Response to Walker's and Barrett's articles

 

    As its heading saying, "big ideas and artmaking" is the core idea of Walker's article. In the beginning, the author defines "big idea" and then gives the relation between big ideas and artmaking. It is pretty convincing as he states that big ideas can expand students' concern and engage them to think deeply, thereby leading them to endeavor to making art. Then the author lists how to distinguish big ideas with subject matters and theme by providing a bunch of instances of famous artists. I quite benefit a lot from such detailed explanation. 

    The following examples he offers intrigue me. In Jennifer's case, she presents her big idea - rules and order, through depiction of subject matter - garden, which is quite meaningful to her. She aims at rules as her core conception and tries to figure out how to break rules. Meanwhile, she set up a series of artistic rules and bent to rules in some way, such as choosing the paper of same size. She provides us with an implication from her artmaking process that rules show people's attempt to impose order.The second example of Deborah is also interesting and meaningful to me. She sculpts horses all the time due to her passionate interest in ranch, even though it is uncool for a girl to focus on horses as she said. I appreciate her spirit of persisting.Overall, this article is easy, educational and beneficial. 


    The second article "cut and paste" is mainly about interpreting denotations and connotations in visual art. The interpretive analysis of magazine ads provided by Barthes is quite wonderful. From his vivid depiction, I can feel the freshness of fruits, even the composition and lighting of the ad. Then the case of a group of art teachers readily apply strategies of interpreting to a image lead to an interpretive conclusion that the denotation would never ruin the connotation of the original meaning of the picture. This is what I learned from it. The most interesting part is overwhelmingly the discussion of a magazine cover by students in class. It's about three women standing with their legs spreading in shape of triangle, with some words encompassing. They all did a good experience with the entire cover, but due to different genders, cultures and some other factors, they came out different connotations of sexuality. The following investigation of students in different ages also intrigues me. It came out that learns of all ages can successfully denotate the connotation of stuffs. The responses of preschoolers to the question "how come your teddy bear not scary" is so cute!
    What puzzled me in this essay is that the linguistic message "Panzani". Why did the author put this here? The Italian word both denotate and connotate the image, but Italians are not aware of the hidden usage of this word. Does he want to mention us that the interpretation should consider cross-culture and intuitional reaction of readers?