Thursday, March 31, 2011

ART HISTORIANS AND ARTISTS

So today I went to Louisville with my art history professor Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller and a retired DAAP professor named Lloyd (whose last name I never caught) to hear Linda Nochlin speak at the University of Louisville. Her lecture was on Misere: Courbet, Millet and the Representation of Poverty in the Nineteenth Century.

It was interesting in that I gleaned a whole trove of new artists to look at both from her lecture and from looking around the Speed Art Museum at which the lecture was held. Also I was simply impressed that she's still teaching and giving lectures. She's eighty years old.

But I did expect the lecture to be more theoretical and less... didactic? I'm not sure if that's the word I want to use. It was simpler than I expected. Not to mention that for a feminist she certainly focused on male artists more than I expected her to. I don't think I wrote down any female artists during her lecture.

I'm mostly glad I went, she had some interesting points and I felt like I could follow along quite easily, which I guess I'm not used to (maybe I've been in visual arts concepts too long).

I did get to use my brand-new Fujifilm Instax camera, which I was rather excited about. I received it as a 21st birthday gift yesterday.  

 Me looking ridiculous with my sister and my mom.
 I love that this camera makes any photo look like it was taken in the 70s.
 Linda Nochlin hiding behind the dude in the suit, and Theresa.
My favorite by far. The green thing is the flash that went off against the car window.

I'm heading into the darkroom tomorrow to develop some 100 speed black and white film, so we'll see how that goes. I'm also going to have to post about all the new comics and graphic novels I received for my birthday (primary amongst them were Jeffrey Brown and Shaun Tan, but there were many more excellent ones I had never heard of).

Also a comics-related side note, Carol Tyler was unable to come to class on Wednesday because her mother was ill, so she sent someone to take attendance, an older fellow with a slow deep voice and a head full of white hair. He took attendance and then took the time to tell us about how important lettering is in comics, and how we should develop several lettering styles to work with. Being a bit of a lettering geek I found it quite interesting but couldn't really think of any questions when he asked us if we had any, so he let us out of class early and we all scattered.

AFTER he left one of my classmates went, "so that's Binky Brown." And I had a minor WHATWHATWHAT moment. Justin Green just took our attendance?? He didn't introduce himself, how was I supposed to know it was Carol Tyler's husband telling us about letter-spacing? I have got to learn what all my favorite artists look like now. Man.

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