Probably belongs in a journal but Hey! Why not?

Do you ever meet people that just make you feel smart? Not because they are praising your intelligence, but sadly, because they have a view of the world that seems... uninformed, or just dumb to you?

On the flipside, do you ever meet people that make you feel like a country bumpkin, or a child, or a plain old idiot? Not because they're slipping facts about their ivy-league education into your conversations (although I've come across a few of those in my day...) but because their ideas seems grander and their capacity to DO seems like 1000x bigger than yours?

I've met people that made me feel like both sides recently, but I don't really like separating them in such an unfair dichotomy! These are my own weird stereotypes, and that's all they are, I know it. In the base regions of my heart, I fully believe that all people are created by a God who absolutely loves them for who they are, for every unique strength they have, and even for the weaknesses they have, because He made them that way (like Punchinello the Wemmick in that one book that's awesome that I can't remember the title of...). I need to recall that people have the potential to work through their weaknesses and work towards Him, and for that and myriad other reasons, He loves his kids. My gosh, lately I just really want to see people like He does.

Right now my only weapon is to pray for charity (I can't go wrong with that, huh? :). "Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature... for the Lord seeth not as man seeth. For a man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." That's how I'd like to be. But how DO you get to see people's hearts when you're meeting them at parties and they just fill you in with brief stats like where they grew up and what they do and where they went to college... and that's all?

Here's one more Lindsey stereotype coming down the line: East Coast people don't like to let their freak flags fly. I think that's what's bothering me right now. I like to be a little bit different than everyone else, and I usually don't care who sees it. In the west I surrounded myself with friends who do likewise, and we pretty much lived out one of the colorful, fun Owl City songs I've got stuck in my head this week. I think I just need to get a grasp on how other people like to be out here. I also need to quit whining :)

Because none of this really, truly matters. Today's post is a wee bit o' gibberish that just needed to come out. I'm growing up, ironing out what is best in my character, and what is not. Welcome to my bumpy road. Someday soon, mark my words, I'm going to make a break-through in connecting to this hard-as-rock East Coast lineup of acquaintances. I'll see people better, light them up, and hopefully look on their hearts! Maybe they'll see mine, too, and like what they see.

Fact/Resolution: It does not matter what you wear (annoyingly trendy or disturbingly outdated), nor does it matter if your parents are rich, if there's a MBA behind your name, if your bag is genuine Fendi, or if you speak only in sign language. I should not, will not care if you never rise to prominence, gain notoriety, amass spectacular levels of wealth, or if you have limited language capacity, education or wit. You have the capacity to love. And thus, you are amazing. That's really what counts. Hopefully you use that capacity. I'm certainly going to try better to do so. Dear hipsters, bums, clueless tourists, and overbearing business-y folk who are too grown-up for their own good, I'm sorry for the rolled eyes I have shot your way recently. I'll try to smile next time. You probably deserve it, what do I know? Until then, I remain,

Some contemplative girl in your midst

"Half good enough for a girl of your...what was it...your passion for living?"

I'm surrounded by passion this week. I love it. It's reminding me why I've come hither, to winter wonderland. I'm reading this fascinating textbook called A Documentary History of American Art to 1900, and basically, instead of some Ph.D. somewhere paraphrasing art history into his terms, the editors have compiled people's writings about art that are actually from the 19th century (letters, lectures, journal entries, essays, etc). These documents really encapsulate and convey the ideals, passions, and philosophies of early American artists in a way that historians who come later just can't duplicate, no matter how hard they try. And the American in me just loves that some of the excerpts are from big players-- art celebrities-- and some are from relative nobodies-- the little guys-- who nevertheless lived and breathed and experienced the onward march of art history just as much as anyone who shared their epoch.

Example: I accidentally started reading this little excerpt from John James Audubon, published in the Ornithological Biography in 1831- I was supposed to be reading the next page, Thomas Cole's Essay on American Scenery, but once I started Mr. Audobon's "Ruby-throated Humming Bird" I couldn't stop, it was so beautiful! I'm repeating it in full, have fun guys:

"Where is the person who, on seeing this lovely little creature moving on humming winglets through the air, suspended as if by magic in it, flitting from one flower to another, with motions as graceful as they are light and airy, pursuing its course over our extensive continent, and yielding new delights wherever it is seen; --Where is the person, I ask of you, kind reader, who, on observing this glittering fragment of the rainbow, would not pause, admire, and instantly turn his mind with reverence toward the Almighty Creater, the wonders of whose hand we at every step discover, and of whose sublime conceptions we everywhere observe the manifestations in his admirable system of creation? -- There breathes not such a person; so kindly have we all been blessed with that intuitive and noble feeling-- admiration!...

