A Product of Romanticism

While I have a lot or respect for the teachings of the enlightenment, I’m definitely more a product of romanticism than I am of the enlightenment. I love learning new things and I believe that logic and rationality are important when making decisions or trying to figure things out. But I am also a person of great feeling. I reject the notion that our emotions are worthless and need to be shut out so that rationality can dominate our lives. Instead I believe that reason is a tool we can use to balance our emotions and prevent us from going overboard with passion and making mistakes as a result. Ultimately emotion is how we experience life, and so emotion should be cherished. I love to listen to music or watch shows that make me feel something, whether it be joy, sadness, excitement or anger. To me it feels good to be sad when a favorite TV. show character dies, or to listen to a song that’s full of passion and energy.

 I also love nature and the untamed wilderness. Some of my favorite things to do are hiking and camping, because I like being outside among the trees and the mountains, the rocks and the hills. There is so much beauty in the world that man-made buildings and landscaping can never match. Those things can be beautiful as well, but they just can’t compare to the ordered randomness or nature, to a lichen covered rock with its many shades of green and yellow, or to the way the red mountains look in the evening when I’m hiking along my favorite trail. 

William Hogarth's Gin Lane

Gin Lane, by William Hogarth, is a satirical engraving showing the dangers of gin and alcoholism. The engraving shows several groups of alcoholics partying, rioting, and selling all of their possessions to a pawn shop. The artwork has a goofy, humorous feel, and it pokes fun at gin drinkers while also showing an exaggerated example of what can happen when a society becomes addicted to alcohol.

The buildings in the background of the print are shabby and ruined, and one building is starting to collapse. The walls on the building in front of it have broken off revealing a man who has hung himself, and many of the people in the scene are wearing frayed, tattered clothes. The bare breasted woman sitting on the stairs is so drunk that she lets her baby fall out of her arms to his death. There is also a man prancing around with a baby skewered on a stick. These elements of Gin Lane suggest that gin causes people to neglect everything and just let society rot and fall apart.

On the left side of the print there is a couple selling their possessions to a pawn broker, and a man fighting with a dog over a bone, who presumably sold everything he had to buy more gin and now has nothing to eat. On the right side there is a distillery where people are fighting over the gin with chairs and hammers, showing the lengths people will go to get their gin once addicted.

Gin Lane also shows that gin addiction can only lead to death. Towards the background there is a woman being lowered into a coffin while her crying child sits beside it. Sitting on the front of the stairs is a dead man who it still holding a cup and a basket with a bottle in it. In the basket there is also a newspaper with the headline “The Downfall of Mrs. Gin.”

The School of Athens

The School of Athens is a beautiful painting done by Italian artist Raphael in the year 1510. In the painting, a throng of philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, congregate in a large, classical style building. A series of arches frame the painting, each one getting smaller as they fade into the distance, directing the viewer’s attention to the center of the painting. The first arch takes up the top two corners and the sides of the painting, giving the impression that the viewer is watching the scene from the entrance of the room. The walls of the first archway are decorated in Renaissance era designs and motifs, while the architecture past the entrance is ancient Roman in style. It’s as if the painting is meant to represent a window into the classical world.

The philosophers are dressed in bright vivid colors, and they seem to be engaging in their debates with passion and energy. The walls of the building are a soft, clear white, which was the color of the marble that was commonly used in Classical era architecture and sculpture. The light, vivid color scheme of The School of Athens conveys a sense of grandeur, freedom and enlightenment.

From the subject matter to the style of artwork, The School of Athens is undeniably a product of the Renaissance. As was common during that time period, The School of Athens glorifies the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It shows us a worldview where knowledge and intellectualism were given a great deal of importance. The painting utilizes many artistic techniques which were refined during the Renaissance, such as foreshortening and linear perspective. The figures in the painting have a soft, rounded form, which is commonly seen in Renaissance era paintings. 

The Artist of Our Times

It’s hard to say which artist best sums up our age, because there are so many different facets of life here in the beginning of the 21^st century. We have a huge variety of lifestyles, cultures, beliefs, and attitudes, and it would be impossible for one artist to document our age without leaving something out. One artist whose work documents a unique feature of our time, however, is the British street artist Banksy.

            Banksy uses stencils and spray paint to create images on walls, billboards, and sidewalks. His work is a lot more sophisticated than common graffiti, but all of it is done illegally and it usually ends up being painted over by local governments. Some of Banksy’s artwork is simply meant to be humorous or visually pleasing, but a lot of it carries a political message. For example, on piece done by Banksy featured a rioting protester throwing a bouquet of flowers, another one a rat wielding an RPG.

            What Banksy’s artwork shows about our time is the strong current of counter-culture and political activism that exists now more than any time in the past. From the Hippie movement in the 60’s to the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria; protests, riots, and revolutions have become an almost everyday occurrence in modern times. Banksy represents this cultural thread not only through the content of his work but by how it is executed: as willful acts of vandalism. 

Passion of the Student

According to Professor Mark Edmundson, college students of today (or the college students of the early 90’s, anyway) lack passion. Edmundson writes: “…students…are, nearly across the board, very, very, self-contained. On good days they display a light, appealing glow; on bad days, shuffling disgruntlement. But there's little fire, little passion to be found.” Edmundson blames our apparent lack of passion on TV, and “high consumer capitalism.” Perhaps at the time of writing, students were a little disgruntled. Those were the days of Nirvana and horrible fashion sense, after all. But the college students of today are not without passion. A lot of us have interests and hobbies, dreams and aspirations. Those that don’t just haven’t figured out what they want yet.

            I am a college student, and I consider myself to be a passionate person, although it might not seem like it. I love art, music, and learning new things, especially about history and science. I have a dream of becoming an archaeologist and studying pre-Columbian cultures. I also want to get better at playing the Bass and start a punk band. I would love to travel the world and see new places, and meet new people. I know I’m not alone. I work with a guy that loves shooting and editing film. He spends his free time writing and shooting movie scenes, then editing the sound, color, and effects. It’s a lot of fun to talk to him about movies, critiquing how they were made and the effects the directors and producers used. All of my friends have something they are passionate about, things like cooking, punk rock, Spanish, criminal justice, politics, etc. The list is endless.

            However, I do think there is a tendency in our culture to curb our enthusiasm. People that show too much passion are quickly labeled geeks and nerds. While there is such thing as too much enthusiasm, we need to be more open about who we are. Edmundson might be right when he says we are self-contained, but that doesn’t mean we are without passion.