Eurothon: Europe's decent into craziness through cultural movements.

Alright, I'm no art historian. But this should be able to provide a broad overview of the major cultural movements which got us to where we are today. Along with in-depth looks at the movements I find amusing (Like Dada).

200 CE - 1430 CE Medieval and Christian art
This time was mostly defined by the flat, religious imagery of the medieval period. Lots of stuff to do with the plague, since it was killing so many people during this time. Other pieces of art were mostly of biblical scenes and figures. Fairly unrealistic, majestic, and God-oriented in terms of style to distract the peasants from their fairly crappy lives.
This style eventually led to the Gothic style, famous for it's architecture that involved pointed arches and flying buttresses. Pieces of art like The Danse Macabre are iconic of Gothic art.

1300 CE - 1600 CE Renaissance
The Renaissance is sort of a massive movement, so I'll do my best to sum up the important stuff here. Most people agree that it started in Florence, mostly as a result of the Medici family and others who took up the practice of becoming patrons of the arts (making the Medici family a group of patrons, Mrs. Brown. I totally won that question). The movement came out of humanist ideas and the study of antiquity, such as the philosophers Aristotle, Plato, and other old dead white guys, as well as the new ways of viewing life and death. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and other teenage mutant ninja turtles came to embod the spirit of the renaissance by engaging in a variety of different art styles and writing. New art techniques focused on a realistic portrayal of the human form as well as things like shading.

While many of the art in this period was religious in nature, there was a much greater occurrence of secular art during this time than during the earlier art periods. The Italian renaissance especially showed this trend, with artists like da Vinci making art purely to celebrate the human form with works like the Vitruvian Man.


The Northern renaissance which took place in the majority of the rest of Europe was still very much entrenched in religious imagery, however, and was slightly less dramatic than the Italian renaissance.

A refresher on humanism: Humanism is a learning style that branches off from the scholastic learning style of the medieval period. It focuses on the ancients and their writings and scientific ideas, analyzing them with a combination of discussion, philosophy, and empirical data to produce such gems of scientific achievement as bleeding people to balance the humors and such like things. Ok, it wasn't a perfect system. But it did lead to a greater focus on human perfection and having a good life as well as an afterlife, which lead to some good things.

1520 CE - 1600 Mannerism
Mostly a continuation on the trends of the Renaissance, mannerism was a highly intellectual art style which focused on artificial rather than natural themes and stylized poses. Perspective was messed with, and the shading was more dramatic than the previous eras. Tintorreto's Last Supper was an example of this style.

1600 CE - 1780 CE Baroque to Rococo
Both the Baroque and Rococo periods were focused on being as pompous, large, and rich looking as possible. It was pushed by the Catholic church as part of the Counter-Reformation, since it went against the more austere protestants. While the pompous Baroque style achieved large-scale popularity with the aristocracy of Europe, the brighter and apparently "more French" Rococo was mostly shunned in England.

1750 CE - 1830 CE Neoclassicism

Basically a bunch of nostalgia which wanted people to get involved with the more "pure" and "noble" art forms of antiquity. Sort of similar to renaissance art in style and running counter to the Baroque and Rococo movements which it thought of as silly.

1790 CE - 1880 CE Romanticism 

More along the lines of Rococo art, Romantic art was sort of an escapist movement that went against the increasingly scientific thought of the 19th century. It celebrated the stylized and aesthetic pieces rather than the   more empirical realist movement which sought to accurately portray human experiences and form. 

1863 CE -1890 CE Impressionism

Like Romanticism, it didn't seek to create an entirely realistic representation of people and nature. It focused mainly on lighting and the movement of things. The main difference with impressionists was that they painted outside rather than in a studio in order to capture the lighting of a moment. There was no single event that really inspired the impressionist movement, but it did provide a counter to photography since it was far more stylized and pretty looking.

