Art Suggestions

Hello, fellow SECAcadecians!

I, too, have looked at the Demidec site recently and noticed they haven't uploaded anything since January 29th. And upon looking at the dates of the earlier material, I do not think that they will begin to upload anything until late summer or early autumn.

So for you art enthusiasts or members interested in specializing in the art segment of the material, I thought I'd kindly spend the ungodly hours of the night writing a blog about where you may want to begin your search. I am by no means an expert on the Great Depression or on art, so if you have any suggestions, kindly approach me at school and I'll give you my e-mail address and work what you have to offer into a future blog. However, if you are indeed an expert on the art of the Great Depression, you can write the art blogs yourself and I'll find something else to blog about, like geology (important but boring).


Anyhoo, down to business:

I recommend you begin your search by googling "New Deal Art." If you remember anything from World History, we learned that the government of the Great Depression begun programs such as the WPA (Works Progress Administration) to help create employment. One section of the WPA that you should read into would be the FAP (Federal Art Project). This program was created to employ artists and create public art for non-federal buildings. Thus, art of the New Deal (or New Deal Art).

Wikipedia offers a list of some of the important artists of the New Deal, so check that out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usa_work_program.jpg


I'll try and find that most important artists and point to a few of their more important works in future blogs, but for now, find out what you can about the WPA and FAP. If you google "New Deal Art" you'll find lots of pages that include the art, and a bit about the artists.


Until later, Adieu!

Poetry, as learned from the Basic Guide

This is, above all, a personal method to reading the section.  I didn't write it for you guys to be clarified on anything.

The components to Reading Poetry:
1) Word Choice (Diction): an author's choice of words

Denotation: the dictionary definition

Connotation: the emotional associations, etc. surrounding a word

2) Tone: the author's attitude toward the subject and/or audience

3) Imagery: the use of sensory details to provide vividness to a work of literature

J4K (Just for Kix):

Sight= Visual

Smell= Olfactory

Taste= Gustatory

Hearing= Aural

Touch= Tactile

Movement= Kinetic

4) Figurative Language: (aka figures of speech): expressions used rhetorically in a nonliteral way

simile: direct comparison of two essentially unlike objects/ideas on basis of some shared quality

EX: "Her face was like a clown's-- with way too much make-up."

metaphor: a transformation of one thing/idea into it's comparison

EX: "Thine eyes are the deep, blue boundless heaven." (Shakespeare)

hyperbole: exaggeration/overstatement

EX: "I told you a thousand times!"

understatement: the opposite of a hyperbole; calls less than what's called for

EX: ?!? I've never heard of an understatement.

litotes (pronounced Lie-tuh-tees): a type of understatement where an affirmative is made by negating the opposite

EX: "I'm never not happy."

personification: a figure of speech where an abstraction/idea/animal/inanimate object is given human qualities

EX: "The mice danced with joy; El Gato was dead!"

apostrophe: a figure of speech in which the speaker addresses an abstract idea/inanimate object

EX: "O death, where is thy sting?" (The Bible)

metonymy: a specific word is used in place of another; these two words are closely related.

EX: "The White House issued a statement." (The actual building doesn't do anything, but represents the federal government."

synecdoche: part of something is used to represent a whole

EX: "Give me a hand." (Means to help me out, not to actually chop off ur hand and give it to me)

paradox: a statement that is seemingly self-contradictory but eventually makes sense

EX: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." (Dickens)

oxymoron: seemingly opposite/contradictory ideas/terms are combined

EX: "Parting is such sweet sorrow..." (Shakespeare)

5) Symbolism: something relatively concrete used to suggest something relatively abstract;

EX: This represents the United States of America.
6) Irony: if u don't know what this is, ur screwed.
7) Sound Devices: used to give the poem a sense of rhythm, etc.
8) Rhythm and Meter: exact repetition of sound in the final accented syllables of 2+ words
Internal Rhyme: rhyme that occurs withina line of poetry
slant rhyme: rhymes in which the vowel sounds are nearly, but not exactly the same (Think of the times when you were look of rhyming words, thought of one, and then your friend told you that they didn't rhyme, even though they had the same letter, etc.) (aka: near rhyme, partial rhyme, half-rhyme)
 Feminine rhyme: a rhyme that ends on an unstressed syllable
EX: "Calling" & "Ending"
 Masculine rhyme: rhymes that end on a stress
EX: "Today" and "Hurray"
eye rhyme: they LOOK like they rhyme, but they SOUND like.. THEY DONT.
rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyme throughout a poem
EX:

"Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me,

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea."

