Final Exam:

Due on Friday, December 16th, turned in to my faculty mail box in Room 7-235:

Please write a six-page answer to the following 2 questions, giving 3 pages to each question. The first question is, “Was Robert Moses corrupt?”, and asks you to spend three pages using evidence and arguments from the book, The Power Broker, to answer either “yes” or “no” to this question – in other words, take a position on this question, and defend it using your own arguments, examples from the book, and even (very) short quotations from the book (with page number) that back up your argument.

The second question, answered in your 2nd three pages, is to take the exact OPPOSITE position you took in Part One, and write three pages making an argument, in effect that Robert Moses was/was not corrupt. You may rely on the chapters assigned, or you may range beyond them into the other parts of the book to gather evidence to make these arguments. Think, write, and argue as clearly as you can, almost like you were in a court of law.

Art Dealer Profile

Students will write term papers, which will also be presented as oral reports. Topic will be either:

1)     Choose to profile an art dealer, whom you interview about how the dealer got started in the art business and how the dealer functions in the marketplace (e.g.: selling works of living artists or through the resale of works in the secondary market).

2)     Profile another person who works with or in the art market, such as someone who manages art as collateral for a bank or investment house, works with art or collectors at an auction house, or organizes an art fair or a biennial.

For any of the above topics, students must contextualize their interview subject with published references on how the art market functions. Ask for permission to record your interview; if granted, either just record sound or take a friend to make a video. Source notes are required for references and quotations. Chicago Manual of Style for form.
Detailed outlines and bibliographies must be submitted in advance of the paper; they are due October 25. Final paper should be minimum 8 pages of text, plus notes.

Take home Final

Please type and double-space all answers in 12 pt. type; minimal length is 2 pages per question. Maximum length is 5 pages per question. No extra credit for being verbose however! Use your own words. Students who copy others’ words will fail. I won’t count off for poor grammar if I can understand your point. Use a spell checker or google words and definitions, but watch that its auto-correct doesn’t introduce errors.

Please utilize as many of the terms on the list for study as possible, indicating their presence by bold face type or underlining them. You need to use them in the correct sense to show that you understand their meaning. Please use at least half of the terms; the more used the more credit, but you must show that you understand the meaning by using them correctly to answer the questions.

1. Explain how art works as an investment vehicle for the rich.

2. Explain what art appraisers do and what is “clear title.”

3. Describe the history of art markets: guilds, auction houses, galleries, and art fairs, explaining similarities and differences.

4. Explain financing options for art collectors, giving at least three different scenarios or situations.

5. Explain how to avoid buying fakes or stolen art.

Mid-Term Paper assignment

Investigate art as an investment, tracking the auction prices of one famous now dead artist across several decades or even the twentieth century, examining how art historical publications (like a catalogue raisonné) and museum exhibitions affect price. Use database ArtNet.com available free to you online with link above. Make a graph of your findings and create a powerpoint to show in class. Compare your findings with one living artist’s prices and to the Dow Jones Index.

choose one dead artist and one living artist and compare the findings using graphs with a powerpoint which will be orally presented in the class tomorrow.

Assignment due Oct 14: Choose one of the art dealers listed to present in class in an oral report with a powerpoint; 5-min presentation.

Historically notable gallerists include as Paul Durand-Ruel; Theo Van Gogh; Michael Knoedler; Rene Gimpel; Ambroise Vollard, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler; Lord Duveen, Alfred Stieglitz, Marius de Zayas, Herwath Walden; Paul Cassirer; Edith Halpert, Julien Levy, Peggy Guggenheim, Betty Parsons; Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend; Sidney Janis; Walter Hopps (Ferus); Ivan Karp; Richard Bellamy; George Wildenstein; Pierre Matisse, Martha Jackson; Andre Emmerich; Larry Salander; Arnold Glimcher; Mary Boone, and Larry Gagosian will be discussed. 

You choose and track a famous artist's sales prices, say Matisse, across several decades: say from his death to the present and plot the price points for sales on a graph. You get those from Artnet.com. You have a free subscription by using the link in the syllabus. Choose a living artist to compare with some of those same dates, say Jasper Johns. When prices go up, ask why. Use the internet and find when there were important exhibitions, publications, or other events that could be relevant. Indicate this with an asterix* at each relevant date and refer to a numbered endnote. OK? Which was the better investment? Why? Summarize and explain your results in a brief paper: a few pages or however much you need to explain what you found by making the graph.
2) For the Art Dealer Assignment, I choose one art dealer (Rene Gimpel), and present an oral report w/ powerpoint tomorrow.
For the brief report on an art dealer (not the term paper due at the end of the term), how about choose one on my list on the syllabus: look the dealer up on google and if need be also in the library. Pick a few images and make a powerpoint to speak for 3-5 minutes to your classmates about why this dealer is worth studying. 
3) And these two oral presentations combined should be up to 5 minutes each. Yes
4) Is there any written report required for the mid-term paper and the art dealer assignment? Yes for both see above.

