The Thinking Eye--Paul Klee

For some reason, I find myself having a very hard time grasping the material involved in this reading. First and foremost, I found the layout made it extremely difficult to follow along. I did not find any true structure to the reading itself, either. The points being made were hard to follow and almost looked to me as if they were just thrown in without any real introduction. And don't even get me started on the diagrams accompanied with the text, which seemed to serve no purpose to me at all. Maybe if they were incorporated in a more systematic manner, I would have been able to connect them to the reading a bit more.

The most exhausting part of this reading was trying to make out all the metaphors involved in it. I have always been a very literal person; interpretation is not something I'm very fond of. I like when things are set out organized and clearly, instead of having to work to figure out the meanings on my own, which simply consumes time and confuses me. 

When I started reading, I was immediately turned off by the confusing words and hidden meanings. In particular, the last paragraph on the first page states "Genesis as formal movement is the essence of the work of art. In the beginning the motif, the harnessing of energy, sperm. Work as form-making in the natural material sense: primordial feminine. Work as form-deciding sperm: primordial masculine." This statement just does not make sense in my head. After reading this over numerous times, the one thing I took away is that the author is trying to relate the creation of forms to the creation of everything by God. Now, is that true? Probably not. Maybe it was just the whole Genesis thing that threw me off. But this confusion carried on throughout the entire reading.

I should clarify that I am not trying to be mainly just critical of this reading, because I bet that if I could interpret and understand the author better, this would have been an enjoyable experience. But unfortunately, it wasn't. I am, however, looking forward to going over this reading in class so I can get a better understanding of the main points the author was making and how everybody else in the class interpreted them.

The Whole Ball of Wax & Definition of art

Definition of art:

I define art as a tool used to express ideas, opinions, thoughts, feelings, arguments, etc. Art is considered to be something very ambiguous. There is no set definition or correct way of doing it, or speaking it, viewing it, learning it, interpreting it, and I believe that is how art differs from most of the other disciplines touched upon in the article. 

The Whole Ball of Wax:

Perplexing. That is the most accurate word I can think of to describe this article. After reading it over multiple times, I am still not completely sure what the author is trying to get across to the audience. From my limited understanding, however, I can conclude that Saltz is simply giving us different definitions of "art" and also showing how those definitions vary greatly from person to person. 

                    I found that the vocabulary and overall structure of this article was very difficult to follow and engage in. I found myself often getting lost in the run-on sentences and repetition of words. For example, the sentence "In his eloquent essay "Vermeer in Bosnia," Lawrence Weschler reports that Antonio Cassese, a distinguished Italian jurist serving on the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Hague, would sometimes go to the Mauritshuis museum after hearing continual testimony about Balkan atrocities." (Saltz 2) completely threw me for a loop. I felt as if Saltz was just cramming so much unnecessary information into that one opening sentence, probably to try and give us a little bit of background information, but because of the lengthiness I could not determine what the purpose of the paragraph truly was. The excessive use of different names, without explanation, jumbled up in my brain and made it very difficult for me to keep up. As he continued on with the paragraph, Saltz mentioned two specific pieces of artwork: Girl With a Pearl Earring and View of Delft. Girl With a Pearl Earring is a painting that I have seen and heard of many times in the past, and I was familiar with the work. View of Delft, however, sounded new and foreign and somehow intrigued me. I decided to google the work to see specifically what the author was referring to. I have attached the image below:

In "The Whole Ball of Wax", Saltz explains how Cassese does not look at these pieces of artwork because they are "merely beautiful", but because they were "invented to heal pain". (Saltz 2) He touches upon how these specific works of art make the viewer feel some sense of peace and serenity. When I took a look at this photo, however, I felt that it radiated a sense of gloominess and possible impending doom. The scale of the people on the land looking so small in comparison to the dark cloud overhead made me feel that the people are small and helpless to whatever doom is about to come upon them. This may be a very wary way of viewing this piece of work, but that's the beauty behind the ambiguity of art, isn't it? However, I do agree with Cassese in the fact that he believed that when you look at a piece of art, you do not see simply colors and lines and brush strokes on a canvas, but instead you get pulled into the scene set by the artist and become a part of the piece as a whole.

Overall, I found this article, as perplexing as it was, still pretty interesting and abstract. After researching the piece of art being referred to a little bit myself and attempting to connect with the art as well as the article on some kind of level, I definitely felt less like just a boring, old reader and developed a better understanding of Saltz's points.