I’m so very glad you liked it. The art is simply stunning in these periods. I’ve captured 131 artists and I’m sorting them into dynasties to give an overall view of ancient Chinese art. They’re incredibly different from ours because they have a different purpose - they’re expressing the character of the artist and that of the person examining them. Major nuance just on how light or heavy the ink is stroked onto the paper. I remember being taught that the ideal person to rub the ink stick was a 13 year old virgin because they had the right strength to get the ink rubbed smoothly and the patience to not leave chunks.
There were almost more art critiques written than paintings created, I’m starting to think. MAJOR sophistication. Another point of confusion is that we see copying done in European art during an artist’s learning period. In ancient China, famous artists copied older artists’ work to spread it through the country. So you’re looking at Sung paintings of Tang artists.
Never took a class in African art. Zip knowledge. I had classes in Roman/Greek and Middle Eastern. Iranian art up to the time of Darius. That sort of thing.
I don’t know that Baez did all that many pieces that were so strangely operatic, but that’s where I first heard that song and I’ve loved it ever since. It had the right strangeness to go with the surrealists.
The surrealistic images popped the memories I had of my undergraduate days back in the mid- to late-fifties, especially the Dali work that was on display at the Art School there. But also I have been remembering the musical artists across the spectrum that were also brought to us there.
When I kind of flunked out, but a few years later entered an engineering school and was successful at it, the school combined both views of the ceramics field, design as well as manufacturing. We had the advantage of a state-funded library that had lots of books and current magazines following the latest trends in art and architecture. I spent a lot of time there with the accessible materials to the whole ongoing modern shemes of the time, that are just now long ago and far away.
Thanks for taking the time to wake up a few of us with your selections. Memories . . . the days when we were young, fresh, daring, and -- beautiful in body, if not in mind. Some parts of it were bad indeed.