Final Exam Study Section

Natalie Hernandez and Qiyi Li from team Vesta met on Dec 19 Tuesday from 3:10pm- 4:49pm at the basement of Library to study for Clas 1110 Final exam.

 

#Qiyi, Team Vesat

#Natalie, Team Vesta

Julius Caesar And Modern Art

This painting is called “Julius Caesar”, painted by Jake Wood-Evans. Compare to “The Basket of Apples” painted by Paul Cézanne, both art-works are using a similar technique in the process of painting. They use only one brush but applying different of colors to depict the shape and shadow of the object that is being painted. Differ than “The Basket of Apples”, the object of Wood-Evans’ painting is a Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, not daily life objects like apples, cookies, and vine. Also, Cézanne is presenting different angles of view in his art-work. For example, the left side of the table, we see it as by bird’s eye view, but by the right side, we see it as by its side, our vision is at the same level as the table’s edge. Moreover, the cookies by the upper right angle present this characteristic as well. The bottom cookies we see it flat laying on the plate, by the top are two cookies that are lifted up as diagonal. The painting “Julius Caesar” is related to Clas1110 class because we learned about him in our lectures. Something very interesting that I learned that is his first name is Gaius and he was a patrician, which means aristocrats or nobleman in Roman. I also learned that senators killed him in order to preserve the Republic from kingship. However, Prof. Yarrow taught us a very interesting point that he was actually killed by giving too many benefits and had devolved Elite competitions.

See Aphrodite From Another Class

This is a painting of Venus, the Roman version Aphrodite. We learned this painting from our ART 1010 class. It is called “Venus of Urbino”, painted by Titian in 1538. We know about Aphrodite form our first Clas 1110 class. “Archer, bind me down with triple those endless chains! Let all you goddess too how I’d love to bed that golden Aphrodite!” This is the quote that I chose from “Song of Demodocus”. Apollo asked Quicksilver that does he want to sleep with Aphrodite and this quote was the answer that Quicksilver gave. He is obsessed with the golden Aphrodite’s beauty. She is golden, she is attractive, and he cannot control his wild thinking of sleeping with her despite the fact that she is married already. From the painting, we can see that Venus is golden too. Look at the painting, Venus has an attractive face, it is just perfectly symmetrical. Look at her sensual body, isn’t it is perfectly in proportion? Look at her beautiful golden hair, her silky smooth skin. She is just perfectly beautiful. From the poem and the painting, both depict Aphrodite’s beauty. In the poem, there is a sense when she is wearing a flower crown when she went back home from her father, Zeus’ palace. In Titian’s painting, Venus is holding a bouquet of flower with her right hand too. However, even these two pieces of art are about the goodness of love, but they are from different culture, the poem is from Greek and the painting is from Roman. However, Roman culture art had been strongly influenced by Greek culture. Therefore, Venus is the Aphrodite goodness in Roman culture.

#Qiyi, Team Vesta

The Origin of April

I always knew that August is the month of Augustus Caesar and July is the month of Julius Caesar. But I never know the meaning and symbolism of other months, so I start to search for their history. Something very surprise me was April is taken from Aphrodite. April in Greek is Aphro, which is the short for Aphrodite. We learn about Aphrodite in Unit 1, we know she is the goodness of love and beauty, we learned from the first class that she is godly. Reflect on how beautiful is she that people say she is goldly. We can see countless paintings and sculptures of her in museums. Also, we learned that Roman people call her Venus and name the planet Venus after her. This is very surprised for me that April is named after Aphrodite. Now I can tell people that April is not only special of the April Fool’s day but it is beautiful because of its meaning and origin.

Qiyi, Team Vesta

 

