Morning Classes

So, as many of you know, though our afternoon activities vary daily, our mornings are fairly constant. We get up, get breakfast, and go the the green room, journals in hand, for our "class". The subject has varied from philosophic discussions, to music lessons, to art slides. It's kind of like a cross between Humanities, Art History, and Music History. We have discussed the emotional aspect of art (in all its forms-painting, music, sculpture, architecture, etc), focusing on what draws us to it, and how that initial reaction defines our own personalities and lifestyles. We have learned how everything in art, and life, has a balance- a yin and a yang.
This balance relates directly to the two types of art we have talked about, romantic and classical. These two genres are important as a means of understanding different types of art and how while a painter may have a certain style of approaching art, his actual art could be completely different. We have watched two movies that relate to our studies as they apply to this contrast. First we watched IQ, a movie about Einstein and his mathematical niece and how she falls in love. We saw how Einstein, who was obviously able to produce orderly and rational physics (classical) actually had a more romantic nature, continually prompting his niece to fall for the lesser intelligent, but more charming, mechanic. This contrast is an obvious example of the yin and the yang and how the two balance each other in one being. The second movie we watched was Amadeus, a reinterpretation of Mozart and his supposed killer, Salieri. In this film we were able to again see the contrast of yin and yang that is found within a single individual, Mozart. Known as one of the most rational and orderly musicians known to man, he actually possessed an incredibly romantic approach not only to how he made his music, but also to how he lived his life. These films helped solidify the notion of yin and yang, balance and contrast, and how these tendencies appear in art.