Karina Rivero: octubre 2010

19.10.10

What is Art?

Art is one of the most difficult words to find a meaning for. Never in our times has a human found a completely fitting definition for it, so each one of us can make a contribution from our own point of view to say what art is.

Let's start from there: point of view. Everything done with an artistic purpose has a point of view. The artists create from their experiences, their knowledge, their feelings... or everything put together. This is the reason why many people might find a piece artistic or not.

Next thing: people. People have necessarily to decide whether one thing is art or not. So art is defined by the society, as it is a creation from humans for humans.

But it is still difficult to decide what art is. I can say everything in this world is art, because it has a meaning. Words could be art, even though they are bad words, they are used to represent an emotion. But for example, there are these words that are used to name many things. I believe those words lost their art. So I can say that art pieces have to have their uniqueness and a meaning behind them. I could be telling that a dot in a piece of paper is art, because it has a meaning, and not because of the fact of being just a dot in the middle of nowhere.

Then we can say that everything done by we human beings, comes from our heads, our creativity. Art is meant to create, to represent reality in a way that beautifies it. This does not mean that people have to put reality into their piece just the way it is, but the way they see it. This means that they can put an element to describe something specific about their reality. We can also create art from imagination, like dragon stories or surreal paintings. Everything that does not exist begins with an existing thing, every new idea begins with an already acquired knowledge. So imagination and the way you transalte it, meaning creativity, are the basis for art.

This is why art is decided by society, because it represents a common understanding of reality, say it is about past, present or future, the world has similar ideas, that will change over time, but that we believe is purity and beauty. If a society has specific believes, they will search beauty according to that.

In class, we came to the definition of art as a representation of reality made by human beings in an effort to create beauty to provoke an aesthetic experience. I disagree on the "in an effort" part. Sometimes art is created by accident, without wanting it to be so, but suddenly, it is art, but you did not know it. So sometimes art is an accident, caused by whatever reason, but it is art. Authors, for example, can write, but their works not be appreciated as art but until a century after or so. This is a kind of art accident. Maybe the author wrote for money or to exemplify something, but not with the purpose of causing an "aesthetic experience" in mind. This author could have had a way of seeing the world that was not appreciated by his contemporaries, but being by later generations. There can be a paintor, that in his painting, does a mistake, and feels his work is ruined; but suddenly he notices that that mistake can be an artistic adding element to his work. It is all a matter of perspective, but we all humans share a common nature that make us look at art in a very similar way, no matter the time or social class, it is being human beings that gives us the possibility to appreciate art.

The "aesthetic" experience art causes is very important. It means that you could give the piece an understanding, a meaning, and knowing that it represents something.

So art can be "A creation by human beings based on reality that is considered beauty and causes an aesthetic experience".

As an example, I can put Robert Miles, with his song "Children" (on the music player of this Blog). With this song he made the Dream Trance music genre appear. It is usually piano or saxofon music with the electronic mix. Robert Miles, from existing music genres, could put two very different ones together and create a new beautiful one. Many people do not like it, but again, it is a matter of perspective. Say it is Contemporary Art or Modern Art, but still art out of music, and it transmits the aesthetic experience. You just have to close your eyes and put play. I believe it is a fantastic genre and this, the first Dream Trance song, is my favorite of that genre.

(Just an ironic statement)

-What is A.R.T.? Let me spell it for you! A is for Aesthetic experience. R is for Representation of reality. T is for The World's understanding of it... right here in the big wide world!

If you know where I got this idea from, maybe you will understand why I call it ironic.

(Image from: superchrome.co.uk)

"Witness for the Prosecution" by Agatha Christie

This is the story about a lawyer, a solicitor, trying to get his client's innocence proved. Leonard Vole is the subject judged, and Mr. Mayherne is the solicitor in charge of his case. Leonard is accused of having murdered an old lady for wanting her money. This old lady had trusted her issues to Vole, and he was supposed to have betrayed her and killed her.

The story begins with Vole telling Mayherne everything that made him conclude Vole was innocent. There were two important things that arose from this conversation:

1. Janet Mackenzie, the maid to the old lady, hated Leonard; maybe because Mrs. French had trusted everything to a man she barely knew and not to her, her companion probably for a very long time. So even though Mackenzie hated Leonard, her word was still valid to the court.
The fact here was that Mackenzie had accused Vole for having killed Mrs. French within a certain hour. Leonard said that what Mackenzie had said was not at all true, as by the time she claimed the murder had taken place, Leonard was supposed to be already at home.

2. As a witness to this event, he had his wife, Romaine. Leonard said that Romaine was a very devoted wife and that she would be proving that he had arrived home at the time he said.

This led Mr. Mayherne to his continuing of his invetigation with Romaine, knowing that if she was as dovited as Loeonard had said, she would not be of much help, as a devoted wife's opinion was taken only as coverage to the accused.