Met Alexander the Great in Metropolitan Museum of Art

The new Baroque style of art had emerged close to the end of 16th Century in Western Europe. Baroque style painting use light and shadow, include realism and people has a dramatic movement. The following picture is called “Alexander the Great Rescued from the River Cydnus” painted by Pietro Testa at Rome by 1612-16. I saw it when I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, what catches my attention first was Alexander the Great because we had learned about him in our Clas1110 class. But after observing it carefully, I found some Baroque style characteristic on it. Compares to other Baroque painting like”Las Meninas” painted by Diego Velazquez, both painting has a contrast of light and shadow. In “Las Meninas”, the contour is dark and the light is focused on the center of the painting where the people are located. In “Alexander the Great Rescued from the River Cydnus”, Alexander is in the center of the painting and light is reflecting on him too. In Testas’ painting, we can see people are very emotional, acting dramatically try to save Alexander, and we don’t see these characteristics in Velazquez’s painting. Moreover, Self-portrait is a unique aspect of Baroque painting too. We see Velazquez himself at the left side in “Las Meninas”, however, we don’t see Testa in his painting because this is a campaign painting for Alexader the Great. We learned about him in our Clas1110 class, we know he was a great conqueror and the king of Macedonia from 336 to 323 B.C. He had united Greece and reestablished the Corinthian League, not only conquered Persian Empire and become their king but he also became the king of Babylon and Asia. This painting was painted during his war against Darius. The old man at the left side of the painting is the God of River and the right side are raised smoke from the fire set in Tarsus by Darius’s retreating troops. Overall, this is a very interesting painting, I see what I from both Art1010 and Clas1110 are interconnected on it.

How Comes that Augustus Caesar relates to a Hotel’s name?

Suetonius wrote in “Life of Augustus” that “Yet Augustus never wantonly invaded any country, and felt no temptation to increase the boundaries of Empire or enhance his military glory; indeed, he made certain barbarian chieftains swear in the Temple of Avenging Mars that they would faithfully keep the peace for which they sued.” From this quotation, we see Augustus is a very peaceful and rational person, he had no temptation of expanded his empire, the reason why he fought is not that he wanted to have more glory or become more powerful but only because he wanted to united all barbarians, keep the peace and prevent further wars. He had such a big heart.

This an excerpt of what Augustus Caesar wrote at Res Gestae, it is about himself for his own Mausoleum in Rome. “I often waged war, civil and foreign, on the earth and sea, in the whole wide world, and as a victor, I spared all the citizens who sought pardon. As for foreign nations, those which I was able to safely forgive, I preferred to preserve than to destroy.” This is an excerpt of what Augustus Caesar wrote about himself, he said that he often started wars inside of the empire or outside with other nations, in the whole wide world. As a winner of the wars, he forgave all the citizens as they sought pardon, he preferred to keep these nations with peace than to destroy them. We can see here that Augustus wanted to let people know how generous he is, he didn’t want to eliminate these nation even they lose.

The reason why I chose these two quotes is that I learned from Art class that Augustus Caesar brought Pax Romana- 200 years of peace to Rome. What I learned from Art 1010 really connect to what we learned in this unit for Clas 1010. Also, this is very interesting that both Suetonius and Augustus himself described the reason of wars that Augustus started is because he wants to keep a further and longer peacetime, he is very kind to forgive the loser nation and make barbarians to vow and keep the peace.

This is an image of Hotel Caesar Augustus in Capri, Italy. Capri is famous by the statue of Augustus Caesar, it is the symbol of the city. The Hotel Caesar Augustus has it history since 19 century. Before to be transformed to be a hotel, it was a village that bought by Russia’s Prince Emmanuel Bulhak by the first half of 19th century. Bulhak believed that Augustus Caesar is the person who made Capri famous and he is the emperor of the world, Bulhak placed the statue of Augustus on the terrace because of it. By the second half of 29th century, Prince Bulhak sold the village to the family Signorini and the family transformed it into a hotel. The name of this hotel has nothing to do with the kind and peaceful characteristic of August Caesar but there is no doubt that Capri had become famous because of him and this was the reason why the family Signorini named it after him.

#Qiyi, Team Vesta

Three-dimensional World on a Two-dimensional Surface

The picture below was toke in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it calls Monks in the Cloister of the Church of Gesu e Maria, Rome. It was painted by Francois Marius Granet in 1808. This painting is similar to the Holy Trinity painted Masaccio that we see in class, both of them have a linear perspective aspect, which is a way of recreating a three-dimensional word on a two-dimensional surface. We can see both works looks so real that if we were standing and looking at it from straight on. However, even both are similar to linear perspective, but there is some difference between them. Holy Trinity is a fresco, which is a wall painting. The method that Masaccio used was painted it onto plaster that is fresh and it had to do quick and well because plaster dries fast. Monks in the Cloister of the Church of Gesu e Maria, Rome is an oil painting drawn on canvas and it takes much longer time to dries. Also, the vanishing point of this painting is the end of the hallway which is located on the left down side of the painting, slightly lower than the center of the painting and we see it straight to our view. Holy Trinity’s vanishing point was on the feet of Jesus because Masaccio painted it in a low viewpoint as we are looking up at Jesus.

