Starry Night by Edvard Munch?

I bet you thought Vincent van Gogh was the only one who painted a starry night. Most of the time, if you perform a Google search, you will see van Gogh's before any other. But did you know Edvard Munch also painted starry nights? This one was painted in 1893.

For more information, click here.

And he painted another one in his later years. This one he painted from 1922-24.

Are Unspoken Ideas Art?

R.G. Collingwood had interesting thoughts on art and creativity, which sparked a debate between a classmate and me. I don’t know how many of you have heard of him, but he was an English historian and philosopher in the early to mid-20^th Century. He basically thought art expressed emotions and the work of art came from the creator’s mind. Makes sense, right?  Well, he also thought even if something is created in the mind and not spoken/shared/produced/etc., it exists. A tune, for example, doesn’t need to be sung or written down in order to exist. So...if you are the one and only person who thought up the tune and never mentioned it to anyone, how does it exist? 

This classmate agreed with Collingwood’s thoughts. I did not. This person also believed those silent ideas were art. I did not. (It eventually took a turn where the classmate thought everyone is an artist, even if they just have an idea. Needless to say, I didn’t agree with that either.)

CLASSMATE: Creativity is the ability to be creative. To be creative means one has the power to create. Creativity creates! Ideas formed within one’s mind are creations from one’s mind. Why can't thoughts be art? If I thought of a fictional story, and told that story to other people, is it not just as much a work of art as if I had kept it to myself?

ME: Art is an expression or production of creativity. If it is not expressed or produced, it is not art. Creativity is the use of imagination or original ideas in the production of art. Everyone is creative, not everyone is an artist.

The rest of it made my head hurt, and I’ll save you that pain by not posting it all here.

Imagine a picture you’d like to paint, but don’t tell anyone about it or actually paint it or write it down or anything. Voilà! Your idea is art and you’re an artist!

No. No, you’re not.

In my opinion, the ideas someone comes up with are not art nor do they exist if they are not spoken/shared/produced, etc.

What do you think? Do you agree with Collingwood and my classmate that unspoken ideas are art? What about art vs. creativity?

mw

Mother and Child in Art History

Since it’s Mother’s Day, I thought I would share with you a few of the many awesome pieces of art surrounding the subject of mother and child…and I won’t even make you read a lot! You're welcome.

I hope all of you mamas, step mamas, fur-baby mamas, adopted mamas, and single dads have the best day!

Mother and Child – Neolithic Sesklo Culture, 4000 BCE

Statuette of Isis and Horus – Ptolemaic Period, ca. 304-30 BCE

Krishna’s Foster-Mother Yashoda with the 

Infant Krishna, Chola period, early 12^th Century

Madonna and Child (ca. 1295-1300), Duccio di Buoninsegna

Madonna Litta (1450), Leonardo da Vinci

Madonna with the Long Neck (1534), Parmigianino

Midnight: The Hours of the Rat; Mother and Sleepy Child (1790), Kitagawa Utamaro

Mother Roulin with Her Baby (1888), Vincent van Gogh

Mother and Child (1890), Mary Cassatt

Mother and Child (1893), Edmund C. Tarbell

Mother and Child (1905), Gustav Klimt

Motherhood Angelina Child (1916), Diego Rivera

Mother and Child (1921), Pablo Picasso

Mother and Child (1931), Tamara Lempicka

Mother Holding Baby (1986), Keith Haring

Baby & Mother (2007), Diana Ong

mw

It’s Finally Over

Well, folks, I did it. Graduation this past Saturday went off without a hitch. I officially have a Master’s degree. I still can’t believe it.

A really great thing happened while I was at the school. I got to see a few of my classmates. You may be wondering why I haven’t seen them already, but the entire program was online, so we never met our classmates in person. It was really nice to be able to talk to them face to face about everything from personal lives to the picky revisions in our capstone course. Let me tell ya, it made me feel a lot better knowing I wasn’t the only one who thought the professors were picky. The tiniest little detail bothered them and they wouldn’t grade it until it was fixed. But, I digress.

Julye, yours truly, and Jennifer
We did it!

It’s weird because it was an all-new waiting game once we were standing in line to walk. Then, it took forever to get everyone seated. After that, all of the sudden, it was my row’s turn to walk up and have our names called. We sat down, I blinked, turned my tassel, and it was over. I was rushing through the crowd to get outside, desperately looking for my husband who had already made his way out. Five minutes later, we were on the road home. What seemed like ten minutes was really two hours from the point the ceremony actually started. Two years knocked down to two hours. Wow. But it was totally worth it and I would do it all over again—late nights researching, writing, pulling my hair out, writing, doubting myself, writing, and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into (and did I mention writing?).

As promised, I will post some of my photographs from my capstone project. I just have to get them into some kind of presentable format for the blog. Once I figure that out, I will post them.

Thank you, readers, for sticking with me during this process!

What shall we talk about next? Anyone have any art related suggestions?

mw