Art is not skill, it is emotion.

Hey hey.

So I finally stopped procrastinating and finished my assignment today. Yay me. And then I decided to finish off some off the chapter about Cézanne and when I say finish I mean skim briefly to see if there were any important bits I should have included. There weren't it was just about his life, but why skimming, I see the name Rilke quickly and then have to read the rest to make sense of it. But basically Rainer Maria Rilke is a austrian poet who I love and have done for probably 2 years, he;'s not well known, not even in Germany, that's a story for another time, anyway. Basically Rilke went to see Cézanne's work numerous times to try and understand he emotions and grasp what was happening. For some reason the fact that Rilke felt moved by Cézanne's work really moved me and made me look at Cézanne's work and modern art in a different light and actually thought that Jug and Fruit was quite good. I know, I know, I seem like a hypocrite, but surely this is what it means to learn. I have learnt to appreciate art that I hadn't done before. I mean I still think most of it is pretty rubbish, but I don't hate it with so much passion anymore. (:

Starting friday is my next topic, which is about Faraday, thanks to the wonderful invention that is wikipedia, this is the first piece of information I see;

Michael Faraday, FRS (22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of the time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

Brilliant. I like science, I used to want to be a forensic scientist back in say 2008 but not every teacher is as good as I had for my GCSE so that didn't pan out all to well, and besides I couldn't imagine doing anything but writing now. But I digress. Science has always interest in me so this seems like a nice week, it's a shame that not all the things I learn about are assignment based, like Doctor Faustus.

In my second week, I had to read the play Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Excellent, some literature, something I can really enjoy, also relates to the supernatural, and at the time I was watching Supernatural and cross road blues was the episode in question so all this faustian mythology really played in quite well with my life. ANYWAY. So all I had to do was read the play. There was no analysing of voices or texts, no deeper reading to why Marlowe damned him to hell and why he didn't repent. Bit of a let down really. I spent £9.99 on that book to read and do nothing with. Shocking to say the least. Although 'all skills will be used in the future'. Which means we have some literature to read that is clearly very hard to understand. Marlowe was born the same year as Shakespeare, (and paved the way for him to) and so it's all old english where you can only really get the gist and not the detail of what's going on.

But as I was saying it is quite annoying. Faraday seems like a nice lad and all that. And I have a busy life, so it seems pointless to me to even bother when it's not for anything. I'm going to sleep now. I have work at an ungodly hour (8)

Ciao

Beer, pizza, films and absolutely no studying.

I am sure at one point I will sort out all the finer details of this blog but for now I shall continue.

I am currently studying for a BA degree in English Literature through the Open University, which means I do all the studying etc on my own. I don't go to any lectures or have classes, I got sent all my books in september and work through them each week. Anywho's I'm learning about Cézanne at the moment, who was this french impressionist painter. He's all against traditional art and that so took a stand by not painting his pictures in that style. But to be honest, I think most of his work is awful. I like traditional art that looks like it took hours to create rather then Cézanne's bathers, which just look like blobs of awful colour. Like seriously its hideous. Stranger still I should like this. I like things that go against the norm. In film studies I loved Surrealist films. Buñuel is a genius, who needs a linear structure? No one, that's who. But I don't. I hate it. And worse then that. I have to write 500 words on this crap. Brilliant.

Where is my exact assignment question...

Look carefully at Cézanne's Jug and Fruit (1885-97) and Zurbarán's Still Life with Lemon's, Oranges and a Rose (1633). In no more then 500 words, outline what you think the main differences are.

This is easy. 500 words is piss easy. The painting itself is not even that bad in comparison to his other work anyway. I can write about the tone and shading and how this models the pears or whatever but I just hate it and procastinate over it because I hated having to look at all his other work, it angers me so. On the other hand, loving Zurbarán. LOVING. IT. So realistic. And doesn't look like a child painted it. The lighting looks lovely and the fruit is so detailed. This I could happily write about and not decide to play video games instead of. But no. It's also due in on the 5th. But luckily for any poor sucker reading this, I decided to spend my precious time writing about why I'm wasting my precious time.

A main point which may have crossed anyones minds is. What has art got to do with literature? Nada. The beauty of doing the OU is that you pick which modules you study. The worst part is for the 1st year. Options are pretty broad. The module is called Arts Past and Present. It includes topics from literature and classics. Yay. But also music, history, art, art history and other stuff which really isn't related to what I want to do. Lame.

Well I shall leave you now. I feel a bath or something equally that isn't me doing my assignment. Ciao.

In a nutshell.

I'd like this to be a blog about things that interest me and what exactly I waste my time doing, what I study etc. It may not be of any use to anyone, but it would be nice to look back and see all the thing's I have ever thought we're interesting.

I like to write for the most part and I'm hoping that I'll regularly update this and not have stupid blocks of time where I don't write.

I will end this quite short. As it is late at night, I am tired and also cannot think of anything at the moment.