1890 CE - 1910 CE-ish Lots of stuff

The pre-war time period was filled with a huge number of different art movements as the Belle Epoch came to a close. Cubism, futurism, and Art Nouveau were fairly large movements that defined the culture of pre-war Europe, showing a trend towards the "batshit crazy" art that was well on its way. Changes in society during this time had been mildly dramatic, involving demographic shifts and new ideas as a result of the industrial revolution. The reconciliation with the many ideas in the so called "market place of ideas" was what mostly drove these changes, involving everything from Marx to Spencer who attempted to make complete systems for explaining the world.

Post WWI

This is pretty much the last period we covered in terms of art, so I'm going to assume we don't need to look at much else past this. Also, I'm really done with looking at all these different wikipedia and note pages.

THE MOMENT YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!

Dadaism is, of course, the idea that if you take a small badger and combine it with a three-quarter limeade beverage, you achieve what is known as the "Urnial cake singularity", which is as dangerous as it sounds. Contrary to popular belief, pulling this badger does not result in an unpleasant oder, but rather an extravagant tortoise. 

That was an exercise in teaching by example. Dadaism was totally crazy and based on the idea that the world as we know it is absurd. It's a movement we can all get behind, I think. Movements like Dadaism were a result of the post-war changes in society and general craziness following the first world war. It was a precursor to surrealism, which was also based off of general weirdness but was actually intended to have a meaning behind it rather than the intentionally meaningless Dada art. 

The important thing to remember about post war art was that it was based off of the strangeness of post-war Europe and the rapidly changing ideas which populated society. 

Euro Thursday: A short history of Imperialism (Part 2)

Alright, I've let the suspense of what happens to screw everything up with Europe's little imperialist scheme build for two weeks now. I think you're all ready to find out (or have taken World History, in which case you can at least pretend to be surprised and shocked by the shit that is about to hit the fan.)

When we last left our intrepid heroes, everything was pretty alright for everyone except France, who we've already noted to have a desperate need to get their shit together. All their American and Indian possessions went to England  or Spain at the conclusion of the French and Indian war, leaving them with very little to work with.

Not too long after all this, roundabouts 1775, there was a little thing called the American Revolution in which England realized it's mistake in giving their colonies nice things like limited self governance. This taught them to be much bigger douche bags to the rest of their colonies, like India. America gained it's independence against what was supposed to be the most powerful Empire in the world, giving a bunch of other people ideas.

America's ideas of freedom and liberty and whatnot was greatly appealing to the slaves of what would come to be Haiti and spread there quickly, with the small change of acknowledging blacks as full class citizens, or at least some of them. Toussaint Louverture, a man with a name I will now type as  "Touss" because like hell I'm going to remember how to spell it and I don't feel like looking up all the time, led a successful revolution in Haiti which freed it from French rule. The rebellion which Touss led made him a famous and fairly wealthy man, so he decided to buy a plantation with several slaves to work it. Because every revolution needs its fair share of irony. So France loses another colony, which had been one of it's most profitable, to a bunch of people lauded as being racially inferior. When Napoleon took control of France after all that crazy stuff over there went down, Touss made alliances with France that ended in him being carted off by Napoleon's soldiers to die in a dungeon somewhere. One of his compatriots defeated the French again, thereby finally earning Haiti the right to be as ironic as it damn well pleased.

Also around this time was the Lagutao Revolt in the Philippines, the latest in a series of revolts which had been an almost semi-annual tradition in the region for the last hundred years or so. Most likely to make Spain feel good about itself, since it hadn't done anything of major significance for a good amount of time now.

Even this, however, was not enough to keep them feeling like a real imperial power when Mexico fought a war independence and won it. Though it took a good ten years, it was still fairly embarrassing for Spain. At this point, they basically said to the rest of the world to wake them up when it was time for a violent fascist uprising.

Continuing on, Greece wins its independence from the Ottoman Empire with the help of some bored European nations, Afghanistan continues its history of making invading/occupying it really difficult, and Britain takes it out by stomping out the last bits of pretending to just be business partners with India by installing viceroys and whatnot.

