Category: Research

Week 8 Journal

What was your favorite object from today’s visit to the Asian Civilizations Museum?

My favourite item has to be the carved skull. It was hauntingly beautiful. A lot of questions came to my mind. Why would someone carve a skull? was the main question. The skull is from the Dayak Tribe. Came back home and researched on them to get some answers to my questions.

Dayak people are known as natives of Borneo. There are at least 200 sub-groups but this term is being generally used. Although they have their own culture, language, customs and law, they do have some common traits amongst them. The picture on the right displays a man and a woman from a sub-ethnic group of people from Dayak in their traditional costumes.

Headhunting is a practice where a person’s head will be cut off and preserved. This was in practice in the historical times and the Dayak tribe were one of the few tribes that had this practice. Headhunting was done for several reasons that include, capturing of enemies as slaves, looting of valuable properties, intra and inter-ethnic conflicts and territorial expansion. Skulls were also used to carve and given to the family of the deceased as a form of remembrance. It was also given as prizes. It also served as a “measurement” for people to know about a person’s status in the society. So the more heads a man collected, the higher his prestige and social status was.

 

Week 7 Journal

If you could have a room of your own, how would you set about decorating it? Chinoiserie? Japonaiserie?

Neither to be frank…hahaha. If I could have my way to design my own room I will definitely have a room based on Batman as I am a huge fan since young. As a collector of figurines, I will have glass showcases lines up along the walls to display my figurines and statues.

Victorian Bedroom Canopy Bed Red Painted Wall Traditional Bedroom Furniture

Elegant-Victorian-Homes-Design-With-red-sofa-and-classic-fireplace-and-chandelier-design

But I have always liked the victorian look. My favorite colour is maroon. I will definitely have a room which is black and maroon with victorian style wallpapers and a canopy bed with net draped over it. I really  love stained glass. Might even throw in a stained glass window to bring in the surreal feel to the room. :<D

 

Week 6 Journal

What is a family portrait? What are some famous family portraits? How would you take a family portrait now?

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Portraits of family members were first produced by painters back then. Family portraits were considered to be a statement of power and profession. Paintings were expensive and time consuming to produce, thus it was limited to certain groups of people in the society like the heads of state, military leaders, royalty or other members of the ruling class.

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In most family portraits, the people in it looked rather solemn and I am assuming that that became the ideal pose for portraits. But as time went by, this culture of painting slowly started to vanish, and it was replaced by photographs. Even in the early photographs, the people did not show much emotions and by looking at the picture above, I realize that they actually choose certain outfits that represent who they are or rather what class they belong to.

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Nowadays as both technology and mind-sets of people has changed drastically over the years, the type of photographs taken have also changed. For example, the picture above shows the US president with his family. This is a very different type of family portrait as it is taken outdoors and the subjects are seen smiling. And we are also capable of instantly capturing moments using our mobile phones as contrary to the olden days where people had to engage someone to come over to take a picture.

 

Sources: http://dostalproject.weebly.com/meaning-of-family-photos.html

http://art.ekstrax.com/2013/04/10-famous-family-portraits-and-paintings-over-time.html

 

 

 

Week 5 Journal

Paradesi - 00 - Art

How have artists made us think about labor?

For this weeks journal am going to bring to everyone’s attention a great Indian film, “Paradesi”, directed by Bala. In my opinion, he is one of the few directors in the world who is worthy of having the tagline “Masterpiece” to his films. This film focuses on the ordeals faced by the locals in the British owned tea estates in the 1930s before India got independence.

We all drink tea in coffee shops and Starbucks. We have 3 in 1 packets nowadays. We just pay a couple of bucks and just drink without any thought. We just drink to quench our thirst or we just felt like drinking with no reasons.

But this films shows us that many lives were lost so that people could drink tea. The locals laborers had to travel by foot to the tea estate and they were treated very badly and abused during their time there. This movie emphasises more on the gritty side of colonial days.

Me talking about this film definitely does not do justice to this film. I would definitely encourage those interested to watch this hard hitting film which will leave you speechless when the end credits roll. Not all Indian films are about glitz, glam and gravity defying stunts. As someone that likes good cinema, its my duty to introduce this film to my peers.

Week 4 Journal

How does Allan Sekula’s engagement with the sea, help us to think about trade in the 16th century?

In Sekula’s documentaries, he has asserted the fact that up till today, trade through sea is one of the world’s busiest and vastly used method of trade. Back in the 16th century, only countries that were rich enough to build ships were able to do trade on the seas. But this so-called ancient technique of transporting goods from one country to another through ships is still being in use today, and it remains as one of the most efficient ways of transportation. Although technology has advanced so much, the fact that trade by sea is still the most important way to transport goods. In fact, this reminds me of the sea route via Singapore was considered as one of the important and short route that has been discovered for easier transportation of goods, and that is why we remain the world’s second busiest port.

Week 3 Journal

In week 3, we learned about Catherine of Austria and her kunstkammer. Who is another female patron of the arts?

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Being a female patron of the arts in the olden days is something that is really challenging to achieve – but some women had and one of them was Artemisia Gentileschi. She was known to be the only woman in Italy to have known about painting, colouring and other fundamentals of art, according to a research done by an Italian critic named Roberto Longhi.

Most of Artemisia Gentileschi’s artworks depicts women as protagonists or equal to men. The painting that caught my attention was the one above, named Judith and her Maidservant.

Judith in this painting is seen with a sword in her hand, in which she used it to decapitate a man and his head is in the basket that the maid is carrying. I think that this particular painting reflects on what Artemisia Gentileschi thinks about women and their strengths. This painting shows the opposites of the “natural” feminine traits – being courageous and rebellious instead of being weak and timid.

 

Sources:

https://womenshistorymonth.wordpress.com/resources/women-and-series/women-and-art/where-are-women-in-the-history-of-art/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_Gentileschi

 

 

Week 2 Journal

How have your images of Africa changed after today’s class on African ivories? 

To be honest, the thought of Africa having such great talents really amazed me. Little is known about the fact that Africa has great sculptors who can come up with amazing sculpture, just as the one shown below:

We all know that ivories come from elephants, which are used as means of transportation for important people in the past. Ivory was, and is still considered to be a valued material and Africans have used Ivory to carve and create such sculptors which were used for trade.

This is made from ivory, which was presented as a souvenir to a Western trader. This particular piece exhibits the wk 2sculptors’ minute observations on foreigners. It is separated into two equal parts, where the top part represents mannered Westerners, whilst the bottom part signifies aggression of the Africans.

The videos presented by the first group during their presentation disturbed me quite a bit. It was okay that they wanted to make a statement about illegal trade of ivories. But by destroying them in the process to make that statement caused mixed feelings. It was not one or two. There were so many of tusk. The death of all the elephants have gone to waste, that’s what I felt. They could have just ceased the items and placed them under custody or something. Or use it for medical research purpose perhaps. I have seen tusks being sold at Chinese medical shops in Singapore. We may never know what benefits the tusks may hold for what kind of disease or cancer. If tomorrow someone was to discover that the tusks hold the cure for Aids perhaps, they are going to go after a new elephant for its tusk and be placed under research facility. If the tusks were not destroyed they could have just used them without harming the other elephants. Just my thought on a “What If” scenario.

 

Source:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1993.382a,b