Museum Visit

For my museum visit assignment I chose to go to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. It was definitely interesting experience. The museum itself is located in very nice setting. The museum collection is divided into many different categories based on the geographical location and also on period when the art was created. At the time when I visited the museum, at the class we were covering the prehistoric period. So I focused my attention there on the oldest items in their collection. The oldest items there were from Asian continent.

For example, this particular item is almost 1800 years old. It is model of Three Story Pavilion from China’s Han dynasty. It is amazing how it survived all that time without being broken in some war.

The museum also has a section dedicated to the Stanford family, who founded Stanford university. It was interesting to see pictures of them that showed life in the 19th century Palo Alto. Then there was area dedicated to modern art. There were many pictures and statues that caught my attention there because of how different they were.

And this is one of my favorite pictures at the Cantor museum. Looking at it I almost want to go camping.

The museum visit was deffinately worth the effort to go there.

Blog #3

For this week blog I chose comparison between Roman Colosseum and a modern stadium.
Colosseum was build some 1900 years ago. It has many features that are still used in modern stadiums and arenas: sloped seating for spectators, crowd control features, numbered entrances, etc. One can almost imagine excited spectators rushing in to see their favorite entertainment or game just like now days people go to see football game or baseball. In chapter 6, it seems there are many things that we consider to be part of modern life: bridges, stadiums, coins with portraits of important people, large scale structures, aquaducts.

Blog #2

When looking for similarities between modern world and pictures in the last 3 chapters I noticed resemblence between style of old Greek temples and some modern buildings that want to project stability. For example the façade culomns on the New York Stock Exchange building are very similar to those on the Temple of the Olympian Zeus in Athens.

Undirected Blog #1

After reading the first two chapters in our book I was thinking which image could be compered to something in modern world. I think the most suitable for that is the image of the house interior from Skara Brae.

Skara Brae was occupied from 3100 BCE to 2600 BCE. Even thou this structure was constructed some 5000 years ago, it shows surprisingly modern features such as build in shelves, rectangular stone beds with space for some type of beding, and place for a fire in the middle. Many modern interiors use stone as the finish look on parts of the wall. Fireplace is probably the most comon area when one could see the stone finish in modern day structures. I'd imagine the builders of Skara Brae house did not intend to use stone just to achieve some look. For them the stone was material of choice because it was readily available building material in the area. In modern world we can chose from many passible building materials. Often times the stone finish serves only aesthetic function. There products available that imitate stone in its apearence but they are meant to be only an outer wall layer only an inch or two thick.

Art 1A class blog

Blog 1 - About me

The first picture that I chose for my blog is one of the picture from our book. It is a picture of the statue of a man that was found in Cernavoda, Romania. The statue depicts a man who seems to be thinking about something. I'm a thinker myself so this statue shows this part of my personality. The person who carved this statue lived some 5500 years. I'd imagine he lived in a completly different environment from today's world and yet he was able to make something that people are able to relate to many ages later. My first idea of ancient people is that they were rather primitive. Looking at this statue, I think person who made it was very inteligent. I'm not sure if I was able to make something like that.

The second image I chose is the picture of a painting by Vincent van Gogh. The name of the painting is The Stary Night. Van Gogh paited this picture in 1889. It shows small town with giant night skies above it. This picture reminds me of my own home town back in Slovakia. There was a church, few houses, mountains, and at night one could see thousands of stars.