Class Discussion on the 29th

I read the articles for class on the 29th and I have to admit that I didn't understand them completely. Our class discussion went a long way to clarifying the ideas of beauty, aesthetics and criticism for me. I have never really thought too hard about the art I see in museums. I think that I have been operating on a "beauty for beauty's sake" basis. Of course, my connection with the gospel helped me to appreciate religious works of art more fully, but other than that I have found it easier to simply look at a peice of art and enjoy its color or its content without real thought. Sometimes I read the plaques beside the art, but I'm not sure whether they come from the critic or the artist, and are thus less useful. I do think that beauty is a very important part of the world, because without it, everything would be more sterile. As we looked at the pictures of the churches in class and the immense detail each of them possessed I thought, 'If beauty weren't important, there is no way people would spend this much time on things. We must be innately driven to beautify the world around us.' I could really see from the two pictures of the church interiors that they played different roles in the communion with God of the saints attending them. Though I thought each of them were exquisitely beautiful, the more enclosed one brought to my mind secret passages while the white open one looked like it could have been the set for the wedding scene in the Sound of Music.

Another part of the lesson that helped to change my perspective was about critics. I've always thought of them as high-falutin' posh folks who loved to put down other people's work. I never thought of the fact that their job is actually quite hard and carries a lot of responsibility. Not all works of art can be super, or none of them would be - as paraphrased from the movie The Incredibles. At the same time, not everything can be bad. Critics have to give their opinions without allowing personal prejudices to color them. They have a job of unifying different artworks, of giving them a common bond just through the fact that they have viewed them and expressed judgement. Another purpose of the critic is to make artists think twice before they casually create something. Artists know that someone qualified is going to view their art and that ups the ante. Critics force art to keep evolving and become better. I don't know if I could be a critic because I would have a hard time not saying everything is good, even if it wasn't, if merely to spare the artist's feelings. I don't know much about how to criticise art, but I am looking foreward to learning.

Cultural Events

This is a very tentative list of events I hope to attend
Week 1
Play: Singin' in the Rain @ Hale Center Theater
Week 2
Community: America's Freedom Festival Patriotic Service, Provo Gallery Stroll, Balloons
Week 3
Dance: July 10-11 Ballet Under the Stars
Week 4
Music: Deer Valley Music Fest Utah Symphony
Week 5
Screening: Orem Public Library
Week 6
Exhibition: BYU Museum of Art
Week 7
Play: If Singin' in the Rain doesn't work
Week 8
Concert in the park

Reading

Our readings this week really helped to wet my appetite for the humanities, especially the message about the The Gospel Vision of the Arts. As this is my first semester at BYU it is still amazing and wonderful to me that the professors are allowed to combine the churches beliefs in their academic learning programs. One of my favorite sentences was, "What could be the result if discovery were made of equal talent in men who were clean and free from the vices, and thus entitled to revelations?" Something about it just thrilled me, maybe it was the idea of just what could be accomplished. Thinking of it is beyond my grasp because it's hard to imagine anything better than the best we've been exposed to. It's hard to know what better is, what kind of genre will the musician who is better than Bach write? What kind of painting will an even better painting be? Would I be able to tell the best violinist from the best already existing? President Kimball's message kind of makes me feel guilty for not striving to become the best. For not deciding that I need to be better than ordinary or good because I, along with other latter-day saints have the potential to become the best through inspiration. It's already hard to walk the line between pride and humility, and being the best at something would indeed be a great challenge in that regard. I like that the first presidency took the time to write a message to the saints, encouraging them to build themselves in all areas, not just the spiritual, but the physical parts of man's potential as well. I don't feel that I am meant to become really great at something, but no one ever will if everyone feels that way. I hope to someday hear Paginini's better, or read a play by Shakespeare's better.

