Temporizing and Modernist Architecture

Last week, I anticipated this week being crazy busy. Two major research papers, one minor paper, and 32 midterms to grade. So I went ahead and cranked out my two major papers that were due this week. It's really cleared up my schedule. Either that or I've already written them, and now it takes a huge amount of self motivation to go back and read through them to edit and organize them, and I just don't want to. It takes so much to get me to edit one of my own papers. It's a weird thing; I love editing papers that aren't mine, but I hate rereading what I've written. Unless it's been months or years, then I don't mind.

So, in an effort to temporize even more, I thought I would blog about something we discussed in Modern Art today. We were talking about the Bauhaus and the new aesthetic--that sleek, reduced aesthetic that consists of basic shapes and form stripped to the bare minimum. I love this modernist architecture. It's just so clean to me and reduced; it's simplicity at its greatest refinement, and I yearn to live in a house like that.

German Pavilion, built for the 1929 Barcelona World Fair

My professor asked who would like to live in this house, and the majority raised their hand. He then asked those who didn't raise their hand why they wouldn't want to live in a place like this. The answers were varied. It didn't seem practical, what was its use, it's an empty monument to modernist architecture, etc. And my professor agreed with them to an extent, claiming that there was no storage space in a place like this and that its practicality was questionable. 

But I disagree with them on so many levels. 

Yes, the Bauhaus sought to integrate art with technology to establish a new machine aesthetic. But to me, I see it somewhat differently. It's simple and reduced, the way I want my life to be. Sometimes there seems to be such a push to have and have and have the latest and greatest or just the accoutrements that accompany a typical, material life. But I don't want that. I want reduction, I want simplicity, I want the bare minimum. Who needs storage space when all you have is what you absolutely need? Why wouldn't this seem practical? Taking your life and stripping it to just the furniture and accessories that you need to function is to me extremely practical.  

I get so drowned by this push to have little sculptures or decorative asides in my house. I see these magazine with amazing color schemes and colorful pillows that adorn a couch with paintings on the wall and vases and figurines and lamps and decorative books (which I have a problem with to begin with, but that's another story), and it's all so beautiful. But at the same time, it's all so much. Who needs those vases and figurines; why not have one or two pillows instead of six? And above all, read those books. Don't use them to achieve greater aestheticism in your living room. 

I am definitely guilty of this myself. I don't pretend otherwise. I have vases and glass bottles in my home; stacks of books, paintings on my wall, and piles of paper. But I want greater simplicity in my life. With all of its hustle and bustle and constant push to keep busy, I want a place free of clutter, commotion, and chaos, a sleek and calm reprieve. And to me, this is the ultimate functionality of the home I wish to have. 

I stand by my desire to live in a place similar to the German Pavilion.  

I just want to put this out there:

Does anyone else think it's weird that people take selfies/any sort of picture at all in bathrooms?

I don't know about you, but a camera is the last thing I want near a bathroom. For multiple reasons.

I just think it's weird.*

*The opinions expressed in this blogpost are solely those of the writer herself, and she thinks it's just plain weird. 

My Kind of Feminism

“It is too easy to allow traditional definitions of power to diminish women’s achievements as they have similarly limited women’s opportunities.”

“That women often play different roles at different stages of their lives is one fact I hope this book illumines.”

“We have wrongly measured women’s productivity in the world by male stages of life.”

"That women must keep on responding to the same problems involving their either/or roles as mothers and workers at different times, in different imaginative ways, must become an accepted reality until institutions change. What we have to understand more adequately are the many ways women have of asserting their own values when they are not included in traditional power structures, and how they often attempt to change things when they are."

Eugenia Kaledin, Mothers and More

There are some nights....

...where I find it near impossible to do homework. Granted, these nights do not come all that often. But they sometimes come.

Tonight is one of those nights.

In other news, I found this little gem browsing through my pictures on my computer today.

This is just so true for me. 

I actually found several gems browsing through my old images. I'll have to do a blog post titled "My College Career as Seen from the Pictures Downloaded on my Computer." 

Or something. It's a working title. 

Future Plans

Nathan and I are retiring in the Schwarzwald, on the Bodensee. To those who claim that's geographically impossible, I say: challenge accepted.

Also, I'm buying all of Gesina Ter Borch's illustrations from the Rijskmuseum. There's this little tiny piece of me that wishes they would at some point be forced to sell them so I could snatch them up. But of course I would never really want the Rijksmuseum to be in financial distress (nor is it likely that they will ever be in financial distress). Unless it meant I could snag me some Gesina drawings, then I'd support that.

I started training for a triathlon today! I'm looking to do some next semester/summer, and I'm pretty stoked. I've always wanted to do one, so I'm carpe-ing the diem and doing it. I convinced Nathan to train with me. He's so motivational and driven, it's great for getting me to do things.

My life is a mixture of fantasy and reality, but whose isn't?

I should not be awake past 11:30

I'm staying up late tonight to register for classes.
I should probably be up until midnight every night doing research, but alas, it is so difficult for me to function on such little sleep. You would think I could make an exception since I have a rough draft due next week, and I do not know what my thesis is yet. Naturally I would stay up late every night searching and searching to come up with something. Nope.

I just realized that if I had not chosen to double major, or even minor, in German, I could be done with my art history degree next semester. After three years of college, I would have a degree. Needless to say, my mind is blown. I literally only have eight classes left to take for my undergraduate degrees. This is so weird, and it's not even my last semester yet.

But the end is in sight; I can glimpse the proverbial flickering light at the end of the tunnel.

And I just want to sleep. Why must I pick classes at midnight.

Epiphany

I had an epiphany this morning about why I love art history.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, trying to discover what it is that I find so fascinating about it, and it dawned on me this morning: There's more than meets the eye.

John Constable once said "We see nothing until we truly understand it."

I think this statement is true on so many levels. We do not see people, places, cultures, or paintings until we truly understand them. We can get the gist, we can glance and skim; but to fully appreciate all the beauty that is there before you, you must seek to understand, you must put forth an effort to see beyond the surface. And I love that this profound truth is the same with people, not just works of art. I love forging that path to understanding and seeing people, cultures, languages, and works of art in a genuine sense. So this is why I study art history: I want to see the world around me in all its glory and bask in the wonderful complexity that is simply life.