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.
I’m 73, so I was an undergrad ‘62-7. Started in Physics and in my 4th year lost it on Schroedinger Equations. Screaming loudly, I ran into Art history for the next year and a half. THEN I got into computers. But the memories are still fresh.
Grandmother had studied with the sculptor Lorado Taft at the Art Institute in 1909, and mother and I both studied in his studio at U of Chicago. I can almost remember the smell of the place. Music had moved into folk music, so nothing so avant-garde as what you were experiencing.
Those were the days of boys writing you poetry and songs that they played on their guitars. I lived in the art library surrounded by open books, but it’s nothing to what I can get now online. That time gave me the love. This time gives me knowledge like a fire hydrant.
But the art instructors were wonderful. I had Father Harrie Vanderstappen for oriental art and medieval art with Norman Rosenthal. Brilliant teachers. Though Rosenthal really got to me when he described trying to identify a sculpture on a church by examining the quarry payroll records to tie a block of stone to a particular artist.
And yet I can spend years today examining how a particular poet favors particular word combinations that move their tongues in particular ways.