(Excerpt from "Croosing the Bar", by Alfred Tennyson)

Rhyme scheme is ABAB

Repetition

Alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or within words

EX: "Pampered pink princess pout prettily." (Think tongue-twisters)

Assonance: repetition of similar vowel sounds

EX: "I sigh, I cry, Why?"

Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds that are preceded by a different vowell sound.

"All must Kill the Dell computer."

Onomatopoeia: the use of words whose sounds actual actual sounds

EX: "Ka-POW!" (punch) "BANG!" "BOOM!" "buzzzzzzz...."

9) Stanzas and Divisons

(I'm skipping this)

ALL RIGHTIE, THEN. I'm guten.  I'll post some more later, i think..

Anyhoo, STUDY HARD YOU GUYS!! 3 DAYS UNTIL JUDGEMENT DAY!

Practice Impromptus-Day2

Ok hey everybody. I don't know if any f you are practicing, but for those of you who are, comment on how things went! Ok, so yesterday we started you off easy. Today your questions will be a little bit more difficult. :D Ok, so wihout further introduction I give you your next group of Impromptu Questions.

Group 2, Day 2

1. What are the effects of the increasing dispersal of knowledge brought about by the internet?
2. If you could be any animal other than human, what would you be? Defend your choice.
3. Is human overpopulation a problem modern society needs to be concerned with?


Ok, well good luck and keep practicing! The same rules apply and comment people! Haha. yup yup :D Also starters, comment on how your speeches are going. Ok, well practice! :D yup yup.

-Rita :D

Practice Impromptus-Day 1

Hey people. Ok so January 30 is right around the corner, and guess what! We are gonna have to give Impromptus! Isn't that totally better than going to sleep till 1 on a Saturday or going to Disneyland!!!!!!! Yeah, ok seriously, it's NOT!!!!!! At any rate, we still must do them. Ok so most of you are freaking out right. Well, why not try practicing. For the next week I will be posting up practice impromtu questions each day. They are only practice and remember an impromptu probably wont take more than 5 minutes of your time each day. All you have to do is choose 1 of 3 topics. Then you have to take one minute to prepare your thoughts. Next you speak for 1 and a half minutes to 2 minutes, DON'T GO OVER 2 MIN., and then you are done! It is that simple. yup yup. Ok here is the very first set of Impromtu questions. I know that some of the questions you may not know but try your best. Questions at competition are unpredictable.

Group 1, Day 1

1. What has been your worst experience with Academic Decathlon?
2. What is the biggest effect of the internet?
3. Can technology answer the problems of modern society?

Ok, so now that you have your first set of questions, PRACTICE! Time yourself and look confident. SMILE! hehe :D ok, hope this will help prepare you for the kinds of questions you might receive. Have fun practicing and good luck! I will post a new set of questions tomorrow. yup yup :D

-Rita :D

Art Works-Artists

1) The Wine Cooler-Vincennes Porcelain Factory 1753
2) Mezztin-Jean Antoine Watteau 1718-1720
3) Soap Bubbles-Jean Simeon Chardin 1734
4) Broken Eggs-Jean-Baptiste Greuze 1756
5) Modern Rome-Giovanni Paolo Batoni 1757
6) The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus-Carle Vernet 1789
7) Evening Lanscape with an Aqueduct-Theodore Gericault 1818
8) Stormy Coast Scene After a Shipwreck-Emile-Jean-Horace Vernet
9) Young Jewish Woman of Algeria, Seated-Theodore Chassireau 1846
10) Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond-Adelaide Labille-Guiard 1785
11) Princess de Broglie-Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1751-1753
12) Bust of Volatire-Jean-Antoine Houdon 1778
13) Portrait of a Young Man-Pompeo Girolamo Batoni 1760-1765
14) Royal Tiger-Eugene Delacroix 1929
15) The Start of the Race of the Riderless Horses-Emile-Jean-Horace Vernet 1820
16) Sheperd's Idyll-Fracois Boucher 1768
17) Minerva Protecting the Young King of Rome-Joseph-Antoine Romagnesi 1811
18) The Death of Socrates-Jacques Louis David 1787

Hope this helps at least knowing the names of the pieces and understanding when they were created, and by who. yup yup. :D
-Rita :D

Speech Topics for Starters!