http://www.materialdriven.com/home/2016/5/17/second-life-material

Short Assignment 1  [Standing Julian]

Due in class on Tuesday June 14
2 pages, typed and double-spaced
125 points
Go to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The current exhibition, “Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection,” is on floors 6 and 7 of the museum. Find the work called “Standing Julian” by Urs Fischer in this exhibition. Take a picture of it. Write a two-page reflection on what this work says about the nature of human identity and life and how art portrays (or fails to capture) experience. In your reflection, link Fischer’s artwork to two of our class readings from between June 2-June 13 (up to and including “The Happy Prince”). Attach your picture of “Standing Julian” to your paper. This particular artwork changes every day, so be sure to include the date and time of your image.

Come to class on Tuesday June 14 prepared to discuss what you wrote. Everyone will briefly present and this presentation is worth 25 of the 125 total points.

Tintern Abbey

Even in the present moment, the memory of his past experiences in these surroundings floats over his present view of them, and he feels bittersweet joy in reviving them. He thinks happily, too, that his present experience will provide many happy memories for future years. The speaker acknowledges that he is different now from how he was in those long-ago times, when, as a boy, he “bounded o’er the mountains” and through the streams. In those days, he says, nature made up his whole world: waterfalls, mountains, and woods gave shape to his passions, his appetites, and his love. That time is now past, he says, but he does not mourn it, for though he cannot resume his old relationship with nature, he has been amply compensated by a new set of more mature gifts; for instance, he can now “look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity.” And he can now sense the presence of something far more subtle, powerful, and fundamental in the light of the setting suns, the ocean, the air itself, and even in the mind of man; this energy seems to him “a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking thoughts.... / And rolls through all things.” For that reason, he says, he still loves nature, still loves mountains and pastures and woods, for they anchor his purest thoughts and guard the heart and soul of his “moral being.”

The speaker says that even if he did not feel this way or understand these things, he would still be in good spirits on this day, for he is in the company of his “dear, dear (d) Sister,” who is also his “dear, dear Friend,” and in whose voice and manner he observes his former self, and beholds “what I was once.” He offers a prayer to nature that he might continue to do so for a little while, knowing, as he says, that “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her,” but leads rather “from joy to joy.” Nature’s power over the mind that seeks her out is such that it renders that mind impervious to “evil tongues,” “rash judgments,” and “the sneers of selfish men,” instilling instead a “cheerful faith” that the world is full of blessings. The speaker then encourages the moon to shine upon his sister, and the wind to blow against her, and he says to her that in later years, when she is sad or fearful, the memory of this experience will help to heal her. And if he himself is dead, she can remember the love with which he worshipped nature. In that case, too, she will remember what the woods meant to the speaker, the way in which, after so many years of absence, they became more dear to him—both for themselves and for the fact that she is in them.

Form

“Tintern Abbey” is composed in blank verse, which is a name used to describe unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. Its style is therefore very fluid and natural; it reads as easily as if it were a prose piece. But of course the poetic structure is tightly constructed; Wordsworth’s slight variations on the stresses of iambic rhythms is remarkable. Lines such as “Here, under this dark sycamore, and view” do not quite conform to the stress-patterns of the meter, but fit into it loosely, helping Wordsworth approximate the sounds of natural speech without grossly breaking his meter. Occasionally, divided lines are used to indicate a kind of paragraph break, when the poet changes subjects or shifts the focus of his discourse.

Commentary

The subject of “Tintern Abbey” is memory—specifically, childhood memories of communion with natural beauty. Both generally and specifically, this subject is hugely important in Wordsworth’s work, reappearing in poems as late as the “Intimations of Immortality” ode. “Tintern Abbey” is the young Wordsworth’s first great statement of his principle (great) theme: that the memory of pure communion with nature in childhood works upon the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure communion has been lost, and that the maturity of mind present in adulthood offers compensation for the loss of that communion—specifically, the ability to “look on nature” and hear “human music”; that is, to see nature with an eye toward its relationship to human life. In his youth, the poet says, he was thoughtless in his unity with the woods and the river; now, five years since his last viewing of the scene, he is no longer thoughtless, but acutely aware of everything the scene has to offer him. Additionally, the presence of his sister gives him a view of himself as he imagines himself to have been as a youth. Happily, he knows that this current experience will provide both of them with future memories, just as his past experience has provided him with the memories that flicker across his present sight as he travels in the woods.

