Art 451-Caitlin Pupich

For this post, I wanted to explain the inspiration from two sources that drove my last image. The first I have referenced before, The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, and the second is the Netflix documentary film Take Your Pills. The film explores the increased need and distribution of Adderall and other prescription drugs that were developed to treat people with ADHD. While treatment is the primary use, its over prescription has led to wide use of the drug for other purposes.  Legal controversy over athletes using this drug, as well as a more hidden controversy between employees and students, have led to many ethical discussions of its use. Furthermore, while there are people who truly need the drug, the quickly decreasing attention span of the common public has greatly blurred the lines between when someone needs treatment or not. What I wanted to look at from this documentary was the fact that so many employees and students are finding illegal means of getting this drug beca...

For this week, since I am using art from another culture and another time to compare my own work, I wanted to look at what is shared about art across time and space, and in turn what has changed. Overall, this research clearly shows that images and art are something universal, and have many universal elements to them. While the style of the images and the actual content (eg. Carts vs. Cars) may change, they are still examining the same idea or overall theme as they were from the first cave drawings. This is an interesting idea that ties all humans across time and space together in a very interesting way. Looking at art in the holistic form  really shows the deep and fascinating connections of the human mind and challenges the individualistic modern themes in U.S. culture today. In a way, it proves that art can transcend differences in things such as ideas, belief, technology, and essentially tie back to the core of the subject: humans as a whole and how they see the world, in a way...

image credit: Tran osuke   For this week, I researched on the traditional Ukiyo-e shop and what they looked like. I found very little information on this, but I did find an image of a replica of an Ukiyo-e shop in the Edo-Tokyo Museum. This showed multiple ways in which the work could be displayed in the shops: on flat surfaces, hung among strings, and then some were even hung alone. While this sort of cluttered display to show as many things as possible is normal to us today, it is fascinating that our ideas of mass production and how that is displayed derive from shops like this. Furthermore, I like the fact that it shows how the same images have different designs and colors and are printed many times, emphasizing the devaluation of each piece during this time (which is how it became affordable to the middle class). For my own display, I chose to replicate the pictures hung on strings. Although they are all beautiful prints, they are forced together and forgotten because ...

Brief History: Kabuki, which was a surprising and eccentric style of theater that started in the Edo period of Japan, was first initiated with performances by women actresses dressing as both men and woman. It started with one woman, Izumo no Okuni, who began theatrical dance performances in the streets Kyoto (which was the capital of Japan before rule moved to Edo, now known as Tokyo, during the Edo period). As her performance grew in popularity, the dance was brought all the way up to the imperial court, where it became a larger performance of women. This grew to be very popular, and even a way to understand pop culture, such as its display of the latest trends in fashion, but eventually the women's Kabuki was banned for being too erotic. During the "golden age" of the Edo period, where many arts and entertainment thrived, a new type of Kabuki emerged where only men acted, playing the roles of both men and women with masks over their face. This became extremely popula...