The prairies, the field, the orchards and gardens, nay, the deepest shades of the forests, are all visited in their turn, and everywhere the little bird meets with pleasure and with food. Its gorgeous throat in beauty and brilliancy baffles all competition. Now it glows with a fiery hue, and again it is changed to the deepest velvety black. The upper parts of its delicate body are of resplendent changing green; and it throws itself through the air with a swiftness and vivacity hardly conceivable. It moves from one flower to another like a gleam of light, upwards, downwards, to the right, and to the left. In this manner, it searches the extreme northern portions of our contry, following with great precaution the advances of the season, and retreats with equal care at the approach of autumn.

I wish it were in my power at this moment to impart to you, kind reader, the pleasures which I have felt whilst watching the movements, and viewing the manifestation of feelings desplayed by a single pair of these most favourite little creatures, when engaged in the demonstration of their love to each other: -- how the male swells his plumage and throat, and, dancing on the wing, whirls around the delicate female; how quickly he dives towards a flower, and returns with a loaded bill, which he offers to her to whom alone he feels desirous of being united; how full of ecstacy he seems to be when his caresses are kindly received; how his little wings fan her, as they fan the flowers, and he transfers to her bill the insect and the honey which he has procured with a view to please her; how these attentions are received with apparent satisfaction; how, soon after, the blissful compact is sealed; how, then, the courage and care of the male are redoubled; how he even dares to give chase to the Tyrant Fly-cather, hurries the Blue-bird and the Martin to their boxes; and how, on sounding pinions, he joyously returns to the side of his lovely mate. Reader, all these proofs of the sincerity, fidelity, and courage, with which the male assures his mate of the care he will take of her while sitting on her nest, may be seen, and have been seen, but cannot be portraye or described."

SO CUTE, right? I just want to meet Mr. Audubon and hug him. One wonders if he were newly in love when he was writing this. The Thomas Cole article I had to digest after that wasn't near as exhilarating. Ah well. I considered myself a fortunate and happy scholar to have stumbled upon it at any rate. I wish I could write like that. Are you like me and vaguely recognized the name John James Audubon? He was a huge deal! Read a bit about his fascinating and adventuresome life here, if you will.

Yesterday I worked the National Building Museum's biggest public event, their Discovering Engingeering Family Day! Also a huge deal! Companies from all over the world set up booths, replete with gadgets, crazy displays, hands-on crafts, Wii machines and robots in order to show the crowds (some 5,000 people!) how engineering can be fun and can make our lives easier and cooler. My goodness I realized how far behind I am in my passion for science. It was fun to get a refresher, and realize that the engineering branch of science is just as much if not more in love with the potential of human creativity as anybody is in the art world. My job for 5 hours yesterday was to put little fake tattoos on kids. Tattoos of Digit and the Cyberchase gang (some PBS show that teaches kids to love math). You'd think that'd be boring, throwing stickies on kids for 5 hours, but I got a major kick out of seeing just how excited each one would be for this little tattoo. I instructed them to count to fifteen while we waited for the tattoo to stick, and some would screw up their faces in concentration, some would proudly breeze right through the sequence. And, then, when it was over, their hands looks like this^ And 95% of the time, they could not have been more delighted afterwards. Seriously, these little people's entire days were completely lit up-- their worlds were made perfectly wonderful-- because of a sticky I put on their hand.

Love it.

And love this-> girl's win (Go Mormon girl snowboarders! You're an inspiration to us all! Aunt Marie, she [Torah Bright] looks like you!)

Last but not least, I came across this fun poster this evening (actually, it was sent to me by my friend Mary from here). Let's play a little game: You get one point for every name you recognize, and one point for every art reference/joke you actually GET (my score is 67, I'm pretty proud of myself, and my favorite is "Picasso owns the century").

Running

Welp, I started this blog at 12:50 am, which means it's no longer Valentine's Day and I am no longer under obligation to talk about love. I'm gonna go ahead and run with that...

... what a coincidence: the topic of running is my starting off point today.

About two months ago (back when DC was just a wintery grey, not its present snow white), I was midway through my favorite run along this canal thing in my neighborhood that culminates in a meet-up with the Potomac River, when the thought randomly crossed my mind- "Is there any type of art that really, truly captures the sensation of running?" Almost instantly, I had my answer: LANDSCAPES. Why? Landscapes try and encompass all that you see before you, try to bring you in to that space. There's no story involved, no figures for you to narcissistically identify with, no giant brushstrokes for you to be confused by. Just you and the land. Just like running.

Winter semester 2010 means Art History 254: American Landscapes in the 19th Century. I signed up for this class because, admittedly, I do not like landscapes, nor do I know much about them, and I knew I should probably fix that (and, I love America!!!). They all seem essentially the same to me: a horizon line through the middle, with earth beneath and sky above. Usually there's some kind of weather and rock formations thrown in the mix, too. Case closed. One of my favorite paintings to say hi to everyday at the BYU Museum of Art, though, was a landscape. It is by the southwestern painter Maynard Dixon, Mesas in Shadow, oil on canvas, 1926, at left. He sure is a pretty canvas, now isn't he? I love(d) this painting because it feels exactly how my high desert clouds look, rolling on over my neighboring mountains.

