I made it through Dramaturgy class and then my brain took off for the weekend.
Which was a shame, really, because I still had two more classes.
Interp. & Argument is always fun, because I have a cool instructor (she reminds me of you,
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buongiornodaisy -- v. smart, with this kind of low-key sense of humor, and she won't take crap from the students). She just passed her Ph.D. exams and says now she's going to write about pirates and prostitutes. How cool is that?
Unfortunately, Critical Arts Histories continues to piss me off because I feel like half the time half the people who talk -- including the profs -- are bullshitting to sound smarter. They say things that mean nothing; the profs don't dare to say "Well, no, Student X, that interpretation makes absolutely no sense," they just hem and haw.
In that sense, it's a very useful class. My bullshit detector needs tuning so that I can keep myself from spouting the same kind of meaningless fluff. I did that last week when the prof said "Look at Duchamp's
Fountain -- this is beautiful. Why is this beautiful?" And somebody said that the shadow looked like the classic silhouette of the Virgin Mary, and I said that the shape of it, divorced from the actual object, reminded me of the little founts of holy water in churches, and I could
feel the people around me going "What the fuck?" And then the prof compounded it by saying "Well, yes, Duchamp was a Christian, so it's interesting to think that that background might have influenced this work--"
NO. What the hell?
Fountain is not intended to echo Christian architecture. It's a
urinal. The point of
Fountain is that Duchamp took something base and low and dirty, something no one wants to talk about, and presented it differently and called it art, and so it
became art, something high and of value, and it changed modern art forever. Christianity? Bullshit! Do you think he was intending to make a statement about the circle of karma when he made
Bicycle Wheel? Of course not!
As a
viewer, of course, it's entirely possible and entirely legitimate for you to bring those interpretations. If you want to look at
In Advance of the Broken Arm and say that Duchamp was making a Marxist commentary on utilitarianism and the working class, you can. Great. If you want to look at
Fountain and draw religious parallels, go for it. Fine. But Duchamp made it abundantly clear that he was creating these ready-mades for their own sake. They are what they are what they are, and yet they are still art. It's about objects in space. Don't take my interpretation of it and ascribe it to
Duchamp, for Christ's sake. He knew what he was doing. I'm a college freshman trying to get points for participating in class.
I am so sick of talking about Duchamp.
We're supposed to turn in notecards at the end of each lecture with some kind of comment or thought, so that our TAs have something to work off of at recitation (also to make sure we were there and awake). I've been drawing the Somebody Frog on the backs of mine, as some kind of commentary on art or another. I'm not exactly sure. Maybe it's a Frog for the sake of a Frog.
I am so glad it's Friday.
Fun stuff planned for the weekend:
~PotC: AWE tonight with the other [Adiva]
~A cappella group callbacks tomorrow
~Possibly seeing
Helvetica tomorrow night?
~Mattress Factory Sunday
Also I have to write a rough draft of an argument summary on an essay about "Strange Fruit," and I probably have another fuckton of readings to do for Interp. and Religion. And I need to figure out this production history -- I may have to abandon
Antigone and do some other significant classical play. Bah. And mapping arguments for Critical Thinking. But at least I got my performance review done!
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