“Tintern Abbey” is a monologue, imaginatively spoken by a single speaker to himself, referencing the specific objects of its imaginary scene, and occasionally addressing others—once the spirit of nature, occasionally the speaker’s sister. The language of the poem is striking for its simplicity and forthrightness; the young poet is in no way concerned with ostentation. He is instead concerned with speaking from the heart in a plainspoken manner. The poem’s imagery is largely confined to the natural world in which he moves, though there are some castings-out for metaphors ranging from the nautical (the memory is “the anchor” of the poet’s “purest thought”) to the architectural (the mind is a “mansion” of memory).

The poem also has a subtle strain of religious sentiment; though the actual form of the Abbey does not appear in the poem, the idea of the abbey—of a place consecrated to the spirit—suffuses the scene, as though the forest and the fields were themselves the speaker’s abbey. This idea is reinforced by the speaker’s description of the power he feels in the setting sun and in the mind of man, which consciously links the ideas of God, nature, and the human mind—as they will be linked in Wordsworth’s poetry for the rest of his life, from “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free” to the great summation of the Immortality Ode.

Urs Fischer’s giant wax sculpture of artist-director Julian Schnabel calls to mind a temple figure — or idol worship. Whether burning brightly or burning out, the Fischer sculpture is also a real candle. Atop Schnabel’s head a flame burns, melting the enormous wax figure in glacial time. The hair’s already gone; wax is running down the sculpture’s back. All this will dissolve into some Wicked Witch–like puddle in a few months. Schnabel likens the sculpture to Ozymandias, Shelley’s decaying stone sculpture in the desert. And me? Beyond the highly realistic Baroque sculpture, the distorted surfaces of Rodin, the superrealism of Duane Hanson, and Frankenstein via technological razzle-dazzle (body scans, milled foam, casts, wax, and wicks) — beyond all that, I see a meta-vision of two male artists as candles burning in the wind.

Or, more Freudian, it’s the younger (and Swiss) Fischer negating the image of one of the most controversial American artists of the past 40 years. “Julian is like an archetype,” says Fischer. “It’s like the tide moves around him.” Contemplating the sculpture, I thought of the 28-year-old Robert Rauschenberg showing up at the door of Willem de Kooning in 1953 — and asking for a drawing in order to erase it. De Kooning gave him one, saying, “I know what you’re doing.”

On view as part of “Human Interest” at the Whitney.

*This article appears in the May 16, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.

Write a two-page reflection on what this work says about the nature of human identity and life and how art portrays (or fails to capture) experience. In your reflection, link Fischer’s artwork to two of our class readings from between June 2-June 13 (up to and including “The Happy Prince”).

Express feelings in the present moment with the colors and feelings

He is literally a burning man

Larger than life

Does not look impressed, is hefty, possibly even bored

Start as something whole, slowly melt away

Mind melts, becomes part of exterior ‘clothing’ that he wears

portly

Calls Grecian Urn- cold pastoral – set of conventions- idealizes living outside of the city

“A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.” ll30
Utopian/ideal – to call it cold, representation/not there

Grecian urns tell a story that usually is warm, reminiscent

Burning- hot, but is a cold portrayal of something that is human/ passage of time. Melting- the reverse cold pastoral- its an ideal, its got this model-like pose, but the statue is melting like the paintings on the Grecian urns will erode. Attempt to reach for the truth, sublime, by describing these feelings. Representation of something very contemporary (the clothes) and then its melting right in front of you. reach for the romantic. Tiny human in a huge world

Art is manipulable. Keats is writing a poem that is a narrative act to rewrite the Grecian Urn.

Vintage that is cooled off- so distant, but tasting is so close,
sunburnt mirth, full of the warm South- heat – sunburnt- too warm

Ephemeral nature (ignore)

How much we try to represent something but its never possible, its always

Urs Fischer’s “Standing Julian” is a larger-than-life wax sculpture/candle that burns on the 6th floor of the Whitney Museum.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s277/nl/37637047/8d0a1fa0-56d0-484d-b904-b66ce8bc572c?title=Untitled

Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun

When I first began to read Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, I read it in a very literal way and was a little bit confused. At first I asked myself questions like “Is he living in a poor society where people eat each other?” or “Is he crazy?” In the beginning, a man describes that he is visiting a friend who has been sick, but the illness is not identified. As I began to read deeper into the text, I understood that the man in the diaries suffers from paranoia. He is overwhelmed with hallucinations and fear of cannibalism. He is gripped by the fear that everyone, including his brother, his caring doctor and his neighbors are preparing to eat him. In the mind of the “madman,” he portrays his everyone in his neighborhood as heartless and cannibalistic. Despite the brother’s apparent genuine concern, the narrator still regards him as a big threat as any stranger, showing just how distrustful he has become.

