but the sky is dark. That's what I saw in this painting.

My absolute favorite was The Ark by Melissa Miller. It depicted a scene from the biblical story of Noah. Most representations of this familiar story show the animals as calm and orderly, filing into the ark without protest. What really drew me to this piece was its different take on the story. Instead of the animals paired side by side, many were separated. Not all the animals looked friendly. Wolves were threatening mice, lions were roaring at horses. Overall, the scene was somewhat chaotic. The background was a swirl of dark blues and oranges, black and reds. It suggested that there was a terrible storm raging, a torrential downpour flooding the land. The whole painting used vibrant colors, giving it life and captivating the viewer. It was huge, completed on two panels. I found it in a back hallways, separate from other pieces of art. I stood in front of it for probably 15 minutes taking it all in. "This is what art should be," I thought.

There was only one other artwork that captivated me, though not as much as The Ark. Aschenblum is a huge piece of art that took up almost an entire wall. It took the artist, Anselm Kiefer, 14 years to complete. At first I thought it was covered in bark because of its rough texture. Maybe it's a tree? But upon further inspection I can see walls, a tiled ceiling, and a floor. After reading the information plate next to it I discover I am right. It is an interpretation of the Mosaic Room in Reich Chancellory, Berlin. The artist painted the empty room, then covered it with ash, clay, and earth. The piece was Kiefer's way of coming to terms with his German heritage. It incorporated Nazi imagery and symbolism. For Kiefer, it represented the processes of transformation. It was huge, grandiose, and personal.

Walking around and reading the information plates, I discovered that many of the artists were inspired by and borrowed from other Modernist thinkers. This reminded me of the section in Modernism: A Very Short Introduction that went into detail about Modernists using each other in their work. It helped answer my question, how do they come up with some of these confusing and seemingly meaningless images to convey their thoughts and feelings? I learned that inspiration not only comes from others, but from personal experiences as well. Ben Shahn wanted to create a piece "centered on disaster and evil overwhelming the helpless and innocent." He painted Allegory in 1948, depicting a large red lion with a fiery mane standing over four small sleeping children. The background was blue with no distinct shape. Apparently, Shahn had a couple bad experiences with fires and read about four children being killed by some natural disaster. The painting made much more sense after knowing what the painter had experienced.

One exhibit I really enjoyed was Focus: Robert Lazzarini. His sculptures played with dimensions creating eye tricks that really made you focus. He warped the shape of revolvers, safes, and brass knuckles so that they looked like they had been flattened at odd angles. Walking around the sculptures, you could see that they really weren't flat, but 3-dimensional. It was quite the illusion.

Overall, I enjoyed my trip to the Modern Art Museum. There were pieces I hated and pieces I loved. I discovered that I am drawn to artwork that is more realistic, like landscapes or animals. I'm not a real fan of random shapes on a canvas. To each his own.

Food, School, and Language

Today I met with Marcelo for lunch at Red Cactus. He had never been there and was interested in trying the Mexican food. We started off the meal discussing the cuisine available in America and Brazil. Mexican food is not very popular in Brazil. There are not many places that serve it. However, they do have other international foods, like Chinese. The lack of Mexican food surprised me considering the proximity of Mexico to Brazil in comparison to China. He also mentioned that they had "American" food. When I asked what that entailed, all he could come up with was hamburgers and hot dogs. We spent the next five minutes trying to come up with other foods that would be considered American without much luck. I had never really thought about it before. Our discussion made me realize that the foods available in the U.S. are just a conglomeration of international foods. We eat Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Italian, to name a few. But really, America doesn't have its own cuisine besides hamburgers and hot dogs.

Marcelo described to me the native foods of Brazil. He said they ate a lot of beans and rice. The food he misses the most though is the meat. They ate meat with every meal. I didn't understand completely, but the way he described it made it seem like Brazilians have special types of meat or special ways of making it. He explained that they make different cuts of beef than are found in America. The thing he misses most about Brazil is the food.

Marcelo is considering applying to TCU for the next school year. He told me it is so much easier to get into a good college in America than in Brazil. Apparently, each university in Brazil has its own test as opposed to the universal SAT and ACT in the U.S. Students will study several subjects including Math, Science, Philosophy, Portuguese, English, Writing, and History to prepare for the tests. If they do not achieve a satisfactory score on the exam they are not accepted to the university and have to wait a whole year to retake it. During this year they study, study, study. There are universities that take lower scores on their tests, but there is a big difference between a good university and an okay university in Brazil. If you want a decent job with a good company, you better attend a good university. That is why Marcelo came to the U.S. for college. It is easier to get into and almost all the universities are high quality. I now appreciate more the opportunities I have as an American citizen.