Ok. hey everybody, hope you are having a good week back from break. As you all know, Acadec competition is coming up real soon. Starters will have to present a prepared speech to Mr. Hall on Friday. Ok so a lot of the starters including myself are having trouble with understanding exactly what our speech is supposed to be. At this point I honestly don't really have a clue,and a lot of you starters I already know are like me too. So I have come up with a list of some good speech topics you should consider talking about. Ok so here is the list. Hope you find something that you are interested in. Remember you only have one week to think of something and memorize it! Good Luck!

Speech Topic List
 Discrimination against (fill in the blank).
 Energy independence
 Political polling
 The demise of the newspaper
 The Scrabulous-Mattel dispute on Facebook
 The power of conventional wisdom
 LASIK versus genetic engineering—is there a difference?
 Foreign bathrooms
 Converse with someone historical
 A brief history of chocolate
 Sustainable development in the Andes
 The impact of ubiquitous Internet
 The economic theory of arbitrage
 The reality show “Man Versus Beast”—a new low?
 People who insist on having children with
“disabilities” like their own
 Drug ads
 Caffeine: should it be regulated?
 Hands-free driving laws
 Three things more dangerous than talking on the phone
while driving
 What someone from the past would think about today’s
world
 Alpaca farming
 An imaginary safari through the cities of America
 Praising the suburbs
 The aerial hunting of wolves
 The financial meltdown of 2008-2009
 The value of intuition (read Blink)
 The shortcomings of majority rule
 Tooth whitening
 Explore a cultural cuisine
 Everything I need to know, I learned from The Onion
 The “random walk” principle and the stock market
 The truth about college
 The Olympics used to have artistic and intellectual
events—research and advocate for their return
 Behavior and biology: how much do our bodies
control us?
 Is suffering ever good?
 The future of the water supply
 Afghanistan: what should we do?
 Different views of beauty.
 Religion: an agent of intolerance?
 Discrimination against the elderly
 Art and the Internet
 What if Helen Keller had been born today?
 Celebrity chefs (and Iron Chef)
 Tibet: crisis or cause célèbre?
 Educational systems in other countries: pros and cons
 A critique of the Academic Decathlon
 High school bullying: what are the consequences?
 Google’s plan to put data servers on ships to avoid
national laws
 The joys of teenage motherhood (this is a “shock”
speech and must be delicately handled)
 Comparing cartoons today to cartoons of yesteryear.
 America’s next great enemy—who, and why?
 The importance of pain in medical research.
 The value of prearranged marriages.
 The work of Doctors Without Borders
 The experience of an amputee
 What might Shakespeare have written today?
 How to negotiate: a crash course
 How your parents met
 The story of a deceased sibling
 Your first encounter with poverty
 Modern art—advancing or ridiculous?
 “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will
never hurt me.” Assess.
 Pick an everyday place and analyze it—a shopping
mall, an airport
 Libertarianism
 Dr. Horrible and the future of entertainment
 Take one event and report on how it was reported by
different media (for example, MSNBC and Fox News.)
 Propose a different way of electing the U.S. president.
 Discuss your first meeting with someone important to
you—say, an author, an actress, or an athlete.
 Weave song and prose together in an optimistic
speech about a “few of your favorite things.”
 Discuss what is meant by the phrase “life is a
revolving door.”
 Same sex marriage
 Stem cell research
 Broadway musicals
 Take a person—real or imagined—and offer a series
of snapshots of his or her life at different ages.
 The importation of drugs from India
 Make a case for illegal immigration.
 New laws requiring the public display of calorie
contents at fast food restaurants—good or bad?
 Defend Larry Summers for his comments about
women in the sciences
 American policies toward Cuba.
 Discrimination against people who weigh more.
 A day in the life of your generation.
 The meaning of the shopping mall.
 Pick a sport and explain its significance to you or its
applicability to life in general (baseball, tae kwon do,
etc.)
 Talk about blogging. Many judges will be fascinated.
 Allergies as a spiritual metaphor—why our souls
reject certain toxins.
 The understated epidemic of sleep deprivation.
 Media credibility (especially in light of coverage of
the recent presidential election)
 The effect of cameras on the way we remember our
lives.
 The phenomenon of child acting—does it impact the
children negatively?
 Surrogate motherhood. Explain a few interesting legal
cases involving mothers who were paid to give birth.
 Eating disorders—this is a common one but can be
done effectively and imaginatively. Consider eating
disorders in other nations.
 Where did popular foods come from, anyhow?
 How do we learn to speak? Isn’t it a miracle?
 What does it mean to be an existentialist? An
atheist?
 Why does the space program matter?
 Female stereotypes in Disney films—for instance,
ever notice the title characters rarely have mothers?
 How danger is important in life.
 Breakfast
 Censorship—is it ever necessary?

