Who remembers that one internet cartoon video floating around sometime between my junior and senior years of high school of the earth exploding and various international leaders saying stupid things? I hardly remember anything about that video, but the one thing that has stuck with me is some sort of a creature screeching “AHHHH MOTHERLAND” while something detonated.
That dialogue has been running through my head intermittently since I decided that it might be sort of cool to do something with Hungary (AHHHH MOTHERLAND) art for my BA. I initially started out with “I think the Baroque is cool?” which developed into “Hungary (AHHHH MOTHERLAND) is sort of cool too?” and then that morphed into “Maybe the Baroque in Hungary (AHHHH MOTHERLAND) is cool?” which is why I’m sitting in the stacks of the Reg on a Saturday afternoon reading about Art Nouveau in Hungary (AHHHH MOTHERLAND).
Yeah, Art Nouveau. Don’t ask me how THAT happened. Baroque = very late 16th century/17th century – very early 18th century. Art Nouveau (from what I gather) = late 19th – early 20th centuries.
I foresee several problems.
1. My experience with Art Nouveau has been limited to me strolling through the second floor of a museum in Paris among the Art Nouveau furniture, signs, and paintings saying “Golly, this is pretty, I wonder where the bathroom is?” and picking up some really pretty Art Nouveau-ish looking wrapping paper in my favorite bookstore in Rome saying “WHOA, I’d like to hang this on my wall, why would I wrap a CD in this?”
2. I have taken NO classes in art past the Baroque. Sure, when I was taking my Baroque art class one summer we walked through the top floor of a museum where the teacher gave some sort of an introduction to modern art with “So art didn’t stop after the Baroque, there were one or two developments afterwards.”
I guess I only have myself to blame for this large gap in my art history education. I started out college first quarter first year taking a late Byzantine art class, and the next quarter I wanted to jump to “Art in the US in the 1960s.” But then my mom brought up a good point: How would I make the transition from the 1st century to the 20th century? So then I started plowing through the centuries of art, through Romanesque, Gothic, Late Gothic, Early Renaissance, Late Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, Flamboyant, Medieval Mongol and Mamluk Art and Architecture, Prints and Drawings of the 16th-18th century and then I sort of got stuck in the Baroque.
I don’t regret doing this. In fact, my first art history class ever, even if I didn’t have any idea what in the world I was doing in a Byzantine art class, and at the time I didn’t understand the art, was extremely useful in teaching me how a sleep deprived, hungry student can stay awake in a darkened room. Now you can put me in any sort of art history class, one that talks about different nail head formations of carpenters and the ruts their hinges formed in the bottom of cabinets during the Renaissance, and I will stay awake. Guaranteed. It’s a sort of mark of pride of third year art history students: you can tell a third year from a first year judged by the condition the students emerge from the class. If you stand outside the Self-Portraits, Autobiographies and Diaries art history class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the first years will skip out of the class, fresh from a 1 hour and 50 minute nap, while 3rd years will drag/crawl out from class with a glazed, bleary look on their faces having just spent an hour and 50 minutes listening to how interesting it was that that one artist drew curly hair when he REALLY had straight hair.
(aside: I actually have no idea what the class is about. I did want to take it, though)
So anyway, the long and short of this is that my understanding of Art History is entirely linear. I have to move chronologically from one period to the next because if I don’t then I break out and the world explodes. Kind of like in that one cartoon video.
I know I obviously have to talk to someone about the dilemma on my hands that basically Hungarian Baroque art is nonexistent, since in a moment of brilliance I forgot that HEY! HUNGARY (AHHHH MOTHERLAND) HAD HARDLY ANY ACCESSIBLE IDENTITY IN THE BAROQUE! and this emerging interest/more information I can find in early 20th century developments.
And then also, I am just sort of allergic to people who cling unnaturally strongly to their national roots in order to establish a personal identity. My reaction to this is “You know what, first deal with what’s on your hands first, and then try to make a complementary blend of the two,” but that is a whole different can of worms, which involves “Why Adrianne always felt uncomfortable at Hungarian (AHHHH MOTHERLAND) Scouts. And it wasn’t just because she had to tuck her shirt in all the time.”
The rest of my Hungarian (AHHHH MOTHERLAND) sort of weekend involved Bruce ever so nicely taking my suggestion of studying the Hungarian (AHHHH MOTHERLAND) language for a language project he has to do in a class, and my mom yelling at me this morning in Hungarian (AHHHH MOTHER(LITERALLY)LAND). But actually, that’s how Hungarians communicate. They don’t know how to speak below 80,000 dB. So Bruce, when I make those sound recording for you, expect nothing less than a full-bodied bellow when I say “A bear is chasing Ferenc.”
And expect me to walk around campus like this from now on:
Because I owe Motherland one great big thanks for maybe fueling my BA.
