Author: Lainie Smith

I really enjoyed our class discussion on what exactly is ‘the fantastic’. Connor Murray noted it’s something too great or wild or unnatural to be real. Professor Serrano said it’s the juxtaposition of the real and the unreal, the moment of hesitation in distinguishing the two. But I also wonder what I should call the emotion that I felt looking at one of the first few pages featuring objects of ownership. The image of the family drawn in child’s scrawl was the most powerful to me. It made me sympathize with the immigrants in that I felt upset imagining losing that hand-drawn picture. Could that renowned, real emotional feeling for an image, something that is unreal, be considered fantastic? It is the combination of a real response for something fictional… And I think the word fantastic denotes something of great power, something moving and strong and provoking. Although my emotional wasn’t a “hesitation” exactly, it was overwhelming. What do I call this?

One of my favorite parts about Asterios Polyp (and graphic novels for that matter) is how everything seems to be placed with purpose, and therefore, much of the author’s intent came across as more deliberate to me. For instance, comparing Asterios Polyp to Songs of Experience by William Blake, I found Asterios easier to interpret. For example, one of the panel progressions discussed in class was the all yellow fire that blazed and took over Asterios’ apartment complex. Comparing panel by panel, the fire increases in size to a completely yellow panel that is larger in size, depicting the growing scale of the fire. The gutter space is deliberate, and the use of color is straightforward. I felt like I understood Mazzuchelli’s intent. However, as we analyzed with The Sick Rose, some of Blake’s work is ambiguous and I wondered if I was doing too much work as a reader to try to put meaning in his images. Overall, I enjoy graphic novels the most out of all the content we have analyzed thus far because I felt closer to the author and found myself reading the cues of the gutters, the panel size, and the colors like a code.

As I’ve learned from many of our workshops, the creating art is a lot more time consuming and difficult than it looks. I absolutely loved the collage workshop, largely because it is something that I used to do often when I was younger. In the past, my collages were just pasted images cut from magazines that I liked. I found it a lot more difficult to pull images from magazines and books that have to relate to the scene I am trying to depict, Dracula waking from his tomb. I found that it was hard to recreate such a specific scene with the content in a magazine. I think I am going to end up drawing or selecting and printing the more specific images (like Dracula and a tomb). I have also never made a collage with tissue paper and streamers before, but I really liked the way that it looked on the page, though it was hard to glue down. I think the prettiest collages are made by layering mediums, though this is the most time consuming. I am glad we are starting this final project early!

One of my favorite texts that we have read this year has been Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey. Not only do I find it humorous in its critique on the British monarchy, I think that it does a good job depicting the idea of frivolity in society. From the works that we examined in class today, “The Bug Book” and “The Curious Sofa”, both stories handle murder, but murder occurs in the face of frivolity across different societies. “The Bug Book” shows a clan of bugs partying with one another and going on excursions together. When their outrageous fun is disturbed by an outsider, a large black bug, they kill him and continue on their way with partying. In “The Curious Sofa” the party is disrupted when Sir Egbert hides everyone in a sofa. In both circumstances, the halting of festivities is met with outrage, shock, and death. Could Gorey have been commenting on the times, making a commentary on how society deals with people trying to stop the fun momentum of the times?

Consistently throughout the course, there have been a lot of noteworthy links between the psyche and an artist’s mental health and the work he produces. I think of artists like Goya and now Max Ernst who we just studied that had physical or mental ailments which thus explain the works they produce. Particularly with the genre of Surrealism, I found it interesting that the subject is centered on the irrational and the subconscious, a function of the mind discovered by Freud. Dreams were seen as inspiration, and questions like how do you dream? What color is it? drive the production of art. From Henri Matisse to Goya to Ernst, I find it fascinating that these men all had some sort of mental or physical ailment that largely contributed to their unique ideas as artists.

It was a privilege to meet Yun-Fei Ji at this morning’s class session. I found it really beneficial to put a face to the work, as studying art so often without seeing the artist himself can make the work seem like an entity of its own. I found it insightful to hear about his upbringing in a Chinese army camp outside of the more urban environments that I picture when I think of China, and how the folktales he learned from his Grandmother translate even today to some of the more grotesque figures in his pieces.

