Beauty in Art

It’s been interesting this semester discussing opinions and philosophies about art. What’s great is that art surrounds all of us each day. While walking to class or even at a store, one can see creations of art everywhere. It’s up to the individual to see and enjoy, or dislike what is artistic in our surroundings. Discussing history and concepts in our world of art in the classroom setting helps us realize that many great minds really shaped and developed the origins and beauty of art that we all enjoy today.

And, each person can have their own opinion on what they view as what is artistically beautiful or unattractive. It comes down to one’s perceptions and experiences which influences a person’s opinions. The more exposure I have to a variety of artistic ideas, the more I enjoy it and look forward to unique experiences. It’s up to all of us to further develop our world of art by continuing to deliver unique ideas to the history and beauty of what artistic expression is all about.

dreaming and reality

Ryan for a moment mentioned the difference between dreams and reality. i thought for a moment that would be a major and interesting part of his argument but its importance was made unclear. anyway, i wanted to comment on how i know that a dream is a dream and not reality because according to the International association for the study of dreams the dreamer cannot interact with a person that they have never had a sense experience with in what we call reality, and that if a person would were to be missing any of there senses such as a blind person they would dream with smell, tastes, and touches. this study has proven to me that we must first experience something awake before we can experience it in the dream state. therefore i can conclude that our experiences in reality effect the dream states when we sleep.

I really enjoyed the metaphor Alex used to illustrate God in her presentation last class. I thought it was very thorough and there were a lot of powerful comparisons. It also made me think about how personal each individual's thoughts of religion are. It is clear that Alex has a personal relationship to the ocean, and since I've lived ten minutes from the beach my whole life, I can understand that. I think humans all share a deep connection with nature, whether it be the ocean, the woods, or whatever. I think people also have a unique connection with their religious views, whether they are Catholic, atheist, or anything else. Both are things only the individual can fully understand for themselves. And even though they might be part of a larger group of people who believe the same things, they are going to have experiences that affect their beliefs, making them uniquely their own. My experiences have formed by religious beliefs, just as all of my experiences with the ocean have created my deeply personal feelings toward it.

#29

I have been thinking a lot about Aurelius' 29th meditation quite a bit. I really enjoy the language he uses, its almost poetic. The first line says to discard your misperceptions which means a lot to me because I feel like so much of how we live our lives is based on snap judgments and assumptions. It's such a hard thing to do though, its so easy to hold onto misperceptions and let them cloud our thinking. That's definitely one thing I want to work on for myself is being more accepting and more forgiving. Next he says, stop being jerked around like a puppet. I guess I've explained before that I see a lot of people living and doing things for all the wrong reasons and all the wrong people. The rest of number 29 says, limit yourself to the present, understand what happens to you-to others, analyze what exists, break it all down, material and cause, anticipate your final hours, other people's mistakes? Leave them to their mistakes. Most of this really sums up how I want to live my life. I want to live in the present and not fret about the future or get caught up on the past and things that can't be changed. This year, especially in my foundations classes I spent a lot of time challenging our perceptions of things and manipulating interpretations with materials so I thought that one particular line fit in really well with my educational goals in life, perfectly really. Everything in art to me in material and meaning, so why not in some ways pull that into my everyday life. Finally, I think this meditation reminds me to let go of the things I can't change, like my mortality or other people's choices. I've really fallen in love with this meditation and I think it was the most valuable reading to me this semester.