Sunday, May 24, 2009

More School Stuff

I'm almost at the halfway point of my class and it has been so intriguing. I wish it could go on forever. There is so much to learn and I'm only scraping the surface. I was really surprised by how much of my second class was made up of Japanese art. One thing that people forget is that art doesn't occur in a vacuum. When the first Japanese prints were exhibited at the Crystal Palace in London in 1851, it ushered in the era of modernity and Western artists began to borrow Eastern elements depicting time and space. Similarly, Japanese artists gave perspective a shot as well as shadows and value. It was such a fascinating class - the differences are obvious, but sometimes one doesn't know until someone tells you!

Lately we have been looking at German art up to World War 2 with a brief detour to Soviet propaganda. It's fair to say that Hitler set the design world back a good few years. In fact, there was one class where Bozenna used the word "degenerate" to describe every work. San-serif fonts, anything modern and not like "the old way" was considered degenerate. As a result, many German architects and designers, like Mies Van Der Rohe, brought their style to North America as it was hard to find work in Nazi Germany.

I'm almost finished my research paper on Franz Marc. I think it's going to be quite enjoyable...I just need one last paragraph, then fix up my citations.

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