Singing in the Rain

The cultural event I decided to go to this week was the play at Hale Center Theatre in Orem called Singing in the Rain. I fairly certain almost everyone has seen this play before, but just to keep all the bases covered I'll give a short summary of the play, which is one of my favorites. It begins with an announcer gushing into her microphone about the actor and actress and their magnificent abilities as the crowd waits excitedly for the Lamont and Lockwood acting team to arrive on the red carpet. They do a good job of acting, and no one can guess that the actor, Don Lockwood, of the famous duo actually has no love for his companion. She, being a somewhat dumb blond can't tell either, and believes that they two will be married in short order. As the play goes on, Don falls in love with a girl named Cathy Seldon, the only girl who didn't fall at his feet since he was four. Lena dislikes Cathy strongly because Cathy hit her in the face with a pie that was actually meant for Don. The play is set right on the brink of talkies. Warner Brothers Studios comes out with the musical, The Jazz Singer, and the studio that Lamont and Lockwood work for, Monumental Pictures, has to come up with something to top it. As talking in film is a relatively new concept they have all sorts of trouble getting started and their biggest problem is Lena. She has a terrible voice and almost no common sense so the studio sneakily has Cathy sing for her becuase she has an amazing voice. In the end the show is a hit and Lena, who tries to ruin Cathy's career gets her just desserts. I'm not really comfortable with criticizing the script or the play itself, just becuase I love it and would continue to watch again and again even if someone with authority said it wasn't that good.
I've seen the movie with Gene Kelly and Debbie Renolds dozens of times, so my expectations were pretty high. I wasn't disappointed. They did a fantastic job of improvising in parts that could have been a flop and they even added some hilarious parts that weren't in the movie. I was almost late, I was by myself, and I had the threat of having to write about my experience hanging over my head, so I was a little bit stressed when I went into the theater, but the atmosphere was really calming. I had an excellent view because Hale Center Theatre is set up in a circle stage and is small enough that there are no bad views. The people that helped everyone to sit down were very accomadating.
One of the things that impressed me the most about this production was the way the audience was included in it. "Of course what makes it better than a movie is that interaction with the audience" is a direct quote from someone sitting near me and I completely agree with him. The audience was very involved. We acted as the applause when the stars were walking down the read carpet or when black and white clips were shown as if we with the ones at the movie preview. The most exciting part was when Don Lockwood did his Singing in the Rain. In the movie he splashes all over the streets dancing and singing with his umbrella used for anything but the purpose of keeping him dry. They actually had rain coming from the ceiling in the theatre and on the tickets it warned that the first rows would get wet. All of the people in those rows were given ponchos, but I doubt that was enough. The sprinklers didn't get them wet, and I'm sure they were starting to relax when Don started kicking water all over them and spinning his soaked umbrella at them. It was no longer just the front row who was getting wet, but all the way to the forth or fifth rows. I was so funny to see the actor totally trying to soak people while still remaining in character.
Another amazing part was Cathy Seldon's singing voice. She really did a great job. Lena Lamont also attempted to sing. This wasn't a song I was familiar with because it doesn't occur in the movie, but it was very funny to see her try to sing. The actress did a very good job of missing the notes and keeping up her very disharmonious voice. The dancing was also pretty good. Anyone who knows who Gene Kelly was would know it would be impossible to be up to his standards, but they did a good job.
The only thing I was a little disappointed with was some of the singing. I can't really criticize because I don't know very much about singing, but it just wasn't as good as I hoped it would be but on the whole I was very happy to have attended.

Class

So far I have really enjoyed humanities. I love history and art, so I think that the subject matter is fasinating. I especially liked the the discussion the class had about high and low end art. It was really thought provoking for me, and the comments other students made were really ensightful and helped me to look at art in a different way. I have to confess that I am among the group of people that thinks because something is an antique it is inherently better than anything new. If it has been kept by the human race for so long it must be fantastic. It may be due to the fact that I've been indocterinated into prefering the older art, but the paintings I've seen that were produced in earlier history are much more appealing to me than many of the "new" ones. I guess I just have a more classical than contempory taste.
We talked about how the most important art can come from pop-culture. I really have to wonder what has caused the changes from what people created then and what they create now. I mean, what caused the change in the public's acceptance of certain styles of art as good. Are the tastes of modern people really so different than the tastes of the those that lived so many years ago; is there some sort of difference in our make-up that allows us to embrace a more, in my opion, flamboyant style than they did? Maybe the advances in science and social liberation have allowed for this. Science has exposed us to colorful new worlds and ideas and it seems that as society has become less stuffy, the art, dancing, architecture and music have also become more casual.
Though I have a definite preference between old and new at this point in the semester, I'm excited to learn more about different types of humanity's creations. I agree that the words high and low are maybe not the best to words that can be used to catagorize art and I'm interested in learning how to decipher what is trully good.