Unexpected Discovery in my Neighborhood

It was a very common school day and I was walking on the way to the B6 bus station. I gave a glance at the building that was on the other side of the street while I was waiting for the traffic light and guess what, surprisingly I discovered all that the architecture design element that we saw during our field trip. It was the Chase bank on 19 Ave, 86th Street. It shocked me because I pass by there almost every day and I had never look at it in details. One thing that I found it is similar to the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House that we visited is there is also a stone head on the top part of the building, but this chase bank has it above a transom window and the Custom House has it as a keystone in the entrance arch, even this bank also has an arch too, but it only serves as decoration because it cannot support the weight of the building. Also, there are two symbols of the sides of a liberty dime on the wall, the back side coin is a fasces next to the left Corinthian order and the top side is next to the right Corinthian order. Fasces means authority and power, coincidentally it fits perfectly of how Chase bank is important to our economy. The Corinthian orders of this building are very decent, different than the Corinthian orders that we see in class, they have something more than just leaves by the bottom, they also have a beautiful flower in the center. Also, there is a piece of a big clock with flours and leaves on the bottom and two eagles on the sides located right in front of the transom window. This is a very beautiful and amazing discovery in my neighborhood, I am shocked again by the beauty of these buildings and very admire the designers.

It is Time to Remember our Constitution

When I search the term ” Polybius ‘United States’ constitution “, the article that most caught my attention was “The Constitution, by Hand”. After reading it through, I found out that it is not an article related to Polybius, but it is so interesting that I would like to talk about it for this assignment. The author, Morgan O’Hara, he is an artist and he had a thought by the beginning of 2017 when our Mr. president Donald Trump inaugurated. He started an artistic protest for minorities who have been attacked due to racist discrimination, he hand-copied the constitution in public places. The public followed what was he doing, more and more people joined him to copy the constitution fragments. The primary audience that O’Hara intended to motive in this article is to all the people in the United States, as he mentions: “It is important for us to become more intensely aware of our rights as citizens of the United States, so that as the current government tries to take them away….” O’Hara wants to be an example to let people think about how is our constitution protect all the United States citizen and non-citizen and how is our Mr. president being racist to immigrants. In the ancient texts that we read, it presents:” Thus here again one might plausibly say that the people’s share in the government is the greatest and that the constitution is a democratic one. ” It states that the democracy with the constitution is the best government form. This was the reason of why O’Hara started his artistic protest and wrote it down in words form “The Constitution, by Hand”, he also believed that the constitution is the document that supports the democratic government and it protects our right.

 

O’Hara, Morgan. “The Constitution, by Hand.” New York Times, 2 July 2017, p. 2(L). Academic OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=cuny_broo39667&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA497526732&it=r&asid=f9d2059b0052ddb6ec700a769d83eed1. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.

 

Qiyi, Team Vesta

Midterm Review

Me (Natalie) and Qiyi from Team Vesta started out first midterm review study session on  October 10th from 2:31pm to 4:16pm, in front of the West Quad Center. The second study session was on October 12th from 1:54pm to 4:26pm, in the Brooklyn College Library.

The Fasces of U.S. Custom House

This picture was taken in the side door’s interior wall of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House. The U.S. Custom House is located in 1 Bowling Green, New York, NY 10004. The building was designed by Minnesotan Cass Gilbert and built in 1902-07 by the federal government, to house the duty collection operations of the port of New York. Before the federal income tax was imposed, the first source of revenue was the custom duty,  New York had been a very important port city of United States. Fasces resemble power and authority, being such an important building, for sure it will have this symbol in its design. My assumption of this facses in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House is it represents the power of the New York’s economic and the significance of this building to the city.

 

Reference:

http://nyc-architecture.com/LM/LM012-ALEXANDERHAMILTONCUSTOMHOUSE.htm

 

 

Our Lady of Pompeii Church

This picture was taken on September when I went shopping with a friend. What caught my attention first was the Corinthian order since that was what we had learned in class by that time. Our Lady of Pompeii Church is located in 25 Carmine Street, Manhattan. The church is built in 1926 and was with an Italian-Renaissance style because it established for the South Village Italian-American community. We can see many style and characteristics in this church, starting with its outside appearance, it has Corinthian columns and it has a little dome like The Great Mosque of Cordoba by the left side of the church. Inside of the church is even more pretty, it has Corinthian columns that have different material, the inside columns are built with white marble stone. Same as all the buildings that we had learned in the class, it has decoration inside on the walls, but different than mosaic as San Vitale, the wall of Our Lady of Pompeii Church was painted. Being as a church, it has the same religious function as other temple and mosques. Nowadays Our Lady of Pompeii Church does not only serve to Italians, it is open to everyone and offers masses in different languages for Italians, Americans, Brazilians and Filipinos.

