We Didn`t Start the Fire!!!

Talking about the Cold War, we analysed three songs of the 80's that represent different aspects of those times. Not only did we enjoy the music and the lyrics but we also saw how rock musicians could write music for us to dance and lyrics that make us think.

First song we talked about: "Russians" by Sting (1985) from The Dream of the Blue Turtle. As from the title we are able to guess what he will sing about.

Sting cautions about the repercussions of the Cold War including the mutually assured destruction doctrine ("there's no such thing as a winnable war/It's a lie we don't believe anymore"). Hence he hopes that the "Russians love their children too", since he sees this as the only thing that would save the world from a holocaust brought on by nuclear weapons ("Oppenheimer's deadly toy")

Our next song was "Guns in the Sky" by Australian band INXS. According to his frontman and songlyricist, Michael Hutchence, he wrote the bruising "Guns in the Sky", the opening track on "Kick"(1988), as a protest against nuclear weapons in space. The video for the song specifically flashes the letters S.D.I. - for the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars system - in case viewers might otherwise misunderstand the song's intent.
Hutchence says the inspiration for "Guns in the Sky" was "pure anger". "I wouldn't call it a political song," he says. "I'd call it an anger song. I was reading that they spent $2 million a minute on arms in the world in 1987. Two million dollars a minute. How much money did Live Aid raise? Seventy million dollars? So in an hour... That's when I started getting angry!"

To watch the video, click here.

Last song we dealt with in class was "We didn´t start the fire" by Billy Joel (1989, from Storm Front).In this song, Joel makes reference to a catalogue of headline events during his lifetime, from March 1949 (Joel was born on May 9 of that year) to 1989. The events are mixed with a refrain asserting "we didn't start the fire".
The song and music video have been interpreted as a rebuttal to criticism of Joel's Baby Boomer generation. The song's title and refrain reference "the fire", which refers to conflict and societal turmoil; Joel asserts that the existence of these issues can't be blamed on his generation alone, as it has been "always burning since the world's been turning".

Poetry

OK, I admit for many poetry is "boring, unintelligible, nonsense"...yes, and you might be right! Partly this has been caused by us teachers with our mania for looking for the"MEANING" or worse still..."THE POET´S INTENTION"(intention that sometimes not even the poet knows!) We are such killjoys! Because that is what poetry is about...joy! The joy of reading something that we would have liked to say, the joy of discovering someone akin to us, or just the joy of the miracle of words, the same words that we use everyday can produce magic by a skilled/gifted/inspired pen. So how can we go about poetry? First, relax, read with your mind and all the senses open, forget about meanings, look for the"punch"...What is that? The assault to your mind and senses...the way a word or two keeps coming to your mind...the awareness that you would have wanted to say that...the recognition of words that make you happy, even if it`s for a moment or sympathy for a feeling you share. I invite you to listen to two poems by one of the most important and influential poets of the 20th century, the Irish William Butler Yeats, Nobel prize winner and recognised figure of the times...His poems are everlasting...


Two versions of "Second Coming" from Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1920

And a modern one with exquisite music...



Or a surprising version of "Mother of God", from The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)recited by Bono from Irish band U2:

Looking at 20th Century Art through the Eyes of a Physicist

Physicist and art collector Walter Lewin (MIT) shares his personal insights into major works of art from the first quarter of the 20th century.

Lewin begins by providing a framework to understand pioneering art, by dispelling the myth of “beauty” in the artwork. An excerpt follows:

“At the turn of the century we’ve reached a point that beauty is no longer an issue. Now you may find some of these works beautiful, but the intention of the artists that you’ve just seen, was definitely not to paint something that was beautiful. They wanted to introduce a new way of looking at the world, and they did that in different ways. The reason why you may now find many of these works beautiful is that their new way of seeing—their new way of looking at the world which they invented has become your world—your way of seeing. Our ideas of beauty evolve. What is plain ugly a hundred years ago can now be beautiful.


Click here

Absolutely great!!!!

20th Century Art Part 1

This is a good summary and revision of art movements in the first half of the 20th century.

20th Century Art Part 1

View more presentations from Mid-Pacific Institute.

Cubism

Work done by Germán Wendt Barrios and Eleonora Grassino

American gothic

Work presented by Monjes and Aceto

The Simpson' s version of Edgar Allan Poe' s poet, "The Raven"

Fauvism

Fauvism and the 20th Century thoughts

Fauvism is the first 20th Century pictorial movement . I think, it introduces the spirit of the new era. It doesn’t only starts a new way of expressing but also a new way of thinking and viewing reality.

No more “cold”, external “reality”, no more just empty lines and shapes. What each person sees is so hard to describe and so particular that is not possible anymore to express conventionally. I mean, we can’t, for example, agree that the sun in a specific situation, is just yellow, others may think it should be red or orange, or any other colour that expresses our particular and unique view.

Fauvist painters decided to express their feelings towards reality and their subjective view of the world. Matisse is its main figure. He wrote in his “Notes of a painter”:

“There are two ways of expressing things; one is to show them crudely, the other is to evoke them through art.” Matisse

The 20^th century people don’t feel delighted by the exact representation of a landscape or a human body. The advances in technology made possible the photograph which catches the exact shape of things. Art needs to show the truth behind that “apparently real image”. It needs to express the most important aspect of reality: the soul, the feelings and thoughts which make the singularity, the unrepeatable of every human being appear. Matisse narrated about one of his paintings:

“…I looked at it, and then a feeling came over me that it was not I, that it did not express me or express what I feel."Matisse

Fauvism developed through 1905-1908 but its representatives lived during the most terrible wars of the century. Deep and strong emotions needed to be expressed. The sensibility of the moment changed. Many feelings needed to come out and they couldn’t be represented by the traditional ways, which showed a perfect image of the world: a perfect body, a perfect natural order.

It is also true that the advance in technology was so huge that it developed at high speed. The value of art changed so. The photograph, the television then, new artistic materials close to more people, the movies, etc. all these advances and surely a lot of more, gave innumerable new ways of creating and expressing. The fauves started using colour as the main means to express but lately, different artists of other movements will use unconceivable materials as newspapers, plastic objects or whatever was needed to express these new feelings.

Fauvism starts revealing a new way of thinking. It starts making conscious about that new reality of the human being. This new human being that now cares about different issues which need to find a way of expressing in accordance with it. The world will provide with the new materials, feelings and thoughts.

Work by Bellingerri, Paulenko and Destefani