Now, a little over a month into my course, I write to you as maybe not a changed woman, but definitely an intrigued and thoughtful one. My in-class landscape learning thus far has consisted of philosophical discussions (my fav... NOT.), and just two slides: an artist's self-portrait and a depiction of a guy getting his leg bitten off by a shark (??). This week, however, I had homework with illustrations-- amazing ones!-- and for once, landscapes have my full and complete attention and admiration! Maybe it's because of the twelveish-day streak of sitting in my house contemplating nature. Maybe (and a lot of art fans out there would probably say this smugly) it's because landscapes really are that important to art history. Either way, what I might once have dismissed as just artists showing off their skills ("Let's see how realistic I can make this leaf..."), I now see as very valuable records-- snapshots-- of how people view their own time and place; what seems important and beautiful enough for them to document.

Albert Bierstadt, Merced River, Yosemite Valley, 1866.

The Hudson River School of artists were the first Americans to take up the mantle of creating a distinctly American style of painting that could compete with the Europeans. They chose as their weapon the American landscape. Why? Because they felt (and rightly so, in my opinion) that the land of the free and the home of the brave contained something brand new to art, history, and society. Their gorgeous pictures of the untamed, idyllic beauty of the West symbolize the freedom and majesty inherent to our democratic system of government. The Hudson River School also frequently depicted the Eerie Canal and the Hudson River it connected to (hence their name). This was because the canal (363 miles long, finished in 1825) symbolized man's innovation, engineering prowess, trade potential, and also the still-new nation's great potential for growth. I'm looking forward to finally getting to discuss these images in class, someday.

My dear mom keeps getting after me and my siblings for never taking pictures of our worlds. She likes to be able to envision where we are when we tell her the stories of our various social and educational escapades (it must be the artist in her). Well, I was browsing through the 600+ pictures stored on my camera this week, and realized that I have taken quite a few landscapes of my own, and that these are often my very favorite photos (well, tied with the ones of me and my BFF's). In the spirit of the Hudson River artists (John Frederick Kensett, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Cole, and Albert Bierstadt... Google them if you want to see some jaw-dropping nature scenes), I am now posting some of my landscapes, so you can see where I've been (and maybe some day you'll share some of your own...). I love these photos because all of them have a story. All of them are visual records of events and places in my life that were important, or just breathtaking. Right now (I can't believe I'm going to cave and talk about love) I am just happy to have a horizon full of hope. My idea of love is pretty much the same as it was at the end of my V-day post last year, except that I've seen that that train flash by me a couple times now (and I SOLD that GRE book, instead of burning it- haha!) For all my friends in my same boat, let's just hang on, smile, and repeat the lines from my current favorite hymn: "Keep thou my feet I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me." Life is a beautiful thing. Keep going. :)



Wait, one more thing. Because it will get you to smile, it has great landscapes of Rio, and I'm a little obsessed with it right now:

Watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMhUZAq5IxQ

Snow Days/Daze

(No seriously. That's how our streets look. This picture was taken in Arlington this weekend. Me and my friends have either had to sit in and look out the window at this whiteness or bundle up and sojourn like eskimos out into it allllllll week long!!!)

I have passed five of the last seven days in sheer lazy abandon, thanks to Mother Nature's "Snowpocalypse 2," a 24-inch snow binge that basically shut down the entire region, just like back in December (Global warming, if you ask me, has officially been decamped as a belief system!)

I was really kind of mad on Thursday and Friday that my jobs were cancelled, since apparently the powers that be forgot that some little people still get paid by the hour and WANT to work (that's what I get for living in Government-Town, USA... apparently the people who created snowpocalypsedc.com this weekend feel the same way). But I got over it quickly. My darling little sister Katie sent me a ham in a roundabout way, which I proudly glazed, cooked, and later turned into an experimental ham-pepper soup starting on Thursday night. Total success- I cooked a whole ham! All by myself!

That was snow adventure #1. On Friday, I was all set to perform adventure #2, 72 hours of homework, when thankfully, during a few hours' lull in the snowdrift, wonderful friends came and picked me up from my relatively isolated little apartment. We trudged on over to one of their houses (the only one with power), where we have since performed all the usual girls' sleep-over rituals, stretched out over a three-day span. And we've still got nothin' but TIME! (classes, work, all still cancelled at least til Wednesday). Let me tell you guys, laziness is hard work!! In order of time spent performing the action, here is a list of all the stuff me and my friends have accomplished in the last few days:

1. Sleep
2. Talk about boys
3. Watch chick-flicks (currently holding at 5 and still counting)
4. EAT! (Maybe this should be #3, we have definitely spent multiple, multiple hours doing this...)
5. Did I say sleep already? Ok, forget it, 5. Talk about very philosophical things (the metro closure / church being cancelled two weeks in a row / travelling to sunny places / fashion / cooking / families / electricity and how vital it is / God)
6. Sojourn out to other friends' houses for supplies or Superbowl parties
7. Play in the snow (although I really avoid this at all costs. I am such a desert rat- the cost of getting snow down my ankles and in my gloves almost always outweighs the benefits of five seconds of sledding bliss)
8. Get ready for the day (we're nearing the bottom of the time-spent barrell. I'm in my sweats, make-up-less, right as we speak)
9. Homework
10. Anticipate going back to work / assuming normal responsibilities / gear up for normal life again. (Time spent equals approximately 8 minutes)

Basically, Mom, Dad, grandparents, and other darling relatives, I'm doing fine. I feel like I'm five years old kind of: eternally in my PJ's and blissfully avoiding the homework that I carted over to my friends' house in my backpack. I regret that at this moment of extreme relaxation and ease, I am not able to summon up the mental powers to write about anything artsy, serious, or insightful. My apologies. Next week! :)

Yours from the white wonderland cave of Virignia,
Lindsey

Ankles, Elbows, and the Human Body in general

I had a really weird dream on Friday that is still so vivid that it's going to take over my post this week. (I'll spin it into an art discussion soon enough, don't worry). In the dream, while out and about with friends, I suddenly looked down and saw that I must have gone and gotten MASSIVE tattoos on my legs! Two 1.5-inch stripes of gothic red-and-black checker patterns ringed (rung? rang?) around my ankle bones, and above them unfurled beautiful, lacy, abstracted black and blue fairy-wing patterns. These graceful arabesques overlapped each other and covered entirely the lower parts of my legs, all the way to my upper calves. I was at first entranced by my boldness in getting these tattoos, since I belong to a religion that generally disdains them (although, small side note, I absolutely love them on other people! Asking about tattoos is always fun, they are almost always very special and symbolic to their owners).

In the dream, after overcoming my surprise, I ran around for a bit, literally kicking up my heels and enjoying the flash of blue and black that ensued. I became horrified, though, when I realized my tats obstructed and distracted the eye from my legs, which, as all those who know me well know, are a source of shameless and unhealthy pride for me. (But, hey, I always make sure and give full credit to my mom and my Nike's!). Anywho, I was FURTHER horrified as this thought scrolled across my brain: blue is the hardest ink color to remove. Semi-repentant as I now was, I knew I faced a long, painful restoration process if I ever wanted my calves back to their original whiteyness. At the same time, I looked down at the insides of my arms and found similar wing designs extending out from the crooks of my elbows!!!! Apparently I'd gone tattoo crazy!


When I woke up, I checked my elbows before crawling out of bed and it turns out, I'm clean. But the whole dream, the vivid dark patterns on my skin, and the keen feelings I experienced about my tattoos really made me think about my human body, and the human body in general this weekend. It gets treated so differently by different people. In my religion, we believe our bodies are our first and most sacred gift from God, something we have been sent to Earth to learn how to operate and control. These precious gifts, the only thing we really possess, come with a full, wonderful range of sensations and passions that can either help us or possess us, depending on what we do with them. Gordon B. Hinckeley, former president of our church, had this to say about the human body in 1992:


"Have you ever contemplated the wonder of yourself, the eyes with which you see, the ears with which you hear, the voice with which you speak? No camera ever built can compare with the human eye. No method of communication ever devised can compare with the voice and the ear. No pump ever built will run as long or as efficiently as the human heart. What a remarkable thing each of us is. We can think by day and dream by night. We can speak and hear, smell and feel.

Look at your finger. The most skillful attempt to reproduce it mechanically has brought only a crude approximation. The next time you use your finger, look at it and sense the wonder of it. While sitting in Symphony Hall in Salt Lake listening to a concert, I was in a position to see the fingers of the performers in the orchestra. Whether playing the strings, the percussion instruments, the brass, the woodwinds--all involved the use of fingers. One does not have to use one's fingers to sing or whistle, but beyond that, there would be little of musical harmony without the deft action of trained fingers.
George Gallup once observed, "I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone--the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity" . Our bodies were designed by our Eternal Father to be the tabernacles of our eternal spirits." Whole talk found here.


Such I also believe. In addition, I believe it is very important to take care of our bodies, to keep them clean, to not show off every part of them to the world (DOWN WITH CLEAVAGE MONSTERS!), and to practice habits that make them function well for us. Regular exercise (doesn't have to be strenuous, peeps), a natural and balanced diet, and abstinence from anything that would lead to addiction-- yes, I include caffeine, alcohol, and white sugar here-- really help us in every aspect of our lives: emotional, social, mental, etc. Bonus: as a temple, the body really is a place that God may visit with his peace if we keep ourselves worthy of Him.