Our final topic of discussion was languages. I asked if he was required to take English in high school. He said that while they were, it wasn't an important class. It was what we would call a "blow-off" class that no one paid attention in. He learned English through private classes he took with about five other people. To my surprise, he said that speaking is the easiest for him and writing is the hardest. When I was learning French in high school I was just the opposite. I had so much trouble speaking. However, that was partly due to the fact that we were hardly ever forced to speak French.

We are going to meet again on Thursday when I take him to Billy Bob's and teach him how to two-step. He is going to teach me how they country dance in Brazil. It should be a very enlightening experience!

Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"

To put it simply, this story creeped me out. I can see it being made into a horror film, maybe by M. Night Shyamalan. Spooky. Disturbing. One that gives you the goose bumps. While reading it I had a continuing sense of unease, as if something terrible and inevitable was going to happen, which turned out to be spot on. From the beginning when the narrator declared that "there is something weird about [the house]" in the third line, I knew something unnatural was going to come out of the woodwork.

The plot line was pretty easy to predict honestly. From the little details the narrator gave about the room, like the barred windows, rings in the walls, the bed nailed to the ground, and the wallpaper ripped savagely off the wall, I surmised that the room had a more sinister history than being used as a nursery, playroom, and gymnasium. Then when she started seeing an old woman behind the wallpaper I knew she was going crazy. The thought even crossed my mind that the narrator is or will become the woman creeping along the wall.

I believe the form it was written in, as a stream of conscious thought, added to the eeriness of the story. I was able to track the growth in obsession with the wallpaper. At first it was just a nuisance, an eye-sore, but then it consumed the narrator's every thought. The woman creeping around clearly had to be a hallucination.  If I saw an old woman creeping and crawling around the outside of my home, my reaction would be fear and alarm, not fascination.

I was very impressed with the transition from the narrator being outside the wallpaper and observing the trapped old woman to herself being the one released from the wallpaper. I had to go back and reread the previous lines to make sure I hadn't missed something. Even though I was somewhat expecting it to happen it still caught me a little off guard. It was beautifully done. That would be the point in the movie when the ominous background music gets louder and faster. Then the music would suddenly stop as John comes into the room and observes her insane behavior. When he faints and she continues creeping along the wall, the music would gradually come back. The last scene would be the narrator walking over her husband as she creeps along the wall. Very unnerving.

Going to Walmart

Today, upon request, I took Marcelo to Walmart. He does not have a vehicle and was very interested in seeing my Jeep Wrangler. On the way to Walmart we talked about how crazy drivers are. He said traffic is much more "organized" in Brazil. "In the United States, people do whatever they want!" While I agree that there are some crazy drivers, I still wanted to defend my country. However, before I could respond a woman proceeded to cut me off and go speeding down the road. I ended up just agreeing with Marcelo.

We discovered that we both love country music. Some time during the semester I am going to take him to Billy Bob's and teach him how to two step. He has been once before, but the country dancing in Brazil is much different than what people do at Billy Bob's. I then played a CD of my favorite band, Relient K, for him. To my delight he really liked them! At our next meeting he is going to play a different sort of Brazilian country music for me.

Once we got to Walmart, we made our way through the aisles and picked up everything he needed. I found it interesting that his shopping list was written in Portuguese. Some of the items he had to describe, but we had no trouble until it came to Kleenex. He described it as "lens paper" so I thought he meant the special paper or cloth used to clean glasses. However, I realized he meant tissue paper when he started pretending to blow his nose. Our little Kleenex debacle was probably quite a spectacle. This was his second time at Walmart and he was very impressed with the variety of items it contains. There are Walmarts in Brazil, but they are all too far away from his small town for his family to do any shopping there.

When we got to the checkout, he started putting his things on the counter. To my embarrassment, he even took the one item I needed to get and placed it among his things. He refused to let me pay for it, saying it was the least he could do for driving him there. Any guy who has no reservations in buying a new acquaintance a box of tampons is definitely all right in my book.