That said, I was surprised when it was noted that many of his figures are on the left side of his works, but Yun-Fei was not even aware himself that he did this. It made me question as an interpreter: Are we as interpreters giving the artist too much credit if he himself admits a lack of intent in something we may take as symbolic? Are we reading too deeply or assuming that everything single detail has meaning, when, as Yun-Fei suggests, some things “just happen”? Where is this line of interpretation?

I also would have liked to hear a little bit more about his 3-D piece. What inspired him to produce such a radically different piece from the rest of his works?

 

One of my pet peeves on this campus is the poor-functioning printers on a regular basis. For some reason, they always seem to be broken or inundated with paper. I am hoping that the print workshop will provide me with an understanding and appreciation for laser printing, even if it does not function spot-on each time. At least we don’t have to hand set all of our papers…

Last year, I had the pleasure of working with Professor Rippeon in a print-making seminar for my poetry writing workshop. For the featured poets coming to campus, we produced prints of their poems to be distributed at the readings. I still have my prints hanging in my dorm room! Professor Rippeon stressed during the process that print-making is truly the combination of art and literature; the act of “performing” literature by aptly selecting colors and forms that mirror the content of the poem. Moreover, we took into consideration some of the poet’s preferences. I LOVED this workshop; it is still one of my most memorable experiences in the literature classes I have taken because it was the first time I was exposed to the unification of art form and literary production.

One thing I remember from my work print-making is that it can difficult to maneuver the paper in the press. As shown in the video clips in the preparatory email, the print-maker must hold down the piece of paper while cranking at the same time. This can be trickier than it looks…

Early this week, I had the pleasure of watching the BBC documentary on Goya, hosted by Jake Chapman. Throughout the ~:30 minute documentary, Chapman goes to numerous sites in Spain that feature Goya works and/or inspired his famed creations. In one such museum, Chapman observes Goya’s dark etchings, work from his later years in life after he lost his hearing and his wife had died.

I found it fascinating that Chapman mentioned the “blurred line between biography and portrait”, a phrase that perfectly captures the relationship we seek to understand in class. Chapman goes on to say that his morbid creations at this time indicate his mental state – some of the faces look like they are from an insane asylum in deep anguish.

Yes, Goya’s works at this time provide insight into his mental state, but I think they function as a signature as well. Just as signatures change over time (when we are young and first signing documents, our signatures are clean and pristine; full of life. As we age and grow comfortable [maybe too familiar] with signing things, our signature becomes a “dead” scribble) Goya’s works are a darker signature, one worn with age and the routine of life. As Jake Chapman notes in relation to Goya, “In order to be good, you have to see some bad things.”

Similar to our class period of painting, I would say that Monday’s class session where we looked at the Special Collections has also been another favorite. By viewing some of the treasures maintained in Special Collections, I was struck with appreciation for how much effort goes into the construction of an ancient manuscript. I found it particularly interesting to see the book whose cover had bent over time from age, as well as the various Atlases showing the perception of the time of the world. Since most of the works that we saw were Western, it would be interesting to compare the types of Atlases we saw to ones from the East. Did they have the same perceptions of the world?

Viewing the treasures in Special Collections also brought great pride and appreciation for being a Hamilton student and having access to articles of such worth. For example, Prof. Serrano mentioned that these types of works are usually only available to graduate students, who have to wear gloves to get a close look at the materials. There is something surreal about being able to touch the covers and the pages, feeling the differences in the wooden covers and papyrus/animal skin/parchment paper pages. I felt lucky to be doing something so worthwhile on a Monday morning at 8:30 am…

The scriptorium workshop absolutely made my day! I always love working with watercolors and painting – it really forces you to slow down and acknowledge what you are doing. Moreover, the exercise really made me appreciate the patience that one must have to create wonderful artistic works like an illuminated manuscript. The Gregorian music transported me to a different time and place, and I could picture how ethereal painters of manuscripts must have felt at the time of their creation. I struggled with the gold leaf – I think as a result of the paper- but it still is a nice touch. I really appreciated this day and have a lot of respect and admiration for the artists who created the manuscripts. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been just to acquire the tools to create a manuscript, let alone create one.