Artist of the Day

In every art history class I take there seems to be one artist who

a. completely baffles me.
b. annoys me.
c. intrigues me.
d. makes me laugh.
e. does all of the above

For my 19th Century Art class, I believe Philipp Otto Runge will take the prize. Let's take a look.



Here is his appropriately entitled Birth of the Human Soul (1805). A baby frolicking in what seems to be a valley with many flowers. And then there's this one:



Child in a Meadow (1809), in which a baby is plopped down in a clearing with his arms outstretched toward the sun, marinating in his innocence and childlike naivety.

This is the era of history that makes me crawl up walls. In which authors write stuff like "our heart still feels the love and unity of all contradictions in this world; to contemplate a flower rightly, to enter into its depth...we come to understand ourselves even more," that flowers and children represented "a state of innocence retained from paradise," where people write stuff like "the earth comes to life and stirs beneath me, and everything harmonizes in one great chord: then my soul rejoices and sours in the immeasurable space around me. There is no high or low, no time, no beginning, or end" regularly to their loved ones, probably right before spending his Monday afternoon heaving long, pained sighs.

In the margin of that reading, all I wrote was "barf." Do you know what this reminds me of? DO YOU? THAT AWFUL BOOK I RANT ABOUT PERIODICALLY? Look at this quotation:

After the dance, we left in Sam's pickup. Patrick was driving this time. As we were approaching the Fort Pitt Tunnel, Sam asked Patrick to pull to the side of the road. I didn't know what was going on. Sam climbed in the back of the pickup, wearing nothing but her dance dress. She told Patrick to drive, and he got this smile on his face. I guess they had done this before...Anyway, Patrick started driving really fast, and just before we got to the tunnel, Sam stood up, and the wind turned her dress into ocean waves. When we hit the tunnel, all the sound got scooped up into a vaccuum, and it was replaced by a song on the tape player. A beautiful song called "Landslide." When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

This was precisely the moment I put down The Perks of Being a Wallflower and decided that maybe I would be a better person if I didn't finish the book, that maybe by reading this book instead of just tanning the putrefication of my brain would actually be accelarated instead of being reversed.

So there you have it. Philipp Otto Runge, the EMO kid of the 19th century. During class when these slides came up, I believe I was only one of a few people who was laughing/shaking her head for the rest of the lecture.

Jennie Yamartino, those babies are for you.