Play in the City 2013

I intend to go to Rittenhouse square and the Rosenbach Museum and Library.  I'll head into the city around noon on the regional rail and spend the hours leading up to our gathering wandering around the area.  I thought (in the spirit of 'play in the city') I might spend some time playing in the park and watching how other people enjoy their city.  After this, I'll go to the Rosenbach Museum, which is quite close to the park itself.  Much like the Barnes, the Rosenbach is a private collection, but this time it is books and other rare manuscripts.  Knowing what we have learned about the value of private collections and how they no longer hold to their original principles, I want to look at this museum as we have looked at other museum institutions.

I’ve put a lot of thought into what I want to do this weekend in Philly, and I’ve come up with one conclusion:

I’ve got nothing.

There are so many amazing things I could do for my last trip, like going to what looks like one of the coolest events ever this Thursday, continuing on my mural adventures, or staring at paintings that make me think deep play might be possible. I could even go to the top of City Hall and survey the city like I’m Mufasa and everything the light touches is my kingdom. But, in the end, I know I would probably be happiest aimlessly wandering around the city, stumbling [serendipitously] across murals, spending an hour on a park bench watching people and eavesdropping on their lives,  and thinking more about what my place in Philadelphia is rather than what the coolest thing I can find to do is.

I want to go visit Peter the Mint Eagle and go bird watching in Philadelphia. I became interested in Peter shortly after watch the John Steward clip in which he argues that NY pizza is better than Chicago pizza. Although it seems as if Peter and pizza are not at all connected, they are. Both are/were symbols to a large group of people at one time. As we have discussed, cities encompass vast groups of people that do not always interact and rarely agree on the importance of one thing. However, most people in Chicago are willing to argue that their pizza is pretty damn good. Pizza transcends all of the city's internal boundaries. It is not only a source of pride; it is a source of agreement. I guess what I'm searching for is a better understanding of why Peter the Mint Eagle is important to a city, or pizza is. How are people able to settle differences over a bird or a type of food? I'm essentially curious about the production of meaning in cities.

Wondering in the largest and historic library in University of California Berkeley, I noticed the sculpture on the wall, thinking about that how strange it was, which named “Apple from Heaven: The Armenian Alphabet” with, actually, three pomegranates inside instead of apples. Laughing slightly because of such a ridiculous mistake of this artwork, I broke the silence in the library and felt a little bit embarrassed.

Keeping watching this sculpture, I was absorbed. The letters were too abstract to be recognized, but they looked artistic and seemed to have deeper meaning than it looked like. The content was the Armenian Alphabet, boring, but the style that it was built was extremely interesting. Each letter was created by warped iron belts, which gave me a strong visual shock. As I knew, Armenian is a state which owns long history and high-level ancient civilization. This alphabet, as the most necessary element of language, was a symbol of the flourish Armenian civilization. Thus, the warped letters, I guessed, represented the immemorial and mysterious history of ancient Armenia.

As Anne mentioned in class last Thursday, I probably did not spend enough time with my painting. I also did not know what Barnes wanted us to experience when we looked at his collection. 

That being said, I’m not very keen on trying to unravel Barnes’s expectations and wishes for us. I am more interested on the history of the collection post-Barnes and how it affected my perception of the works themselves. How did all the tangles of bogus lawsuits, greedy political motives, and Merion station vs. Benjamin Franklin parkway somehow make all the works more profound? 

Use this as a segway to one of my favorite documentaries of all time: The Rape of Europa. It’s a detailed movie of how Hitler purged European art to meet his own standards during WWII and how the works have changed because of it.

At what point in time after death does a person become a figure? A legend? A character?

In my rewrite of my essay, "The Tree's Solemn Warning," I'm going to explore a few ideas. I'm going to move more into the three neighbouring portraits that surround Utrillo's painting. This will introduce the idea of large, close-up images of individual persons versus the small, basic people figures depicted by Utrillo. So, who's a figure? Who's an image? Who's a person?

I reread the articles and essays, and I think I'm mainly going to stick with "The Barnes Foundation, RIP" article, which gave me some great ideas. I haven't fully organised them all, but they are something along the lines of: looking at Barnes as a figure - about whose depiction I am mainly learning from this article - and as a character who carries symbols and meanings in his story. These items would include his history as a wrestler, his career as a "pharmaceutical magnate," and his intentions of creating an educational institution. After his death [the point where he now becomes a character] his story more strongly tells of economic and business incentives in the mask of others' educational intentions.

"Some pictures are unattractive and significant, some paintings are insignificant and attractive. This is both unattractive and insignificant. " - a guy in the movie

I was a little bit struck by how unfair a claim this is. I understand the "significance" of a piece to be equivalent to its historical relevance, and I can see how art historians have a very distinct idea of what art is relevant to them. Yet, a piece of art could have historical significance that isn't from as limited a perspective of an art historian's. It could have been passed down throughout the generations of a family, or created by a friend or loved one. Then, there's the "attractiveness" of art. Generally, certain things are more pleasing to the eye than others--complementary colors, good framing of the subject, etc. But if the subject perhaps reminds the viewer of the viewer's friend, that particular viewer might find the piece to be quite attractive. I think that certain elements of attractiveness can be attributed to taste. Despite this, I think there is some validity to the statement, in that the painting might not have been attractive or significant to Barnes. I'm actually pretty sure Barnes would argue that the emotional connections to the painting that I speak of are from a lack of training in the viewer, and that the emotional connection should be found after having analyzed the painting from a more educated point of view.

I'm still not sure what I want to write about next week, but I would like to keep in mind that to a certain degree, art is subjective.

What struck me most in reading the articles and watching the movie was the long history of corruption involved in the care of the Barnes museum. It was not a case of faithful following of Barnes' will up until the point where it was suddenly moved to Philadelphia out of a lack of funds, it was far more complicated than that. However, I find this would not be a useful piece of information for writing a paper. To write a paper on how the Barnes Foundation was cared for, I would need to essentially summarize the movie, and I do not remember all of the different people who were in charge of it. Most of the story of the actual school/museum does not affect my reading of the painting itself. Since I knew before going to the Barnes Foundation that Barnes intended for us to read the painting in terms of what else was on the same wall, I included this approach in my original reading. The only thing I find different is that I am even more struck by the sense that I am not supposed to be there, visiting the Barnes, than I was before. Barnes didn't want Bryn Mawr students to come to his collection, even when it was practically in our backyard. He didn't want us to be able to simply go in on any day. He especially didn't want us able to research any given painting and looking into its background, as was provided by the audio tours. However, I see no way I can use this to grow my paper.

Barnes Foundation gave me an impression of expensive when I entered. The minimalist architecture, the coat and bag searching, the well-dressed visitors, and the large empty space felt expensive. It smelled expensive. So I thought "well, another Parkway building". But I came back and watch the documentary, and realized that this was exactly what Barnes didn't want. So maybe I'll write about the different experiences one would have in the old and new building.

As for the last trip, I'm interested in Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program, specifically The North Philadelphia Beacon Project, because it decorates the most ramshackle area of Philly.