A New Period

Good Morning -

Pulling on my Art History degree a little more, I'll share that art periods are usually marked by art that is vastly different to the period previous...wow - that's a bit obvious, no? That sentence is so clumsy, I can't even bring myself to erase it - something that awkward and clunky is best left lying where it landed. I'm going to sip a bit of coffee and see if I can't explain that a little better.

Art, by nature, responds and reacts to what is going on with art at the current moment, building and building until it collapses into something entirely different (if any of my professors have moved on to their great rewards, they are spinning in their graves at this explanation...).

So, say the current period of art is marked by human forms that have advanced in their realism, with a better sense of dimension and lots of swirling energy and bold motions (Renaissance). Artists on the edge of this period are going to start making art that takes those ideas of swirling energy and bold motions and send them over the top with an (over) abundance of swirls and curlicues and gold and layers upon layers of sugary, decorative, fat baby angels (Baroque).

This is what gets them noticed, earns them a paragraph or two centuries later in Hartt's Art, and makes it so those looking back and looking to define and organize the history of art can mark a line and say, "This piece is of the Renaissance" and "This piece is of the Baroque."

Once you move more into modern art, it becomes the tug of war between realism and abstraction (again, spinning, dizzy, dead professors). This period is uber-realistic, so in response and reaction to that, the next period is wildly abstract. Back and forth it goes, with artists looking to make statements against and in reaction to the Now by being different. It's a cycle though, no?, so what was once different becomes mainstream, resulting in artists who want to make a statement against the mainstream being led to something different, usually something opposite (realism vs. abstraction).

And why this Art History lesson? As you can see, our Virgen is quite different from the Virgen the day before. It's my simplest yet, with not even a blue glass moon laid tastefully at her feet. Nope - just an image of a forest in California somewhere and our Virgen. That's it. There's no symbolic grills, burlap pants sequences, or sewn ribbon borders pointing us to the action that needs to be taken (sewing up the crotch of my pants). Simple, simple.

Was this a purposeful, living art history response to the previous night's Virgen? Less response, more reaction. After a wonderful evening of drinks and cheap appetizer's at Congress Hotel with my partner and our Odyssey friend, I came home and fell asleep hard on the couch. It was only 8:30 and I still had a Virgen to make and breasts to citrus (although last night was the last of the citrus oil to the breasts), but I was wiped out, so I stretched out and snoozed.

Like sometimes happens, I didn't nap - I feel into a deep, deep, must-have-been-poisoned sleep. This lasted an hour until I was woken by the tortured screams of our grumpy, matted tortoise shell as my partner brushed her. Unlike calicoes who have a strong will to live, tortoise shells are marked by extreme grumpiness and a penchant for suicidal ideations (they are also extremely loyal, but I mention that only in fairness to this cat, not because this trait was in any way displayed last night).

For all the disrepair her coat is in, her lungs are quite healthy, and she hates to be brushed, so this was a long, loud, dramatic, expletive-filled tirade (sometimes you know when a cat is cussing). Needless to say, it was not the sweet serenade necessary to gently pull me back from my too-deep sleep. I awoke startled and moved into my own extreme grumpiness once I realized what was going on.

My partner, caught between the static flying off of the cat and the static flying off of me, made a smart decision and retired to bed. I still had a Virgen to do and my breasts, so sat fuming, trying to find images. I was going to do something with breasts to mark the last of the citrusing, but couldn't find any in any of my magazines (the one and only time I wished I had a subscription to some sort of porny-type rag full of giant images of breasts). As I flipped and fumed, I came across this full-page image of a green, quiet, lush forest and felt a calm wash over me. (side note - I was so grumpy, I sat away from myself and watched - it's amazing to step back and watch oneself in the middle of a boiling moment).

So, while my Virgen isn't a conscious response to the previous night's Virgen as much as a reaction to our cat, it marks a period all the same. What those periods are is left for the future historians to decide and demarcate.