And so Mayherne went with her, and found out that she actually hated her husband, and told him whatever things against Leonard. This resulted very confusing, but in the end he still believed that Leonard was innocent and that Romaine was sort of out of her mind because of her hatred to Leonard, who she even denied as her husband.

At court, Mayherne is delivered a note with an address. He went there and found a woman who had a bunch of letters from Romaine to her lover, making her a liar in what she had said at court, and turning the case in favour of Leonard. The important letter said something about being finally happy with Leonard's arrest. With this note, the case was won by Mayherne and Leonard was set free.

At the end, we surprisingly find that Romaine was in fact the one who had led the prosecution all the time. She had actually invented that she hated him for her argument to be convincing and put the blame on herself. All this she told to Mr. Mayherne, who was obviously astonished, as the winning of the case had not been because of his work, but because of the most unthinkable person's. A little detail he had forgotten: Romaine was an actress. That detail he could have noticed, but what he actually noticed was the habit that both the woman of the letters and Romaine had of shaking their hands. That little detail made him finally realize that they were the same woman. She had faken the letters and acted a fake hatred. She was very intelligent, and the only one who knew the terrible truth: Leonard had actually killed Mrs. French, fact that Mayherne did not believe.

Incredible how desperate a man can be, but the fear that still makes him shake for having to tell the truth. Leonard was desperate to find a way out of jail, so he put all his faith on his wife to cover him, and yet never told the turth because all he wanted was to be free. And so he managed to fool his solicitor; and his wife, the solicitor and the court. They were both intelligent. The difference is that Leonard could fool the solicitor, but there could be anything that could reveal his lies. On the other hand, we had Romaine, who had a perfectly well structured plan and the necessary elements to make it credible and that it would work.

So Leonard Vole was not lying that much, as he said his wife was a devoted one, but he did not think about the lack of use that that argument had.

Romaine is a very intelligent woman who could manage the problem, not letting the worries blur her intelligence and saving the man she loved from going to jail. But in the end, we do not know if she's taken to jail or not for having "lied" to the court.

I think it is a story easy to follow in the events, as you are discovering the facts as the same time and from Mayherne's point of view. This makes you wonder if what he is thinking actually makes sense, or if there is any other possible way for getting more clues and evidence. The most shocking part of the story is when we come to know that Romaine had been the mastermind behind the case, and that she posessed all the information and knew how to handle it.

But even though it was shocking, it does not make it the climax of the story. This is because it does not give a turn to the story, it does not tell us what happens after that, it is just the resolution. The case is solved, and what happens to the couple, to Romaine or to Mayherne is not relevant for the story we are told: "That is another story and shall be told another time". So to the main plot, what matters is wether the case is solved or not, and the point where it is decided is when the letter is read at court and Romaine has to give her defense.

I believe it is a very good story and the ending is definitely good and unexpected.

"The Sun" by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea, and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

The poem could not be more clear. When you read verse after verse, you can visualize, and even feel what the author wrote in the poem. We people are very familiar to sunrises, sunsets, and the fact of the sun just being there. So what does this author wrote? She just made us see the beauty we all know the sun has, but that we forget to remember and appreciate because of our "busy and important" tasks that recquire our cold side rather than our sensible side.

At the end of the poem, we can all agree, because we are all not used to appreciating nature's beauty frecquently, that we are forgetting about those simple things, that just because of the fact of believing in them and feeling them, make us happier, make us calmed, relaxed, and make our problems fade away.

The author just pulls out, with a very concrete poem, our common inner feeling of beauty, of simplicity. The sun is not a metaphore in this case, but it can be replaced with any element, like the moon, the sea, the stars, an image... Something that is there to fill us with joy, that just because of being makes us what we are: humans; and leaves aside our ambitions, our worries and problems. So what can I say? I liked the poem a lot.

(Images from : photoshd.wordpress.com and solarpowerninja.com)

13.10.10

"Salvador Late or Early" by Sandra Cisneros

More than a short story, this is a description of a very poor boy's life. I can say this is one of the saddest passages I have read.

It tells us about a boy, a very poor one, which never does anything interesting, useful or for himself. The same routine is repeated day after day: he wakes up, prepares a very simple breakfast for him and his little borthers, picks up his youngest brother's mess, take them to school and tell them to wait for him in the same place he left them. It also tells us that he buys milk or does favors for his mother, but in the end, he is like a lifeless poor boy which cannot do anything else in his life.

At the end of the story it says that "Salvador dissappears...". It is way too sad. Reading about this boy, who lives to survive rather than the opposite, makes us look how lucky we are to have what we have and the opportunities we get to do something useful with our lives.