Egyptian Style in my Neighborhood

 

What do you think about Egyptian style? Had you ever think that it is very easy to find its influence even in our neighborhood? Both of the above pictures were toke in my neighborhood when I start at looking at the houses, I found out that both of these two building have some Egyptian style on their design. For the first picture, I don’t think the designer include the pyramid as an Egyptian style on purpose but have to mention that whenever we talk or think about the pyramid, what comes first in our mind is it originates in Egypt. For the second picture, I find out that it has some element that seems to be Egyptian style. For example, different than the usual Corinthian column style, what we see here is like a bundled papyrus and having the form narrowing down like a lotus flower’s form. Egyptians used a lot of lotus and papyrus plants in the artworks. The wall has decoration curves like palm leaf’s curves. All above mention characteristic might not necessary be Egyptian style but I just found out that they relate to it at some point. I have no idea who is the designer of these building and cannot know why the designer decides to add this element to its design since these are not famous buildings . But it is quite surprising for me when I found they relate to Egyptian style. Even nowadays we appreciated and like Egyptian culture, but history not always had been like this, Greeks did not appreciate Egypt like how we do now. In the text “Theocritus Idylls” mention that “Nowadays no criminal sneaks up to you Egyptian style as you’re walking along and does you a mischief like the tricks those deceitful scoundrels used to play, nasty rascals all as bad as each other, curse the lot of them.” Praxinoa is proud of her Greek ancestors even she was born was grow up in Alexandria, an Egyptian city. She seems Egyptian as criminals and she dislikes them. She thinks that without Greeks conquer Egypt, they will be in a terrible situation differ then what she sees and lives. She is graceful that Greeks had changed Egypt. Egyptian culture is beautiful and thanks to its influence, we can see these pretty buildings nowadays and there are a lot more waiting for us to be explored.

 

Are we Getting Closer or Farther to the Ideal Society?

In the news “The Purity of a Ruthless TV Couple”, the author first introduces a political thriller plot from “House of cards” then compare it with nowadays society. In the movie, main characters Frank Underwood and his wife Claire start with killing a dog but end with killing two people as he soars from congressman to president. The author makes a comparison of Plato’s Republic with the plot in the thriller later on because of their similarity. In the society of this thriller, money and power are supreme. “They are their own reward. There is almost something of Plato’s ‘Republic’ to the Underwoods: the political life as the highest life.” In the thriller, Mr. Underwood kills those two politicians in order to obtain more power , there is no harmony but violence. It is true that Plato agree that emperor is the supreme power, but he also suggests that everyone should take his/her role in the society so all of us can live harmoniously without the fear of violence and property possession. After the comparison, the author mentions that our society is similar to the society in the thriller, almost half of retired congress member in Washington become lobbyist. We are in financial crisis because banks lend us money but, at the end, they are the one getting benefits and we are becoming poorer as time pass by. All of these are related to money and/or power. Even nowadays society is not exactly as violent as in the movie “House of cards”, but in my opinion, we are getting farther and farther away from the ideal society that Plato proposes because we can never achieve a absolutely peace society. However, we are also getting closer in a sense because our society gives each of us a different role, for example: the president and the congress are chosen by our votes and they are in charged of making national decisions, the military protects our land, and the rest of us are citizens that having not much political power but we choose the person who represents us. All in all, Plato’s perfect society may be seen as very distant for nowadays’ society but we are improving to achieve it.

.Giridharadas, Anand. “The Purity of a Ruthless TV Couple.” New York Times, 17 Mar. 2015, p. NA(L). New York State Newspapers, <http://go.galegroup.com.ez-proxy.brooklyn.cuny.edu:2048/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T004&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=7&docId=GALE%7CA405647806&docType=Column&sort=DA-SORT&contentSegment=&prodId=SPN.SP01&contentSet=GALE%7CA405647806&searchId=R2&userGroupName=nysl_me_brookcol&inPS=true> Sep 15,2017

Civilized World, Barbaric Tragedies

Barbarian, refer to people who are rude and uncivilized. This term originates from Greek in ancient time. The original meaning for barbarian was people who do not speak Greek. However, we use the term barbaric to describe atrocity now. Barbaric tragedy happens very often. Rape, murdering, kidnapping, countless violent actions happen every day.

