embarking on the journey

This is my first online class. I've enrolled in others but always drop them. I really like reading other classmates blogs. It helps reunite the connection that we are all embarking on this journey of both historical understanding and the influence of art as a form of expression throughout time and it's implications on examining culture. I enjoy the insight provided by others which normally is lacking from online courses.

My favorite art form of art is photography (maybe that's because my dad was a professional photographer). I enjoy all the pictures in the text. It really helps make the subject come to life. The reading is a different story. I can never read the assigned reading just once. I feel like I miss so much the first time I go through it, it isn't until the second and sometimes third that I really start to paint an image in my mind.

impressions of a five year old

When I went to the Frida's exhibit I brought along my mother-in-law and my five year old daughter. Aside from my own interest in Frida's work and perceptions I was amazed at the comments my five year old made. She was purely honest which is a quality that children posses until they are jaded by the intrusion of the worlds opinions. She was curious of the implications of death in Frida's paintings. She loved the animals, the birds and monkeys. On the way out of the exhibit we stoped and bought a kit which allows you to color Frida's paintings. My five year old has colored every picture and continues to ask for more. She is my little artist and I think that she was inspired by Frida's work. Even as such a young child she spends every waking moment we are at home drawling, painting, coloring, and writing. I wonder what she will decide to be when she grows up?

A Parallel Between Egypt and Mesoamerica

In this weeks reading assignments we have focused on the great city of Teotihuacan--located in the Valley of Mexico. Teotihuacan meaning "the place of the gods" according to Rene Millon would have been the sixth largest city in the world in AD 550, with population estimates of 125,000 thousand people. The photograph shown of page 72-73 (Miller 4th ed.) of an isometric view of Teotihuacan shows just how massive these city was. The Pyramid of the Moon to the north, the Pyramid of the Sun also north, then the Way of the Dead and south Ciudadela and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

It is interesting to me that we call these people primitive. Their architectural design skills are most intriguing. How is it that such massive structures could be built? today we use cranes, trucks and tractors, massive man power and of course modern tools and technology to create massive high-rise buildings, bridges, and other structures. Yet these relatively small people were able to create whole metropolitan cities without the help of modern technology.

As I study history I always think back to the biblical stories found in the Kings James version of the bible. I'm not a religious person but I do believe the bible is a historical book documentation individuals accounts of history.

I imagine that the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of Mexico are descended from Africa. This explains to me the connection between the great pyramids of Egypt and those of mesoamerica. There is a correlation between the religious practices of Egyptian and Greek mythology and that of mesoamerican religious practices. The mummification of bodies and the importance of the under world, tombs and the artifacts found in them representing the belief of an after life and the sacrificial ceremonies to the gods.