Elsewhere in the world I have observed people with very different opinions of their bodies. Not all of them are bad exactly, just... different: A prison. A sketchbook. A billboard. An adrenaline machine. Some people don't think much of their bodies at all, don't hardly use them. How sad. One thing I learned from being a lifeguard this summer and observing pool visitors is that God sure is some kind of sculptor. Truly. Everyone is built differently, and everyone is beautiful.

That is essentially the reason why people have for millenia sought to re-represent the human form in art. Portraits, history paintings, family photos, you name it. We as a species sure like to look at ourselves. With, ahem, good reason. Sometimes...

Special topic for the day: The nude. The nude is one of art's most prestigious (and snicker-evoking) subjects. It presents countless surfaces, expressions, and shapes for contemplation. The nude is considered by generations of artisans as the highest praise that their craft can render to God. To all the people I attend museums with: the naked statues standing around frozen will be most valuable to you if you simply try to imagine them as odes to God's creative powers. As man's attempt to emulate Him. As artistic explorations of one of the most riddling and enigmatic things that ever walked the earth, or took a breath, or made a sound. What about the body do you think is most fascinating? What would you try and recreate in art?

My best friend Jessica is funny, very opposite of me in the things she will geek out about. As opposed to museums and art, she will sometimes explode with great and brilliant things to say about, what else? The human body. (Science nerd!) I especially remember sitting around her room once, reading or listening to music or something, just chilling out, when I suddenly found myself struggling in vain to worm my way out of watching open heart surgeries on Youtube with her! Apparently, that's quality, uplifting entertainment for you (which I'm sure it is... when you have taken anatomy classes that prepped you to see something other than bloody goo on the screen). It sure is fun to have friends with different views of the world than you. I think I'll keep the science people around. There's a whole 'nother way of valuing the human body...




Because I couldn't escape this blog without including one small proof that my legs are awesome, er that me and Jess are BFF and that there are all sorts of different and beautiful body shapes in the world:


Have a great week!

Memory: It's A Mystery

Morris Louis, Doubt, 1959, Acrylic resin on canvas, 105 x 83 in., Courtesy Riva Yares Gallery Santa Fe, NM, Scottsdale, AZ.

The above painting is actually really big. When I used to look at it, hanging above me on the gallery wall, I always inexplicably imagined how fun it would be to cut it out of its frame and turn it into a queen-sized comforter cover. "Mmm... How glorious," I thought to myself, "to sleep under a marvelous (and heisted!) masterwork of one of America's most important modern painters."

Doubt came to the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Fall 2008 on loan from a private gallery for the show Turning Point: The Demise of Modernism and the Rebirth of Meaning in American Art (now that's an attractive title if I ever saw one... pbbbt). I had worked on this show as a curatorial intern for six months previous to that day, from January to June 2008. I had carted home massively heavy tomes about Morris Louis, wikipedia'd him and other artists til my mind was saturated with images like Louis' stately moneymaker from the Met (on the left) and Yayoi Kusama's psychedelic installation piece (on the right). I had bravely called snooty gallery after snooty gallery in an attempt to locate a Morris Louis big enough and attractive enough to get a place in our thoughtful and elegant show. Doubt was eventually secured not by me but by our fabulous contemporary curator from a wonderful gallery, and it ended up being one of my particularly favorite pieces. Working as a docent for Turning Point for the next several months, I attempted to explain to patrons of all ages and interest levels how Morris Louis removed the practice of painting even further from its traditional definition into the realm of modernism. He did not even touch the paint itself anymore! He held up the canvases and let the paints slide down them, shifting or bending them as his artistic sensibilities demanded in order to create aesthetically pleasing patterns . The results are lovely, and yes, cranky patron, your seven-year old could have done it. But he didn't, Morris did, and now we move into the conceptual art gallery. Now as I was telling you before....

...At this point, a year into making this blog, I have something to confess: I am not giving you a thorough investigation of modern art. Or even art history in general. You are instead getting a smattering of my own memories of art: the images and stories that glow in my mind and heart weeks, months, or even years later, for myriad random reasons. These are the images that compell me forward into laborious reading lists and occasionally mind-boggling seminar discussions. (It's one week into my second semester of grad school and I am already tired, can you tell? And is that a very bad sign? ... And IS anyone reading this besides my mom and Auntie J?) At some points, I still feel like a child of two worlds: I am equally at home in a cabin with my family, playing facecards and talking religion, as I am in the large and spectacular museum world, embodied so beautifully for me right now in the impassive, cylindrical Hirshhorn, the awe-inspiring National Building Museum, and 20+ other lovely historical institutions here in Washington, DC. I don't know what that means and sometimes I don't think my two comfort zones can coexist within myself forever. What I'm getting at is that I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that every time I explain to a new acquaintance that I eventually want to work either in art museums or teach at the university level, Morris Louis' Doubt floats up to center stage in my brain. Somehow, someway, someday, I will be content showing people simple but beautiful pictures like that and causing some kind of pleasant or stimulating thoughts to occur on their end. That's what I would like. Everything else about the path ahead of me is currently a mystery. And time ticks on...