For example, the second diary even begins with his obvious paranoia. “There were seven or eight other people who had their heads together whispering about me…A shiver ran from the top of my head clear down to the tips of my toes, for I realized that meant they already had their henchmen well deployed, and were ready to strike.”

It becomes more apparent in Diary four that the narrator is suffering from a mental-like illness (maybe schizophrenia), when the doctor comes to check on the narrator. The doctor says “Don’t let your thoughts run away with you. Just convalesce in peace and quiet for a few days and you’ll be all right.”

The idea of courage that repeats itself in the diaries. In the fourth diary, the narrator states “But the more courage I had the more that made them want to eat me so that they could get a little of it for free.”

I realized that there is a deeper meaning than the literal translation of these diaries. The text had to be referring to a broader picture or maybe an issue in the society at that time. I began to analyze the diaries as an attempt to describe the oppressive values in the Chinese society. It may even be referring to the corrupt government and upper-class people who fed off the work of the lower-class people while limiting their freedom. By using cannibalism, Lu Xun illuminates the problems of the society without an obvious assault on the corruption in China. Because the Chinese government was extremely oppressive especially when it came to freedom of speech, Lu Xun’s use of such metaphors to connect cannibalism to a critical issue in society worked very well. It also made it comprehensible for many people in society. Cannibalism referred to the outdated values that individuals held at that time, and the narrator is one of the few people who dares to counter those values. This brought me back to the use of the idea of courage. The narrator possessed courage which was rare trait at that time, so people wanted to eat him in order to gain some for themselves.

The narrator comes to the conclusion that his older brother ate his younger sister when she was a child, that perhaps he himself unknowingly consumed her as well, and that his mother either did not know or would not speak of the cannibalism because it was inappropriate to speak of such things.

He enforces his concern for the future generations and the children. His last plea is to “save the children…” He retains hope that maybe there are some children who still haven’t eaten human flesh. In other words, he hopes that the future will learn to stand up against oppression and gain the bravery and courage to speak their minds. Even in the beginning of the diaries, he says “But the children? Back when they hadn’t even come into the world yet. Why should they have given me those funny looks today?…That really frightens me. Bewilders me. Hurts me. I have it! Their fathers and mothers have taught them to be like that!” In other words, the narrator is saying that if the oppression and fear to speak up continues, parents will teach their children to be timid and lack courage.

This entry was postedon Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013 at 3:43 pmand is filed under Class Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 Responses to “Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun”

LU LIU Says: 

Profile photo of LU LIU

April 30th, 2013 at 4:49 pm

Diary of a Madman is a notable landmark not only in Lu Xun’s writing career, but also in the progress of Chinese society. I absolutely agree with Marissa’s viewpoint that this short fiction implies the writer’s anger and sadness about the feudalism, which had lasted for over two thousand years in China.

Actually it is a litter bit difficult to get the idea from this version of translation, or if you have no awareness of the Chinese contemporary history. Even though I am a Chinese, it was also hard for me to understand the meaning of this fiction while I read the original story in high school. Refer to Lu Xun’s experiences, he had studied at Sendai Medical College at Japan and he was willing to use the professional skills to treat poor people in China. However, he found that the real problem of the poor was not physical health issue, but was about their ignorant attitudes towards the feudal system; that was why he gave up his medical education and started to write.

In this story, the madman who is diagnosed as psychological disorder indicates the emerging generation, such as Lu Xun himself, who had fresh thoughts about the Chinese social system and norms at that time. Many of those people had studied abroad and learned advance ideas in other countries. They desired freedom and democracy, thus, they were against the old feudal system and looked forward a revolution in China. Nevertheless, most Chinese people had lived in the shadow of feudalism for too lone time and they were educated to follow the feudal rules in order to survive, which could “eat” their fighting spirit at all. While the madman recognizes that cannibalism is widespread around him, even his old brother attempts to eat him, he was extremely fearful. Madmen’s helpless situation shows how those young reformers were ruthlessly persecuted and suppressed by feudalism.

On the other hand, Diary of a Madman makes me connect to a book titled The Road, which is written by Cormac McCarthy. In The Road, the entire land is burned in the post-apocalyptic America. There are a group of guys called Roadrats, driving a truck and capturing others. They eat one accompanier’s dead body after he was shot. There are more; the two narrators—the father and the son, discover some naked people and pregnant women who eat newborn babies. Different from Lu Xun’s story based on the madman’s imagination of cannibalism, McCarthy creates a world where cannibals do really exist and the story is more bloody and cruel. The similarities between the two stories are—those cannibals all eat human in order to survive and the two writers both depict children as the symbol of the hope of humanity.

— LU LIU