THE REVOLUTION WILL CONTINUE ON WEDNESDAY:
We didn't talk about the Soviets today because we focused on the paper. I ranted something or other at the start of class... Sarah promised she would post it to the reply here. But Moeller will do another lecture on Soviet aesthetics on Wednesday, focusing on Shostakovich's opera and why Stalin didn't like it. So you should (re)read 92-101, and you should read chapter 18 of the Guide, which is about "Analyzing Music."
THE OTHER THING THAT IS HAPPENING ON WEDNESDAY:
You will have a conference with me and two other students about your working draft. Sign up here. That means you need to upload the documents to the "shared student" section of the Dropbox as well as to the "assignment submission" section. If you're not using embedded images: please give the links, and you need to print copies of the images for the four of us to look at in the conference. The absolute latest deadline for uploading your working draft is, let's say, Tuesday night at 7:00. But I would be eternally grateful if some of you uploaded it in the morning, because then I can look at some of them on my flight back from Pittsburgh.
Yes, class will meet as usual on Wednesday in addition to the conferences.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND:
And happy Valentine's Day. (Adding to our ongoing discussion of holidays & festivals, Valentine's day is a minor Catholic holiday honoring a saint, which was appropriated by the flower, chocolate & greeting card companies in the post WW2 era in the U.S. to become the romantic/buying stuff bourgeois holiday that it is today.)
IS THIS ART?
Obama action figure... scroll to the bottom for him with an uzi and a samurai sword (?!?!)
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i did promise i would put up what we discussed early in class. basically what aaron was saying was that moeller is talking about two different time periods in the soviet union and the difference in aesthetics. in marx's writing he said that to achaive communism you have to go through a capitalist stage. but lenin jumped right from the czar and the peasants to a socialist economy. i am not sure if he said anything about whether or not this is a god thing.
ReplyDeleteif anyone got anything extra out of that rant pleas feel free to add on!!
Thanks. The two time periods were before and after Lenin's death in 1924, by which point Stalin had taken over the Soviet Union. I think I also said Shostakovich & his opera are a barometer of this change.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why I was ranting about the feudalism->communism jump... I think it was to show how Soviets were embracing a wholesale change of their culture. They don't have that backward-looking, nostalgic element you find with the Nazis. (This is typically true when you compare right-wing and left-wing political movements, even if in this case they both use authoritarian tactics.)
Hm... I think the purpose of this action figure is to market it just like a Barbie doll? Because I don't understand why Obama is fighting with Darth Vader... or fighting with samurai swords, lol O_O (The whole samurai thing reminds me of the movie Batman Begins, haha)
ReplyDeleteI think this is art. It's not an artistic painting or anything like that, but it does give me the whole Alberti "istoria" vibe because of how detailed and realistic the face is (in comparison to other action figures... Legolas' action figure fails to look like Legolas, for example). I also see art as representational, and this action figure actually looks like Obama. His face, at least.
Hey guys. For saving images from artstor, when you open the picture on the bottom right there is a picture of what looks like a floppy disk( there should also be a plus sign, and a printer sign there as well). It should be above the text that reads "Hide captions". If you press the floppy disk button it will ask if you accept terms and conditions and some other stuff but at the end of it it allows you to save the image. After you have saved your image to your computer then you can insert it into your paper. Hopefully this helps with embedding images.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Obama figure i think it is a different form of art. The art we have been mainly talking about in class has been just to look at but we have not discussed if it is considered art if you can interact with the "art". So I am unsure if this is considered art in any terms that we have discussed this quarter, even if it is not it was interesting to see Pres. Obama holding a lightsaber.
It is art in the sense that the Japanese makers put a lot of detail into it. However I don't think they meant anything by having Obama fight Darth Vader and Obama holding a pistol. These action figures are just for kids and it is a sign that the Japanese look up to Westerners because they follow our politics.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCOOL! Double katanas!
ReplyDeleteI find that modeling a doll after people is no different from painting a portrait someone, and it's been established that portraits of people are considered art. Why should the Obama doll be considered otherwise? I assume that the production of most toys, or action figures, begin with an artist (or artists) designing what he or she wants created. This artist will include details and perhaps think of what clothes or accessories will go with the action figure, all of which will then be created and sold with the action figure. We all have our reasons to buy action figures or toys, right? Some of us (like myself) buy action figures because they're hilarious, others to collect, or to have for idolizing who they represent (just maybe--people are strange). As I've mentioned in other comments, art has in its purpose to evoke emotions; I was happy to see Obama look so action-figure-y with the uzi and katanas and I'm sure other people have enjoyed that as well. I also love how the Obama action figure is pictured in a face-off with Darth Vader...
P.S. This totally beats a Johann Sebastian Bach action figure I saw the other day (it only came with a bench).
P.P.S. YAY CONSUMERISM
after a person*
ReplyDeleteI always edit things after I submit them.
I completely agree that the Obama action figure is art. It's like sculpture in a medium that can be mass-produced. Rather than having someone carve Obama's likeness in wood, marble, or something of the like, the fact that it's produced as an action figure makes it more easily accessible to the public. I think it's interesting that it's an action figure too because the "action" figure idea kinda suggests that President Obama is a man of action, which makes sense since he's supposedly going to bring change to America [I'm thinking propaganda art here]. Also, I think it's interesting that action figures typically target younger generations, and in the last election, a lot more young people turned up to vote. So, in a way, this action figure can be used as an example of art reflecting the context in which it was created [though I guess the fact that this was made in Japan makes that slightly less applicable, but you get the point...].
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, it seems President Obama is doing well for himself, since apparently Obama > Bach, Legolas, and Darth Vader.