Week 3 Readings

Downtown's Daughter by Rebecca Mead

This article brings to light the eclectic and quirky life of Lena Dunham. Dunham, directer, producer, and star actor in her movie, Tiny Furniture, won the narrative-feature prize at South by Southwest Film Festival, and is now working on a new film project for HBO.

The first thing mentioned in this article was the youtube video posted of Dunham stripping to a bikini and bathing then brushing her teeth in a school fountain before getting the boot by a security officer. The video got a million and a half views and pages of comments of viewers critiquing Dunham's "looks". So, she's a bit on the chubby side, however Dunham jokes about the insults, comments, and judgments provoked by her physical appearance, praising her pudge and how it's apart of her silly personality , she says, "it's not the jiggling flesh; it's the attitude. I'll always have a fat attitude. I'll always have a chubby attitude."
Here is a trailer of her film, Tiny Furniture, a movie with very similar characteristics of her life, family, and personality.

Between the Lines by Peter Schjeldahl

"One idea is key: Kandunsjy's proposition that a line is a point set in motion." - Peter Schjeldahl, page 84, The New Yorker, Nov. 29, 2010


What is art? We all ask this question and many answers can arise from it. Many artists of the 20th century have stepped out of the rigid boundaries classic traditional art. Artists such as Picasso, Giacometti, Duchamp, Pollock, Kandinsky, and Agnes Martin have stepped 'outside the lines' of art, changing the idea of lines and perspective into a whole new cup of soup for viewers to sip on.

The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows

Man Ray, 1916

Louise Bourgeois: Statements from and Interview with Donald Kuspit

"Art is a privilege, a blessing, a relief." -Louise Bourgeois, page 1089, Ideas of the Postmodern

Louise Bourgeois mentions how art is a privilege, and it very much is so. The production of art usually requires pricey materials, a lengthy devotion of time, a creative mind to pursue an end result. An artist must pursue the task and create art, a painting or sculpture won't drop out of the sky.

Paul Cezanne Letters to Emile Bernard What Passes for Art- by Walter Pach 1940

"Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logistically as possible..." -Paul Cezanne, page 34, The Legacy of Symbolism

The first part of this reading contained excerpts from letters from an ill and aging Paul Cezanne to Emile Bernard. Cezanne's letters repeatedly discuss the importance of studying from nature while strongly emphasizes a painters use of his own sensations and perceptions. Cezanne also mentions the uselessness of talking about art, encouraging Emile Bernard to become a painter, not an art critique.

The second part of this section contained letter excerpts from Rainer Maria Rilke to his wife describing Cezanne's work displayed in Paris. Rilke finds himself absorbed in the colors and the simplicity of the form in one particular painting, Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair(pictured left). Rilke describes the bold vertical stripes on the dress of the woman sitting in the painting, the vibrant red fabric of the arm chair and the patterned wallpapered background with a sense of awe and excitement like a kid would describe his first visit to Disneyland.

Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair
Paul Cezanne, 1877