I know this is a lot to choose from. Still, if you find something interesting take it into consideration. Hope this helps. Thanx and yup yup. hehe :D

-Rita :D

Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond

Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788), 1785, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Oil on canvas, 83 x 59 1/2 in. (210.8 x 151.1 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art

ok so we all know this piece by "that one painting with the really long name"! soo here are some details on the painting and the artist.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was able to break into the profession during pre-revolutionary France. Her work focused on portraiture and she was quite successful. Portraiture and still-life paintings were said to be appropriate for female artists. Ok so super sexist in a way: they said it was unacceptable for women to study the male nude. Ok so, she married in 1769 but was divorced by 1776.. ok so no doubt that THAT was also frowned on by society! But HA, Labille-Guiard was able to support herself as a teacher and portrait painter even though society was being weird. :D

She set up her studio in the early 1780s and by 1783 she had 8 female students… yeah, they were ALL female. She painted members of the aristocracy and the royal court as well as MALE members of the Royal Academy. She was honored by being admitted to the Royal Academy as a member, but she was not allowed to study or teach at the institution.<-- WOW, once again just because she was a woman. Just because she was accepted doesn't mean all of the male members were happy about it.. and on top of that she was constantly gossiped about & then they even accused her of not painting her work herself!

You can see her self-confidence in this self-portrait; she is in the center of the painting, seated in her studio at work on a large canvas. Her students look on with appreciation and excitement. By dressing in an elaborate and expensive gown, Labille-Guiard represents herself as a painter and a woman of society. Her posture emphasizes her shapely figure and her gown is arranged to be shown at its best advantage. Her studio is also portrayed to be large and luxurious.. it is appointed with fine furniture as well as sculptures letting the viewer know that she was rich

We see the back of the canvas, but not what she is painting, great, just great. Art historians have three ideas about what that painting could be of: 1. it could be like another self-portrait, basically like a replica of the one that we are looking at, 2. it could be a portrait of one or maybe both of her students, or 3. there could be someone else who is having their portrait made. By including other people in her self-portrait, she demonstrates her ability to portray groups of people in one painting. This opened her commissions to patrons who might want to have family groupings immortalized. She was a clever entrepreneur: she used the painting as an advertising tool so the viewer of this painting could imagine themselves as her subject. Her direct gaze at the viewer is enticing and inviting. It’s like she’s saying: “why not let me paint YOUR portrait! Come and get your portrait painted by ME!” her way of advertising herself I guess, in the portraits she paints!
Uhmmm, I think that’s it! comment, tell me if I should add anything! Thank youuu!
-Vanisha!
p.s. you would think I’m getting tired of doing blogs on so many art pieces, but trust me, this is kind of FUN! :D ALSO, big thanks to the art group, I wouldn’t be able to understand these art pieces as much if you guys weren’t there!