Don't play with it

The art of winning the war, doesn't come from fighting every battle but careful selection of the battles you are sure to win.

~~~

I am... easily amused again. I've seen so many things today that all i was able to manage was to shake my head and chuckle to myself.

This included the most amusing drive-by of drive-bys. It's amazing the things one can see when you're not looking (to see something particularly). *wink* Pay attention to the smaller/finer details of life sometimes folks, they help paint the bigger picture. My actually enjoying teaching today. My consumption of plums till it made me sick. My walking around the school with my plums so as to protect them. *laughs* You know you're in Grenada when plums and mangoes aren't safe lying anywhere that doesn't lock them in...like a safe...in a vault... underground... in a bank...! *giggle* Well, any fruit for that matter. Well, the whole Caribbean not just Grenada while we're on it.

Yesterday i was so frustrated with teaching. I was talking to Daniele (another art teacher) about my struggles, and she said she was experiencing the same thing. It's like uphill both ways. Some days it's great, but it's not taken seriously.

Art is one of those subjects that encompasses everything, in my opinion. It's like doing Literature class. Literature, as a subject, touches every other subject, every aspect of life. When I did Literature back in college with Mr. A., at the end of the 2 years I left with a bit of knowledge from all the courses taught at school.

WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett, covered metaphysics, the World War II, a touch of European history, the change in direction of theatre from an Aristotelian structure (beginning, middle, end) to the Theatre of the Absurd, (which coincidentally, is thought to have originated with the cultural Dadaism movement that started around World War I). Also, we covered various theories on religion, ventured as far as Atheism and existentialism. Even Maths was touched. CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY by Anita Desai brought forth History class with Mohatma Ghandi, the Pakistan/India divide, European influence in India, as well as a new type of clarity regarding the differences between Hinduism and Islam. BELOVED by Toni Morrison dealt with the issue of slavery, the long lasting effects thereof, the emotional, physical, psychological scars that remained. And the poets that we were introduced to such as Margaret Atwood, Martin Carter, Olive Senior and William Wordsworth covered politics, history of their country/homeland, social inferences into society... The list is onwards.

Art is Literature in a visual form, not necessarily needing words. It's a frozen image of history. It's a collection of thought bearing witness upon itself. It, like Literature, touches a bit of everything. It touches every aspect of life. Infact, there was History Painting, a dominant form of the academic art movement, that was based on Historical themes. According to Humanities Web, History painting became such a prestigious striving for artists that they were reduced to combing through contemporary literature, Shakespeare and the like for even second-hand accounts from which to create new work.

The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.
-Picasso




This surging passion, hurt filled, of two people related to one another, struck by abrupt and brutal violence, is witnessed in varying lights by the grand forms of the arts. Pablo Picasso's Guernica is a painting of white and black and gray motion, mayhem, and mourning. A woman, her head cocked upwards, her mouth widely open in anguish (scream) clutches her motionless child. This mother and child have been described as descendants of the thirteenth-fourteenth century wooden sculpture Pieta. The brightly painted sculpture, the Madonna with her blood soaked grown son, the sadness and stunned disbelief on her face; his emaciated body draped in deflated posture on his mother's lap, supported by her arms and hands; while his left arm extends across the crook of her left arm, and his right arm looselyt hands down, his hand torn in an explosive crucifixion wound.- David Rasey




Well, I think everyone should know the Rosa Parks story... Her refusal to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white man. She was an African American civil rights activist. For more information on her, click here.



The Last Supper (1495-1498)
Leonardo Da Vinci


I shall look for more work... It's getting late... 12.23 am.I really should go to bed.

In conclusion, while people have been writing novels and plays about the different significant periods along the time line, simultaneously artists have been providing visual reference for these areas with the same strength.


~~~

Before i fall asleep on the keyboard. Good night.
Shelli out.