Done With My Tests

I've taken three tests and two quizzes and turned in two journals in the last three days. And tonight I'm done. Good thing. I've barely slept. Sunday I was up until 4am studying,  last night I was up until almost 5am.

The brain has had a real workout—the equivalent of all that walking. Art History is mostly about memorizing: the artist, the title, the date it was created, the style and in some cases, the location as well. Over the last several days, I've memorized those bits of information for some sixty pieces of art. I had to identify twenty of them on the tests, and analyze another eight. One of my favorites is by an Italian Renaissance artist Uccello. The work is The Battle of Romano; it was painted in 1440.

For one of the essays we had fifteen minutes to compare Donatello's David with da Vinci's Vitruvian Man—that was the question I most enjoyed trying to answer.

I am glad to be done. I'm sure by tomorrow 90% of the information that I absorbed in the last couple days will be gone, but some of it will probably last.  I have begun to understand something about the conversation going on, the way art is a response to art and culture, the way art begets art. I know there's a lot more that I could say and probably would, if I weren't burned out from the effort. It has to do with what Virginia Woolf was talking about in A Room of One's Own. She was making a point about women, but it actually has another, larger application. Her point was that genius emerges out of the conversation. That's not what she called it, but it is how my Art History teacher refers to it. When I'm not so tired, I'll try to say more about it.

There's not a lot else to report. I ate dinner out last night, at my local café. I had cauliflower au gratin with mussels. It was unusual and tasty. It was very nice in the café. I stop there often. It's the first café I went to and I keep going back. Last night in the dark, with these round, 19th century-looking lamps, it was quite atmospheric. I hadn't realized how much it could change from morning to night. I took this picture from the outside some days ago. It's appropriately called, Des Artistes.
Just an ordinary, run of the mill café, that's what I like about it. Mostly locals, very little English.

The other exciting moment was when a young French-speaking woman asked me for directions. I guess I'm looking French, or at least not lost. I understood what she was asking, but didn't know the answer. I surprised myself by telling her that I was a "foreigner." It was a more sophisticated answer than I usually give. My French is still so basic it's pathetic, but, little by little, I seem to be remembering and using more vocabulary. I understand quite a bit more too. As I was walking out of the Metro Monday, I was given a handout about the fact that the line I ride was going to be running a special schedule on Tuesday. It was all in French of course, but I figured enough out to understand. So, like that. I am getting better.

It's almost 1:30am. I really need to try to get some sleep for a change. One more picture for the road: Paris in 1830, not far from where I'm living. And one more thought too: I met with Amy about my book, that was one of the journals I turned in, all my work tracking down the particulars of the book. She knew about a horse market in the South of Paris, a place that Gericault, for example, probably hung out. I'm writing a paper about him for Art History, and it has to be tied to a architectural event as well, so the horse market might do it—if I can hunt it down. I'm very in to horses these days. Wish I could go riding. In fact, I intend to before too much longer, though probably not until I get home from France.