The massive doors to the National Archives- yet another landmark site that I have yet to visit in this city. Sooo many of those... I'm such a bum. :) That reminds me. In March last year I posted my list of things I must do before I left DC; I just checked, and I'm currently 9 for 19. I'll let you speculate which have been done and which haven't. To that list I'm adding Move to a house, Visit the Corcoran Gallery, See the Nats win a game at home, Get a great summer internship, Go canoeing or sailing, Find a good Pho/Vietnamese restaurant and most importantly of all... KAMFLTTM.

Lindsey's 2010 Goals in 10 words (because after that we all stop caring, let's be honest).

Hope

Faith

Ambition Balanced With Acceptance

Romance

Service

Friends

Surprises

PS. A year ago today I arrived in Virginia. Suprises indeed.

The Railway

Edouard Manet's The Railway (alternative titles: Gare Saint-Lazare or Le Chemin de Fer). 1872-1873. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (I visit her on a regular basis :)

I STILL don't even know where to begin with this piece. Since the last time I mentioned her, I've logged more than 150 hours of research and writing time on its behalf, and wagered half of a class' grade on a 26-page paper about her (Update: B-. Totally Satisfied). Oddly, when I first I started to talk about this painting here on my blog in November, I referred to it as a him. During the course of our time together this work must have imbibed a bit of myself-- my passion and interest-- because it changed gender in my mind. Whatever. This bad boy is now a bad girl, at least to me.

And still, after three blissful weeks of theory-less, art-less Christmas holidays, I am overwhelmed by complicated art theory ideas whenever I start to think about The Railway.

OK, this is how we'll do it. If you'll recall, last time I asked you to make up a story about what is happening in this picture (If you didn't do it last time, take 15 seconds and do it now). I got a pretty creative smattering of responses back in November, ranging from a mother and child watching a father leave to a bubble-bath-less nanny about to quit. I call this painting a bad girl because, in actuality, she represents none of these stories. There is no story behind this work, per the artist himself!! In art history fancy-speak, this painting arrived into the art historical canon without an identifiable narrative. This was a deliberate, infuriating habit of the artist, Edouard Manet (who is a different person than the Impressionist artist Claude Monet, fyi).

Here are some of Manet's other most famous works. There are a few thematic and stylistic patterns to pick up between them: can you see any similarities?

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. 1882.

Olympia. 1863.

Luncheon on the Grass. 1863.

Here are a few I can pick out:

• All have women models with odd, half-bored looks on their faces.
• There are no identifiable narratives going on-- in fact, in most of them you kind of have no idea what's supposed to be happening.
• None of them are very strictly painted to look like reality; the artist has used a "sketchy" brushstroke instead of a careful, tedious, realistic one .
• Yes indeed, there's some nudity present. Have your laugh now, so we can get back to business.
• None of them are legendary scenes. No Greek gods here, nor biblical heroes. These are all scenes of late 19th-century Paris, Manet's own time and place.

These patterns apply to The Railway, too, can you see that? All these patterns, these artistic contrivances of Manet's, are why he is called the father of modernism: a very, VERY BIG title. Modernism, in this case, is a somewhat muddled term. For the sake of clarity, we'll just say that all art you would call modern displays, in some way, a focus on the act of making art. A modern artwork peels back the curtain on itself a little bit. It is focused on the modern time, it's own place in history.

In effect (and I'm grossly generalizing here), Manet was the first to say to himself, "Well, obviously I'm using a model, so I think I'll just paint her looking bored, because she is. I mean, I'm making her sit there for hours for heaven's sakes!" Manet also said, "Well, all the pretty art has been done. Let's loosen up the brush strokes like the 16th century Spanish painters did, add in a few nudes like the Frenchies, and just to throw everyone for a REAL loop, let's make the people in my paintings real-life Parisians, just going about their daily business." Manet took away the storyline in his paintings-- the easiest source of grandeur-- and the audience in his day and age HATED him for it. However, they eventually realized how cool it was that he was at least doing something different. "Lady and baby??" they cried, "Come one. That's not new. They're EVERYWHERE!... but they sure are pretty in this painting."

There are literally millions of articles written about Manet: his accomplishments, his scandals, and his story. It was a little daunting to try and add something to this pile of knowledge (and admittedly, I don't think I did a great job of it... got a lot to learn while in graduate school!). Funny story: when I first met with my university librarian to get started researching this painting, she laughed at me and said, "Manet, huh? It's all done. There's nothing left to write!" &!%$#..... like I'd let that stop me. Haha.