And so ends the second part of this abridged history. In the third and final installment of the series, modern imperialism causes a bunch of craziness.

Blood and Irony: WWI was a bit crazy.

Sorry about the hard to read text. The upload size was much smaller than what I had expected. View full-size if you can't read it.

School? Oh yeah. That.

As I sit here reading every entertaining Cracked list I can find with my as of yet unfinished homework sitting a few feet away from me, I come to the realization that the last few weeks of this school year is going to be a battle of attrition that I may very well lose. Soon, AP tests will be over. Which will be a plus. But really, it will likely just remove the little pressure which keeps me mentally engaged. At least there will still be Euro and Lit, which I usually enjoy and can probably focus on despite the lack of tests. But everything else will probably receive very little attention. For instance, Spanish. You're a wonderful language in your own way, I suppose, but I'm really done with all the busy work. I know it's pretty much the only way schools teach languages... but that doesn't make it any less crazily irritating.

 Somehow I've actually managed to stay afloat during the last few months and really haven't seen significant grade drops. It is quite baffling to me, but I'll take it. I've kept up enough just enough to keep things going, and it's very sad. Except for Euro, because I'm actually interested in those things. But even Euro is hard to just sit down and do. It's pretty frustrating, actually. But only a little ways to go, and then I can hopefully regain all the motivation I used to have. I think I've been in high school a little too long now; it's time for a change.

In other news, prom is coming up. So that's.... exciting. I have work in the afternoon, so I may not make it to pictures. I wouldn't really care, except for other people probably want me there. Not that anyone will look at these pictures 5 years down the line and really care that I was missing. Possible, I suppose, but improbable. And plus, there will be other pictures that night that don't involve standing around for 10 minutes in every possible formation while a million parents take pictures. This is what the internet is for, people. Have one person take pictures. Everyone else can get them, I promise.

You can tell I'm not hugely excited. That's my general feeling towards a lot of things recently, that of total ambivalence. Which I guess might be considered a bad thing. But at least I'm not panicking, right?
End of rant. Euro Thursday post may or may not happen, depending on a number of factors.

Euro Thursday: It has come to my attention....

Alright, so most people are familiar with how France was invaded during World War II. Germany invaded through Belgium, steamrolling over the small nation in order to have a convenient way around the Maginot line which defended the France-Germany border. Yes.

A lot of people also know that this happened before, back in WW I. The ironic part was that they actually did much better the first time, when it was a legitimate surprise. I know I had an entire post about France needing to get it together, but seriously now. Was it really that surprising that they would get invaded through Belgium again? They did it the first time, and that was before they had what everyone knew to be a straight up douchebag in control of their armies. It's not like the invasion itself was a surprise; Hitler had invaded Poland the previous year and actually waited out the winter to move all his troops into position to invade France, which is apparently far too busy looking at their impressively useless fortifications to realize that the man who had already violated the neutrality of multiple nations might not really mind having to go through a small, defenseless nation in a strategy that almost worked the last time this situation happened, and in fact would have worked wonderfully had the German general in charge hadn't decided to split up his troops.

To add insult to injury, France had an even better reason to be prepared for this: Belgium had the plans for the invasion, quite literally, in their hands. And the French had heard about it. A plane crashed, carrying the invasion plans, in Belgium. At this point, Hitler had a novel talking about his plans for world dominance and giving his enemies a nice little warning, and they had the invasion plans. So they sent one army group to hold off the roughly 800,000 German soldiers that were meant to be advancing. Germany didn't even revise their plans after this incident; they had evidently figured out that the rest of the world was, in fact, incredibly thick.

The development of the invasion plan over time. Note the lack of arrows in the bottom part of France, where the entirety of their defenses were organized. Also note: Holland was two revisions away from getting its shit wrecked.