According to the Nigerian newspaper The Sun, the author Uche Atuma points out that brain washed parents donate their child to be used as bomb suicide in North East, a geopolitical zone in Nigeria. Director, Army Public Relations, Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman condemns that “The acts of these parents and guardians are not only barbaric, but condemnable and unacceptable.” In this news article, the “other” is referring to those people who do not have love and mercy for their own children. The target audience is all the people who read the article, appeal citizens to report any suspicious could have sent child for suicide bomb use. Those child’s human right is being token by their parents, nobody has the right to take another person’s life, no matter what relationship do they have. In this case, the author is affirming a sympathize value for the audience, those young children had no option to decide what they want and what to do in the future, they have no future, their life is manipulated and destroyed by their braid wash parent.

According to the England newspaper Nottingham Post, the author David Briggs indicates his opinion relating to fox hunting in the article “HS2 on CV will be embarrassing”. He claims that people who protest for fox hunting are behaving double moral because either they are respecting animal’s right. “PEOPLE who eat meat and then condemn fox hunting as barbaric are hypocrites.” People oppose fox hunting in the name of foxes’ right, but isn’t it is very unfair that they eat meat from other animals but defending the right of foxes? The term barbaric in this article is used to describe those people who enjoy meat in their meal but get offended that other people hunt fox. The target audience in this news is all the people who read the news. They said that they need to protect the right of foxes, but they forget that all those meat that they eat are pieces of other animals, then what about those animal’s right? The author is showing a social value of rational thinking to the audience. Also, don’t judge or claim to the other people if you cannot be an example of that.

In the book “Herodotus on the Persians”, the use of the word barbaric is different than the use of barbaric in those articles mentioned before. Herodotus wrote ““For Asia, with all the various tribes of barbarians that inhabit it, is regarded by the Persians as their own; but Europe and the Greek race they look on as distinct and separate.” At that time, any other non-Greek people will be considered barbarian because they do not speak the same language and Greeks cannot understand what they talk. The word barbarian is just a name for all these non-Greek people, however, the work barbaric that people use in nowadays is very different, as we can see from the news mentioned before, barbaric can be used as rude and ignorant.

Atuma, Uche. “Parents donating children for suicide bombing, Army raises alarm” The Sun[Lagos] 6 Aug 2017 1 Print

Briggs, David. “HS2 on CV will be embarrassing” Nottingham Post[Nottingham] 5 Sep 2017 1 Print

Hopelessness is not an Excuse to Cause Tragedy

Sarabi, wife of the lion king Mufasa and mother of Simba. Mufasa was murdered by his brother Scar as the movie went by. Sarabi became a single mother. Even she didn’t knock down by this unexpected change, she came forward against Scar to defense the kingdom. Single parenting is one of the biggest issues in nowadays society. It is hard to raise a child even with both of the parents’ effort, bring the child up in one person’s effort is multiply harder because all the responsibilities are on this person’s shoulder. Even the situation is hard, something in common of all parents is the love that they have toward their children, like Sarabi she was very brave to face the situation.

Medea, she was abandoned by her ex-husband Jason and became a single mother. Medea and Jason were refugees in the king Creon’s kingdom, but Jason abandoned her and got married with Creon’s daughter because of power. Medea and her two children will be exiled soon because King Creon worries that she will hurt the princess. Angry and lose drive Medea crazy, she took action to revenge, she planned to kill the couple and the king Creon by using her own children to realize her conspiracy. It might be hard to be a single mother at that time because people live in their land, leaving their homeland means to lose their protection. She was refugees to Creon’s kingdom, now being exiled is definitely hard for her, especially she is carrying two children. However, what she decided to do is not to leave and plan what to do for her children. Instead, she killed them just because she wanted Jason to regret what he had done.

There are many reasons of why Medea killed her own children, being abandoned and became a single mother was one of the main reason. Single parenting is hard, comparing with Medea, nowadays single parent can have a lot more help from the society and government. In the U.S., there is abundant help from the government for single parents, programs, services, benefits, welfare, etcetera. Their situation might still be hard, but with all of these available help and offers, their life can be easier than Medea at that time.