When you reach the last period in the story, you feel like waking up from a dream. You really feel as if you had gone beside Salvador in his day, and then it suddenly ended. You wake up and realize in a second that the sad and miserable day that Salvador had is going to be repeated for a very long time. You cannot but feel sad for the boy. He is poor, he has got no friends, he has got a sad life, and he cannot change it. He is alone and sad. That is what moves us in the story, the connection that we have with him for not wanting his life and the fact that we do not want him to have that life. It is a really sad story, and touches you despite its short length.

http://lahistoriadeldia.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/chile-los-estudiantes-aportando-al-debate-nacional-pobreza-y-ciencias-sociales/

"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury

To begin with, this story is Sci-Fi. This means, it creates "fictionary science" or develops around science that does not exist. Usually, science is associated with high technology, but it also includes topics like aliens, for example. And "There Will come Soft Rains" is not the exception to the high-tech topic, as it unfolds around an automatic house.

So the story begins with a voice alarm clock telling the date and the hour. Here is where we are transported to the future: "August, 4, 2026". And so the house continues its daily life of service to its inhabitants. It bakes breakfast, cleans itself, the alarm tells the people that they are late for their specific activities... But there's a problem... there are no people at all living in the house. This means, the house is just doing what it "knows" to do: serve. It has all the technology housewise, but maybe in its construction they were missing to include a human detector. This could be useful for family trips, so that the house could turn off and not work uselessly.

But maybe there was actually a switch for the times the family wasn't in need of the house. But why wouldn't they turn it off? Why was the house still functioning? Why would it bake breakfast for no one? We had been told that this, the best house ever, was the last one probably in all Earth. And here came the part where we are told about the family's situation. In the passage, we are told about the shadows that dust left in their patio's wall. They were the family's shadows. Where did they go? Nowhere. They had been killed by a bomb while playing outside their house. Everything had flown away and their house was what remained of society... of humankind.

At some point in the story, we can infer that because of the house being the last one in the city, humans could have moved to another planet, running away from war; a war of any type, with any reason, but war. With the passage that actually tells us about the unfortunate fate of the family, you start to feel the way the author wanted us to feel when reading it. It is important to remember that this short story was written during cold war, and that a fear for everything to be gone in a sudden was common among people. But even if it was 2000 years ago or a lot more in the future, fear for death and suffer is a characteristic in human beings. The idea of war, the idea of death, of stopping to exist is not the happiest thought that a human can develop. So with this passage we can connect to each other by knowing that we all feel in some way sad for what happened to this family, which was killed while they were happily playing.

Then we have the only alive being appearing in the story: the family's dog. He desperately searched the house for his owners, with no success. He started desperating, and the lack of company or even an alive voice, made this poor creature die. The automatic mice, which were in charge of cleaning the house, did their job and took away the corpse of the dog and incinirated him.

At this point, we can notice how lonely the dog felt, which tells us that the bomb event was recent. The dog came into the hosue desperately, probably after having heard the bomb exploded. But the strange thing about that, is that everything was "dust in the wind", but the house and the dog. Probably the dog was in his dog house, which was probably made of the same technology of the house, and so made the bomb not affect it. We do not know, but I think that is one logical possibility. And so the dog died for lack of life, he could not stand loneliness. This is just a part in the story's development, but we feel bad for the dog, and we can wonder what would have happened if one of us stayed all by ourselves in a lonely world. Maybe we would not have survived for too long for one or another reason.

During the story we are also told about a poem, and in fact it is recited to us. It was the father's favorite one and was precisely called "There will come Soft Rains", and talked about faith for war to end.

Finally, the house has its moment. A tree falls and causes a fire, which gives "death" to the house, leaving nothing but the voice which said the date speaking: "Today is August 5, 2026." And that is how the story ends. The climax of the story and its resolution are quite close from each other.

The part of the house being burnt represents the climax. In the exposition, we are told about what the house can do. Then we have the point of the story where we realize it is empty and why. After that, we are told some events happening in the house, including the dog. The author could have written events about the house forever, like a rat or a fly entering the house; but he decided to give an end to the house, and this was through a fire. So this is when the story stops going "up" in the mountain plot, and gives a turn to it, making the resolution be when all that remained was the voice.

The ending probably shows us that no matter how hard we try to keep up our modern developments, nature will have its time to regenerate and charge humankind for everything we took away from her. In this case, just the fall of a tree and something as ancient as Earth itself, could remove the last vestige of humankind.

On the other hand, this could be a message for us, taking into account the time it was written in. War destroys. It does not solve conflicts, it does not have happy endings. It only destroys. And the attempts for having the best weapons, in this case bombs, could cause not only the enemy's death, but yours too. We are also told that humankind does not want war, and how in times of it we want to have soft rains coming.

I believe that, although short and without human beings as characters, it has a very clear message. The fact that the house is the main character, makes us look clearly to the effects of not having humans present, and that they actually caused what happened to the world: the end of it.

The story is simple, but with a very strong message.

(house Image from: http://www.greatinteriordesign.com; dog: http://www.glitter-graphics.com/graphics/39299)

Karina Rivero