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What is it is that makes little girls so ashamed of their missing hair that prompts them to create “Beautiful and Bald Barbie”? While it is not the purpose of the doll in any way, the bald Barbie is a testament to the gender confines that dominate the American culture today. Little girls don’t feel like themselves without hair, because they are taught at a very young age (through media influences as well as direct influences) that hair is an important trait for little girls to take pride in. While the group pushing Mattel for this new Barbie edition are focusing on the children’s acceptance in society, they fail to mention what created the taboo the children face of being hairless in the first place, namely the American culture and media. Bald is beautiful Barbie would help to break through the confines of the atypical-female appearance (that Barbie has always been the face of) in more ways than just for the sick; the message of accepting those that look different would also be sent to children who weren’t bald themselves. For this reason I was disappointed in what was essentially a brush off from Mattel in response to the proposal.
Art
http://www.artnews.com/
The author of this article makes their case clear after essentially making a mockery of the way the National Gallery showcased the small gathering of da Vinci’s work. The part that grabbed my attention, however, was when he switched from putting down the paintings to talking up the drawings, saying they have the “true Leonardo magic.” It had me contemplating on the hierarchy that exists in art and art history at times. Due to the iconic nature of many works, painting has held its place in many members of the general population’s opinion as the highest form of art. While the art community bickers over this notion, people are flocking to see paintings that don’t measure up to drawings, at least according to the reporter in this article. The drawings were not, however, what people came to see, begging the question why the paintings receive the most attention while the drawings (that are in the same exhibit are often ignored.) The institutional theory of art cannot define the answer in this situation, as the drawings and the paintings are both held in high esteem by the artistic institution by making it to the gallery in the first place.
Thinking
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Throughout the reading of this article I had one word running through my head on loop: catharsis. It is extremely important for us as artists to understand the power that can come from the purging of emotion through our work (for ourselves and for our viewers.) This article does a great job of plainly explaining why catharsis is needed in our lives without going overboard with jargon. His paragraph concerning Carl Jung’s argument about adults’ needs for the dark in their lives has a short quote that really hit home for me, “To achieve wholeness, we must acknowledge out most demonic inclinations.” While I knew that catharsis was an important aspect in the arts, I didn’t stop to consider how it actually contributes to mental health and wholeness of the self. Andy Warhol knew this well, even if he didn’t state it in this blatant way, when he created prints of tragedies found in the daily newspapers. The author’s explanation that “when we agonize over what has cruelly been bereft from us, we love it more, and know it better, than when we were near it,” summarizes this feeling of emotional release As well as explaining the (seemingly) strange mental understanding that comes with that release over the most horrific of tragedies for us as humans, who feel the unquenchable desire to look upon and embrace them.
(In case anyone doesn’t know what catharsis means: http://
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