For Auntie J and those with an insatiable desire to know more, here are some of the things I said in my paper about The Railway, boiled down as much as I could get them. In bullet point form, my fav. :) For those with dwindling attention spans, just know that The Railway is a little slice of life, no more, no less, but its beautiful lines, all of its luscious contrasting spaces that go tripping across the canvas, make it no less fine of an artwork:

• It is interesting to note that neither Clark nor Fried discuss The Railway in terms of its potential symbolist meaning, something Harry Rand does in depth in Manet’s Contemplation at the Gare Saint-Lazare. Meyer Schapiro has previously addressed Manet’s symbolic content in a broad sense, stating that Manet’s subjects were not chosen on the basis of pure aesthetic appeal, but rather, because they related symbolically to the outlook of Manet himself (Schapiro 1954). Rand pushes this idea much further within the context of The Railway. His argument is that Manet was depicting his five senses.
• Rand traces this painting’s psychological effect back to Velazquez’ Los Borrochos (1628). The Velazquez image displays a compendium of the various psychological reactions to alcohol in its various figures. Rand’s link to The Railway is the grapes (aka wine) in the corner of the canvas.
• I feel that Rand’s interpretation stretches credible iconography. The Railway’s intriguing subject matter better fits Fried’s idea about instantaneousness. The way that the older female looks up at the viewer casually, finger marking the page in her book, signifies the tiny moment of time in which a viewer might behold this same scene in reality. The bars in the background and the obtrusive steam cut off further imagination about any potential significance for this depicted moment.
• The model’s cool and detached look signifies her presence as a model. All access to the meaning of this painting will pass through her, and she is rather cavalier in this duty.
• The Railway shows that Manet is still capable of quoting, although it was executed later than the 1860s. Instead of Old Masters, he now quotes his contemporaries: Puvis de Chavannes and Berthe Morisot’s 1872 post-war paintings (images below, Morisot on top, Puvis on bottom).
• Clark’s extant writing on this work starts with the note that Manet employs the controversial face of model/prostitute Victorine Meurent once again, although he renders her as benign (and as dressed) as she will ever be. Clark focuses on the modern life depicted in this image. The billowing clouds of immaterial steam and the identifiable piers on the right side of the canvas place this scene at the Gare St. Lazare railroad station, a place of transition and change that often appears in the Impressionist canvases of the same time period. He thus connects this work to the fleeting, absorptive milieu of modern Paris. I would further Clark’s Marxist reading by asking why the little girl gazes into the steam. No doubt Manet turned her little back to the viewer as a way to provoke him or her into contemplating her relation, and their own, to the Parisian spectacle of art and technology.

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Visual Scripture

How often do scriptures cause us to visualize something in our minds? Stories, people, places, things... all the time, right?? In fact, once you take out the ubiquitous "And it came to pass"'s, you'll see that our holy writ is pretty much stuffed full of amazing visual ideas and symbols. This is one of my favorite features of the scriptures. Somewhere, (you are about to see how much of a scriptorian I am NOT) it says that God speaks to his children at their level of understanding, wherever that is. I feel like he also speaks to us through all of our senses! In addition to the heart and mind, God speaks to our ears, our sense of touch (baptism by immersion, the warm hug you offer to friends in their trials), our sense of taste (sacrament emblems and visiting teaching cookies :), smell (cookies again :) and last but not least, our sight! There are a few vivid "visuals" that I count as my favorite in the scriptures. These visuals, some symbolic and some literal, I imagine again and again, and they never fail to affect me. I'm going to set a couple of them before you, and not offer any art historical dissections. Scriptures sure can stand on their own. That's one of the many reasons why I know they are not a construct of man alone. (I can't resist, however, including a few select illustrations of these scriptures' ideas. The following scattered images are the nearest that reality and the internet come to resembling the truths of these verses, at least as I imagine them. :)

D and C 84: 82-84 For, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin; and the kingdoms of the world, in all their glory, are not arrayed like one of these.

For your Father, who is in heaven, knoweth that you have need of all these things. Therefore, let the morrow take thought for the things of itself.




Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.






Isaiah 49: 15-16 Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.





1st Nephi 11: 8, 33 (Lehi and Nephi's Vision) I looked and beheld a tree... and the beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty; and the whiteness thereof did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow.

I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God.




This scripture is perhaps my favorite of all these; it comes into my mind all the time when I'm studying the stories and images of the Savior. I'm on an eternal hunt for images that really strike me as looking like Him. It was told to me once that I would recognize the Savior if I saw him before me, which was a sweet thing to be told. It's kind of cool to me to think that somewhere in the back of my subconscious mind I know what Jesus Christ looks like. BYO Illustration to this one :)

Isaiah 53: 2-3, 5 He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

New and Good Things

I have half of a post about Manet's The Railway written... but I am seriously struggling to not use high-faluting art theory when I write about it. So it's on hold for yet another week... my mind just can't pare it down yet. (Trust me, it's better this way. It's currently a really boring, watered-down version of my 26-page final Historiography paper. And NOBODY, myself included, should ever have to revisit that ugly monster). 

