Cathy Zhou's blog

Culinary Spirit

There was a discovery by British scientists that taste and smell would last longer than visual memories. So today instead of taking everyone to tourist attractions and visit visually, I would like to use the “taste” to approach my city---Chengdu.

I’ve been out of the city for 4 months, and when I closed my eyes, I could still reencounter the taste of the restaurant in front our house. The taste in Chengdu might be the most unforgettable thing in the city.

It is a spicy city, everyone loves spice here, and it somewhat influences the attitude of the residents. Food takes a great proportion in the residents’ life, especially “malatang”. There is at least one malatang place in every block (not exaggerating, there are three in front of my home), and it’s the most representing thing that the city cannot live off.

in the final trip of the class, I went out to take the septa with only a sweater and it began to snow in the middle of the train trip. So I changed my original plan of going to Franklin Square. I went to Market East and found a window seat of a tea place, and watched the snowy weather and people outside. There were many people went outside in snow, most of them walked into supermarkets, and some are travelers with suitcases. The shop owners all come out to clear the snow, even it would be covered by snow again later. The interesting thing I found is in the supermarket, maybe it's because it's chinatown, everything is not sold outside US. Even all the pots, chopsticks might appear in US, but everything inside the Chinatown supermarket is having a label tag in Chinese. It come up to me with Barne's segregation of his museum and outside world. It's a segregated world.

I think the idea of "against interpretation" is fetched. Even she's trying to ask people not to interprete art, I feel like interpretation has to happen in the interaction with art. If you don't have any knowledge or experience of art, you would not even be willing to come to an art piece and spend time with it. And it's not like if you stop thinking, you would have a better approach with art. Many paintings have their own stories, without interpretation, the original story would be lost. I don't believe there could be any bare appreciation of art with no interpretation.

A Letter to Barnes

Dear Mr. Barnes,

I’m a Bryn Mawr student and our class visited your museum last month. I appreciate the difference your Barnes’ Foundation has made from other normal museums, but I have some doubts about the purpose of the museum you set up.

When I went in the museum, I felt the distinctive style you made. You filled the place with all the paintings crowded on the walls, and they do not even have any name tags nearby. I liked the style of building, which was later revealed as the reform of your own house. It’s an inviting place, with all the wood furniture and small rooms. I went to New York’s Museum of Modern Art twice and saw many of the world-known pieces there, but the place seems more like a tourist place than yours. Barnes Foundation did renew my impression for museums, and it’s also an art piece itself. I admire its inversion of former interpretation of art, but when I hear your idea, or critiques of former museums, that they are not presenting art in proper forms. And the purpose of setting up Barnes Foundation was to prevent your own collection to join one of those museums you disliked.

I want to take septa to Surburban station and go to Franklin Square(the Love Square),that's a tourist attraction I've never been to. I would also spend time in the neighbourhood, just to walk around and see what's in there.

If I'm to reread barnes after I know all the history behind it, I will focus on the museum itself instead of a single painting. I want to try to imagine what Barnes expect when the visitors see the building. I would also take a look at the stucture of display in the museum, and find out the meaning behind it. It would not be a normal museum for me.

Giving Thanks

That is a small sized picture compared to all the other works hung up on the wall. After walking around the museum several times, it attracted my attention. It’s a portrait of a small wooden house (or room). With one single bed on the left, a table in the middle and several people around, it’s a normal scene. But it has some attractions distinguished from the rest of the museum.

The use of colors is the first thing that captured my eyes: the mainstream is black, dark red, brown and white, repeatedly. But even with these mainly dark colors, my impression for it is still bright. The whiteness is conspicuous---it has a strong sense of presence. The painting is incompatible with the other ones on the same wall, the contrast of color brought up a brand-new feel, and even it’s an old art piece talking about time few decades ago. The whiteness draws clear outlines in this painting: the pillows, the plates, the apron of the woman, and in the texture of the carpet. However, the whiteness did not have a delightful feeling; it’s just neat, or even dazzling. The only color I like is the sky outside their door: pure blue, without even a piece of cloud or a glance of horizon. I wondered that this might be the painter’s expression of life: the pure beauty outside be the dream and the inside darkness is the reality. The sky is also the light source of the room because there’s no lights inside the room.

Concentration

It’s another day of busy schedule, after all the classes, I decide to take a rest. Walking on the green of Bryn Mawr, trying to drive all the thoughts away from my head, I look up. It was 5 pm. The sun’s still hanging on the roof of one building, and dyed the sky with a thousand kinds of gorgeous red. The wind blows. But this moment I feel unconscious of the wind but aware of the world: I can see everything clearly around myself, but I don’t feel them from my body, I only have raising warmth inside the deep of my body, which isolate my soul from the outside world, my body. The time congeals. I could be anywhere.

When I was reading “deep play”, all the descriptions of the eternity, the holy feeling during play, gave me one word: concentration. Deep play is where people concentrate themselves into something, and that is when I walk on the grass and feel so aware of the world but in the mean time, unconscious of their impact on me. According to Ackerman, “Deep play is the ecstatic form of play.” It is in a form of play, but the spirit of deep play is not about play itself, it’s the feeling generated in one’s soul. When I was walking on the green, the only thing I felt is myself, even the whole world around me has a great amount of information, the only thing I seized was the self I concentrated on. It’s in the form of my vision of the sun, the green, but the actual deep play is only the feeling existed from deep inside my body.

Is this practical?

I heard the penitentiary from my roommate, who wants to go to a haunted house and flattered that there’s real ghost in there. The two days after that our trip of Esem announced the next station: Eastern State Penitentiary. I was surprised that a prison, at least from my point a prison, could become such an attraction.

My first impression of this prison is odd: how could it be such a castle? But when I entered the building, it began to look like a prison: dirty ground, damaged walls, narrow hall ways. The whole place is a conflict: A place of aesthetic beauty from outside. A place of scare and regret from inside.

The audio tour shows that this place has always been on debate in multiple ways.

When it was first built, the supporters claim it is supporting an “idea”, that everyone is born good, and could be changed with instructions. It is a very idealistic concept to try to change those already guilty. In fact, there’s too much not considered in this simple “idea”.

Is it practical?

A dream that one point lived on but now has closed to face a new era.

 It was corrupted over the years not by loose morals and flagging ideals but by the sheer pressure of numbers. 

It's only a place which made people want to keep away from.

It might be easier or safer for some of them to stay in jail. 

Flawed from the start.