Monday, March 21, 2011

Art Review

Until a couple weeks ago, I never really gave art much thought. I knew that it surrounded me and whatnot but I never really went much further than that. One day though, while reading my APUSH book, I came across a type of art that was popular in the 1950s called abstract expressionism. It was really interesting to me the whole concept of letting your subconscious take over the art and just letting whatever you really feel go into it to make a creation. It’s probably my favorite kind of art just because it doesn’t even necessarily have to follow any rules. The only rule that seems to be implied is just having confidence to let yourself go and really paint whatever you feel like painting, instead of painting things that are conventional or traditional. The freedom of this style makes it appealing is what I’m trying to say.
            My favorite artists that use this technique are probably de Kooning and Rothko. I especially like Rothko because his paintings are really simple but they can mean a lot depending on how you want to view them, if you want to view them at all. I really like his use of color and how he doesn't really care whether it's completely coherent or not, it really is just his form on expression that comes out of it. Kooning uses more complex techniques and uses more colors in one painting. He tends to follow Picasso's method of abstractism. He was also more straightfoward with the messages he tried to spread through his paintings, especially those of society and culture criticism. Overall, I really do enjoy these two artists that sprouted out of the infamous abstract expressionist movement from the 1950s.

Monday, March 14, 2011

We Have the Right

          This is pretty broad because I feel like while we may have a lot of rights/freedom in some cases, in others we don’t. It’s only because it’s kind of hard to have a successful productive nation without having some regulations which we have to follow. These regulations in turn create restrictions for us and our rights as well. Sometimes that’s a good thing because the benefit of security is better than having the right to go on a killing rampage without any sort of consequences. Other times though, our restricted rights doesn’t equate to having security. I guess it really depends on your perspective of what rights are to you. I personally think though that our government is okay so far in trying to keep a balance between the two. I mean it could improve but when you think about it, essentially everything has room for improvement.

McCarthy's (Chicago's) Birthday Week

           I guess I’m a little late on this so happy belated birthday Chicago and McCarthy! Uhm so I’m not sure what I should really say other than happy birthday but I have 250 words to spare so I’ll say about how MY birthday week went last year. My birthday fell on a Saturday last year so it was a pretty awesome week because I had all week to anticipate it. My birthday week pretty much consisted of counting down the days until my actual birthday and eventually came down to counting down the hours. When it finally came, it was amazing. Well not really, but it was pretty great. I went to the Hard Rock CafĂ© with my friends where we ended up sitting next to this bachelorette party which was a little awkward since they had like veils with penises on them, I’m not even kidding. But other than that, it was a fun birthday weekend for me. So I hope you guys have awesome birthday weeks as well! J