Art History/Reflections/Yeshwanth

Yeshwanth's Reflections

8/24/07 I have chosen the Dali Museum. My piece will be "The Persistence of Memory", more commonly known as the melting clocks painting. Surprisingly, this museum does not own this piece. This piece is one of Dali's most famous works and demonstrates his involvement with the Surrealist movement. This painting will complement the already wide-ranging collection within the museum.

9/6/07-I think self-evaluation is a good method to evaluate the quality of our work. With self- evaluation, we realize what we need to improve and are more motivated to do a better job. I think I gave myself a pretty honest and accurate self-evaluation. I think a lack of postings made my thinking less transparent and more citatiions would have been better.

9/7/07- I have begun my research on Serra and the exhibition. I have decided to compile a fact sheet on Serra including personal information, quotes, and images of his work. I am saisfied with the progress I have made today. As for Serra, his artwork is certainly unique and like nothing I have seen before. I think this project offers us a chance to expand our thinking to understand whether they're really boundaries to art.

9/12/07- After two class discussions on Serra and the nature of his work, I have come to the conclusion that Serra's work has some artistic basis and Serra is indeed an artist. Admittedly, before learning about Serra, my exposure to broad varieties of art were minimal. it took a little while for Serra's style to grow on me. I now appreciate his combination of mathematics, illusion, and resulting human perception in creating his work. I feel more confident in the quality of my review.

9/13/07- I'm around 75% finished with my review. I included information about process art, which Serra acribes to, and some information on Serra's personal philosophy and use of his unique materials. At this point, I defintiely like the larger scupltures, but I have reservations about the smaller, earlier sculptures, which even Serra doesn't seem to explain very much either.

9/17/07-I like the New Yorker review b/c it inculded a lot of info about Serra's previous work. As someone who previosuly had little exposure to Serra and miminmalism in general, it was a very good piece.

9/25/07- I very much enjoyed having Mr. Anderson come and discuss with us his inspiration for his photographs. I found his insight very deep and insightful. We had seen the aesthestic value of his work, but, until today, I had never truly graspeed the meaning and message of hsi work. I highly recommend this activity for future classes. It is a key component of the class, since we often find ourselves wondering what the artist themself was thinking.

9/27/07-After listening to the audio clips of our discussion with Mr. Anderson, I was able to review Mr. Anderson's perspective and further analyze the photographs and what they meant to Mr. Anderson. I really enjoy the technological aspect of this project and what like to use these methods in the future.

10/8/07-Emma and I have decided to focus on Power, Politics, and Glory for our works. There is a wide range of artwork, spanning various time periods, media, and cultures. Emma and I had a disagreement about a photograph of Ann Richards, the late former Texas governor, holding a gun. I initialy thought it didn't speak to the theme very well, but I changed my mind. We are also considering a tapestry of the Battle of Hastings, a terra soldier from Xian, China, a piece of socialist art, and a war poster.

10/11/07- At this point I have some important questions about the requirements.

-How can we incorporate diverse mediums within our selections? (our theme, power, politics,and glory, is not very broad in this regard)

-What should we necessarily be looking for within each work as it relates to our theme?

-How would non-Western art come into the picture (fortunately, we have found both ancient and more wodern pieces in this category)

-As for citations, how important is fidning the specific, as this may be more difficult for more ancient works or, in our case, socialist art?

Overall I think working on this project will be very smooth and enjoyable. There initially were a few setbacks, such as not being able to acquire images from Artstor which were resolved today.

10/22/07- We've made major headway on this porject over the past couple of days. Emma and I have collected a lot of images. At this point, the main challenges will be getting a sizable group of non-Western works and sifting though the pictures to find the one that best represents the theme.