I must admit that I had high expectations for the National Gallery, but from the majority of paintings I saw I can say that my expectations were not met.\u00a0 Monet and his impressionism simply had no affect on me.\u00a0 His work just seemed very dull\/boring.\u00a0 In Pitmen Painters it was said that art itself doesn\u2019t have an affect on someone, but it is the relationship between that person and a particular piece of artwork which creates meaning.\u00a0 However, I had no connection with Monet in any of his works; there was just aesthetic value in it.<\/p>\n
This lack of feeling was not just with works of Monet.\u00a0 Paul Cezanne\u2019s \u201cAn Old Woman with a Rosary\u201d tried to show despair and a need for help.\u00a0 But staring at it, I could see or feel any of that.\u00a0 It was just a portrait of an old woman to me.\u00a0 Cornelis van Haarlem\u2019s \u201cTwo Followers of Cadmus devoured by a Dragon,\u201d though graphic, seemed like something I would see in a fantasy novel.<\/p>\n
However, there were two paintings in particular I enjoyed quite a bit.\u00a0 Both dealt with the concept of \u201cmemento mori\u201d (Latin: \u201cRemember you are mortal.\u201d)\u00a0 The first was Frans Hals\u2019 \u201cYoung Man holding a Skull.\u201d\u00a0 The name of the painting is self-explanatory as to what it shows, but if you dig deeper you can see it as a \u201creminder of the transience of life and the certainty of death.\u201d\u00a0 It was simple and to the point; the reminder is hauntingly felt.\u00a0 The second piece was Jan Jansz. Treck\u2019s \u201cVanitas Still Life.\u201d\u00a0 The painting was \u201cintended to cause the viewer to reflect on the inevitability of mortality and the consequent foolishness of all human ambition.\u201d\u00a0 It succeeded very well in accomplishing this objective.\u00a0 In the painting itself, a skull is used to represent death, an hourglass is used to represent time, a helmet to represent war\/death, musical instruments, a pipe and other items used to represent the joys of living.\u00a0 What I found most interesting regarding the piece was a title-page of a play entitled \u201cEvil is its own reward.\u201d\u00a0 It was the title of the play which caught me off guard as I wasn\u2019t sure what Treck meant by it.\u00a0 Of course (as Pitmen Painters pointed out), it only matters what I think it means and not what he intended it to mean.<\/p>\n
I am sure the concept of memento mori does not sit well with many people.\u00a0 After all, who likes to think about death, especially your own death?\u00a0 People tend to avoid thinking about death because they see it as a life-denying force; you cannot enjoy the things in life if you are dead.\u00a0 Treck\u2019s \u201cVanitas Still Life\u201d wants to show how every action we take is idiotic since we all die in the end (a concept related to memento mori); and it is very easy to see life as pointless in that light.\u00a0 Such a bleak and dark picture is life-denying.\u00a0 Yet memento mori can be seen in another light.\u00a0 Being reminded of one\u2019s own mortality is not a life-denying force, but a life-affirming one.\u00a0 Think of the translated phrase itself: Remember you are mortal.\u00a0 It is a reminder that you will die; it\u2019s inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it.\u00a0 So why worry about dying?\u00a0 Everyday people see themselves as how they would like to be, how they wish they did this or that, how they wish that could say this or that to someone.\u00a0 Memento mori is a concept telling you to act, to live and to do what you want because of the FACT that you are going to die; you only have one life so truly appreciate it by actually living and do not hold yourself back.\u00a0 It\u2019s not worth it to pretend that you can\u2019t do this or that when the only thing really stopping you from acting is you.\u00a0 So the next time you get worried about something silly just remember memento mori.\u00a0 Getting a bad grade, starting a conversation with someone at the bar, bumming a cigarette, whatever it is that you worry about just remember that in the grand scheme of things it doesn\u2019t really matter\u2026so why not act?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I must admit that I had high expectations for the National Gallery, but from the majority of paintings I saw I can say that my expectations were not met.\u00a0 Monet and his impressionism simply had no affect on me.\u00a0 His work just seemed very dull\/boring.\u00a0 In Pitmen Painters it was said that art itself doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[733],"tags":[12,1381,1317,1316,928],"class_list":["post-1808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-f","tag-art","tag-memento-mori","tag-philosophy","tag-pitmen-painters","tag-the-national-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}