The Thinking Eye

When I read this article  I was extremely confused. The way some of his sentences were structured didn't even make sense to me, let alone the concepts underlying them. The main things I couldn't grasp were the thoughts he had put down about focus, function, and tension. So as far as those things are concerned, I did not understand almost anything on the first page. I especially didn't understand the part in the last paragraph of the first page when they try to define the and describe the different forms and movements as feminine and masculine. I did not pick up on that at all. In fact when it talked about how form- making was feminine and form-deciding was masculine, I thought that it seemed a little sexist. I am not sure why that popped up into my head but I seemed to associate the making with food and the decisions with decisions in life, so that is how it came up as sexist in my mind, even though, now thinking about it, it does not really seem sexist, but it still does not make sense.

After the first two pages were over, things cleared up a little bit because they were more straight forward. The dots made sense, as well as the explanation about how a line that went for a walk. However, with those two things, I do not understand the active, middle and passive aspects of them and how they relate. It was all extremely confusing.i also could not understand why some of she shapes that were shaded in were called what they were called. One of the only things I did understand in this article were the lines. I got the difference between the lines that were basically like waves and the lines that were described as connecting different points and therefore has sharp edges and points, and lastly, compared to never ending lines, like circles or triangles.

In class we had touched on how different lines and dots are and how the way they are created mean different things. For example, by listening to the music, there were different ways to make and interpret the dots and lines by the strength of the dot/line or even how close they are.

I definitely feel as though I need the definitions cleared up and explained to me in a slightly different way than was done in this passage. I can not tell if it was just the writing style that I did not understand or if I just couldn't grasp the concepts.

Blog 1: The Whole Ball of Wax

I enjoyed the reading a lot, mainly for the reason that they gave of art being so important and in-depth. When they compared art with other subjects like science, I was very surprised at first because since I am a big science person, I have never thought of art as anything even comparable to science, besides when you need to draw atoms or something like that. However, when he went into more explanation about how art can be broken down and always interpreted differently and always changing. I found it really interesting how they talked about how it changes over time because as people grow and develop as people and a generation, then the way they interpret the things they look at is changed. I usually think about people interpreting things when the art is very abstract, but he talked about just regular art and how people can look at it differently. He made it seem as though art is all about understanding the art and the way you look at it because of the way he referenced Oscar Wilde, "The moment you think you understand a work of art it's dead to you." Then when he talked about the difference between the dog and cat, it made a lot of sense. I saw this as dogs are very simple and will do what they are told, but cats will keep their distance and make things more complicated. And that is the way that are is supposed to be too, it is not supposed to be simple and straight forward, it is supposed to be hard to figure out and change things all the time by not always doing the same thing. He explains that art is not rigid and I really liked that because in things like math, which I have always loved, it is extremely straight forward and there is one write answer. I have always thought that I loved that because there was one way to solve the problem, but I also love art, which is now very conflicting to me. However, art is something different and special to me. I have always done art as a form of stress relief if exercise did not work. Drawing always has a way to calm me down and then in the end, whatever I have drawn, reflects what I feel and what I was thinking. Whereas math just challenges me in a number of ways and then you are on a destination to find the right answer. I like both things but I love how art and the view of different art can change depending on the times and even just how you are feeling at a time of day. That is something that I do not think anything else to do. Other subjects are very hard and definite but art can always be different, even if it is the same piece of art. To me, I would define Art as a complicated way of expression that can be interpreted in many different ways. It is a form of information and communication in a way that other areas can not do.