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The winner of the Washington Post’s 2009 Peeps Diorama Contest.
Ahahahahahahaha, it’s a Hopper. Get it?
I’ve been forced to consider my body lately, more than usual and with an uncomfortable level of scrutiny.
You see, I’ve been shopping online.
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I rarely hang art in my home.
The walls are decorated, yes, but several years ago I looked around and realized that all of the pieces hanging in my living room, bedroom, kitchen — everywhere — were recontextualized items — sheet music illustrations, vintage cards mounted and framed, wooden or enameled tin signs, framed vintage anthropological paperbacks with lurid covers featuring scantily clad native maidens, early advertising images, reproductions and miniatures of movie posters — that I’d chosen to treat as art.
Right now, we have all those and more (including two vintage baseball-inspired board games from my father’s childhood, wrapped in plastic and propped up over the bar), and one honest-to-goodness painting hanging in the bedroom nook.
About that painting: it’s a smudgy little oil painting slapped onto a thin, mass-produced canvas board, a smudgy little Punch & Judy scene slapped onto a thin, mass-produced canvas board sixty years ago by my grandparents’s artist friend, Nunzio. I always liked it, and remarked as much to my father one day. The next time I visited, he showed it to me, ready to be boxed up, a Post-it tag with my name stuck to its back.
Friends sometimes remark on the oddness of an art history student whose home houses little or no art. But art is a slippery little notion, and I don’t pretend to know where its borders are. I don’t think anyone knows, and I’m wary of those who make pretense of it.
So I’m suspicious and resentful of the premise of ABC tv’s quiz Art or Not Art?, which sees clear boundaries where none exist. A little less arbitrary is An Artist or An Ape?, though even there a boundary is unnecessarily drawn. Who’s to say it’s “artist or ape,” not “artist and ape”?
I am participating in NaBloPoMo.
The kid in line at the coffeehouse pulled the sleeve of the rumpled, gray-haired guy standing next to him. “Hey, Dad, I know who this guy is.” He pointed at the packet of Newman’s Own cookies displayed on the counter.
“Yeah?” said his father absently, gazing up at the specials board.
“Yeah! He’s a dentist!”
This caught Dad’s attention, and he looked down at the packet, a smile crinkling his face. “Ah, no, no he’s actually An Actor,” giving the last two words a storybook emphasis. Dad’s eye flickered toward me and he gave me the special “ain’t kids crazy?” raised eyebrow.
It was time to chip in. “Actually, he’s right, in a way… The model for the original painting was Grant Wood’s dentist.”
The father turned wide eyes on his son, and a new look dawned on his face. “Hey… how did you know that?” he breathed softly.
The kid shrugged. “I dunno. I know things.”
Yeah.
I am participating in NaBloPoMo.
In childhood, I would have hungered for the Kammit action figure. In my twenties, I would have been quite mad for the Jane Austen action figure, and even now I admit a pang; I could hide her in my bonnet, where she would whisper the most deliciously prim gossip.
I can think of one friend who knows a hawk from a handsaw, and very likely can tell a doll from an action figure. Another friend would ponder, weak and weary, over this, or possibly bury it under the floorboards.
The only action figure I have ever owned was given me by a fellow geek in the early stages of courting, and an astonishingly successful gesture it was. That Elsa had twelve points of articulation, her own electrode, and a fully replaceable head, just like me! (A few years later, the same geek swiped my Bride while I was packing my things. Ah, love.)
But even my lost Elsa pales when I gaze upon the wonder, the horror, that is Hieronymus Bosch action figures. My hands actually clench and grasp at the empty air, so potent is my desire to possess them.
Congratulations to Jane, the only person I know (even virtually) who finished NaNoWriMo!
I topped out at a paltry 8,000 words, more than half of which I wrote after my decision in early November to quit, since I was then despairing over finishing my theses and projects.
I definitely plan to sign up again next year — it was marvelous for my morale to have one crushingly complex project I could simply jettison. Very cleansing.
Speaking of theses, tonight I turn in Human and holy: The terracotta Madonna reliefs of the della Robbia workshop. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, and I can’t imagine how I would have done it without the snazzy new computer that my mother thoughtfully gave me. How did I ever manage?
In my Renaissance art history class, the professor has trained us to play Council of Trent, extrapolating from existing records of the Council’s condemnation of certain artworks to make our own Trentian statements about other works. Not surprisingly, I am very good at being strictly doctrinaire and judgmental.
I spent a happy few days thinking this was was probably the least popular children’s game ever… until I found in one of my research texts a Renaissance account of a little Florentine girl and her friends, whose adorable form of play was to imagine themselves members of a flagellant confraternity.
They’re so cute when they’re that age.
I’ve finally created a thesis statement. It is, like everything else, temporary.
I’m positing that the staggering popularity of Luca della Robbia’s terracotta Madonna reliefs arose as an indirect result of the increase in foundling homes, which fostered (no pun intended) a change in the cultural vocabulary regarding women, motherhood, and infants, as well as a growing devotion to Mary.
And, yes, I did choose this in part because the stuff’s so pretty.
Elli
Elsa