Instead, I want to talk about the experience of being home. I've thought about what it means to be home at least 10x a day, starting probably three weeks ago. At first, while in the throes of the miserablest round of finals ever, being home was just the chance to escape, to let my mind stop churning. Visions of watching tv, sleeping, and not having to use any more confounded multisyllabic words danced in my head.

Then, I realized that being home represented a major change, or at least a significant mile-marker, in my DC life. With the close of the semester, I said good-bye to a few good friends who will not be returning East with me next year. I also realized, kind of for the first time, that many of my bestest friends in the West have joined the march of the marrieds this past year, and thus can't come out and play with me like old times. But it's ok. We are meant to grow and learn and adventure in this life, and I am so proud of my friends for the bold steps forward they take.

Being home at this time, the end of 2009, means the close of an incredible and unique year. EASILY the fastest 365 days of my life. I have skipped through an internship at the Smithsonian, a round of unemployment, a summer as an underpaid lifeguard, and a fall as a first-year art history grad student. A lot of the time, I hardly noticed how quick and brilliant these days were. In 2009, I have changed, and changed directions, wildly... and I hope for the best. Being home for Christmas means a brief moment to stop and contemplate these amazing opportunities. It also means a chance to express my gratitude for the "back-east" friends I have out there, who make the cold and the distance and the obnoxious DC materialism/professionalism so worth it (special shout-out to Marissa, Jenni, Maggie, and Dani, my East Coast blog buddies :)

Finally, being home allows me to re-learn the wonderful, slightly cheesy but very true lesson: that friends who love each other are never far apart at heart. It doesn't matter that I only got to see my parents four times this year; when I came home, it's as if I never left! Magic! I've changed, it's true, but they love my changes, or at least they'll want to gab about the changes. :) DC '09 taught me that your heart will ALWAYS expand to fit whenever you find something new to care about. Miraculously, none of the older things in there have to be kicked out. What a glorious gift that is, to be able to grow in love, and never be bounded. There are always new people to serve, to laugh with, to explore, and to love. That must be why Heavenly Father's work and glory is to bring about the eternal life of his children. He's really figured it out: the best thing in life is to love as many little humans as possible, and thus keep one's heart growing.

I read over my 2008 journal this morning. Apparently, on Thursday, November 6th, I felt I had the greatest day of my life. Here is a selection of that entry, so you can see why:

"I worked more, kept busy, shared my friendship bread, went and gabbed with Dani at her desk at the Wilk, and walked home in the beautifully brisk air. And on that walk home... Milena, the Director of Public Programs at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC called me to set up an appointment for a phone interview... then we just decided to interview right then. She told me all about the kinds of things I'd be doing, and as we talked, I felt this unbelievable sense that I could not have ASKED for a better internship, one more suited to my current educational, professional, or social needs :) Heavenly Father LOVES me! I started screaming and jumping afterwards, and called the wonderful parents who support me. Mom cried she felt it was so right, so perfect.

"I have officially changed my life plan today- gonna go down a road in January I never dreamed of. It feels incredible, and very right. Ah faith. Bless it. Oh, and I listened to the great art critic Michael Fried give a lecture on High Modernism and Minimalism at the MoA tonight. I felt completely at home there. I belong in that big, beautiful world. I'm SO Happy. PS Milena was SO pleasant to talk to. I'm really looking forward to working with her. PPS Jessica is sad for me to go... and that's why I choose her as my best friend."

I've learned, taught, explored, loved, been accepted to and attended one brutal semester of grad school since January. Frankly, it has worn me out to skin and bones, and I am happily at home in order to recoup and fatten up. Next year's resolution, among several, is to find better balance between all of these things. While in DC a friend really alerted me to the value of balance; I have the nerdy tendency of focusing too closely on my art world (well... once in a while :). I've got a lot to see of life yet, and many people to love and serve.  I am extremely grateful to know that I have a Savior whom I might lean upon as I try to gain strength and accomplish great things. I am so happy to be home for Christmas, so that I might celebrate His birth with those I love. And I am ridiculously excited for the new and good things to come. Merry Christmas all.

Me at the Vegas Bowl last night- BYU vs. Oregon State. I LOVE that the Momo crowd causes the beer signs to be turned off and the hot chocolate ones to be haphazardly created.

Me and Spence after rushing the field. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO COLD! But notice the score in the upper right hand side- Cougs 44, Beavers 20! Just baaaaaarely worth it. :)

PS Please excuse the gushyness of this post. "I just have a lot of feelings." What movie?? Haha

Finals are Over.

Courtesy of a Google image search for "grief."

 I don't even want to talk about it. It was that awful. Grad school is not for the faint of heart.

On the other hand............. I'm going back to New York and then onto Vegas this week! Oh happy day! So happy I'm actually enjoying listening to this:

Merry Christmas. :)