So the French army stands around this whole winter, evidently doing pretty much nothing. Italy comes in at the end with a declaration of war that was the international equivalent of kicking somebody while they're down (a fairly weak kick, considering that Italy's claim to fame was finally having achieved punctuality). And then, Hitler brought the hammer down. Several million German troops stormed into France through (and nobody saw this next part coming) Belgium, taking everyone but the one French general who had warned of exactly this completely by surprise. That general's name was Dyle, and you can bet your ass that he got one of the best "I told you so" moments in history.

The only story that doesn't embarrass the allies coming out of this is that the English managed to get their troops out at Dunkirk in a "heroic and daring escape". Turns out, it was just the Germans being cautious and not advancing because they were already pretty surprised that this plan had kicked as much ass as it did.

Hitler wasn't that brilliant: The French were just that slow.

Over.

So, musical is over. What does this mean?

First of all, it means that I'm feeling that post-large-event moroseness that always plagues me after things like this.  There is a big musical-sized hole in my head right now that I don't really know what to fill with. Thankfully, my obsession with doing random stuff all the time has already provided a solution to this problem. Because musical being over also means that I now have to do all those little projects that I thought up during musical season but never actually got to doing because of all the craziness.

First off, this blog. It has been rather neglected over the last month or so, and I want to fix that. It's nice to have a writing that can use my own voice and not have the only things I write be about literature analysis and European history. Although I write about European history a lot here anyways. I think the big difference is that I'm allowed to use profanities here, which just makes everything so much more amusing. So there's that.

Also: Webcomic. Probably just posted on here, but it seems like it would be a fun thing to try. Even if it's just a weekly or randomly updated thing that never takes off, it'd be a fun way to present my... interesting sense of humor through a different medium. And then I'd have a bigger use for this here tablet. I think I already mentioned this a while back, but now it's actually a possibility. Should be really exciting, provided I actually do it.

Next, some Euro review to be posted here for the benefit of all my fellow classmates. I want to do a few timelines of eras and important events if I can. It'd help me to do the work to put it together, and it'd be useful in future studies as well. So why not?

Editing my NaNo is probably not happening now. I'm proud of the achievement, but it's not really worth refining all that much. If I were to pick it up again, I'd probably just rewrite it using a more cohesive plot and better characters. The frame itself needs a complete overhaul, not just the little decorative bits. So that's my plan for the next chunk of my life. Wish me luck, dear Readers. I'm gonna need it.

Euro Thursday: A short history of Imperialism (Part I)

For any of you wondering why AP European History is so similar to world history in many aspects, I have your answer: AP Euro is a class on Europe and everyone they've screwed over. Which happens to be almost the entirety of the known world. And so, it ends up being very similar to world history. But don't forget, this is Europe we're talking about here. They can't just fuck up the rest of the world to help themselves. Oh no, they're going to trip themselves up too.

The first wave of imperialism started roundabouts 1492, in which Columbus sailed the ocean blue and gave a lot of people small pox in exchange for some syphilis. Columbus was kind of a massive dick to everyone, along with rather stubborn and generally not worthy of having all sorts of stuff named after him. But that's a tale for another time. Anyways, Spain and Portugal start land grabbing the shenanigans out of the Americas and surrounding regions, subjugating and conquering all the native populaces. England and France follow, seeing that it looks like a pretty good time over in this hip, fresh "New World" place. For awhile, Europe has it pretty good (except for the syphilis, which is a bit of a downer). But then they decide that it's a little too boring, this triangular trade thing.

There are some wars, such as the French and Indian war (which, as all your history teachers have probably told you, actually involved the French and the British. Seriously, why not just name these wars after who fought them and when?) in which the natives decide that one side is wrecking their homeland a little less than the other side and fight so that the French/British* can get more of the land that technically belonged to the natives for thousands of years. A little weird, but I'm sure the French/British were very persuasive. Anyways, this war was just a part of the larger 7 Years War, named for the amount of time it took to fight.** This was also really the first World War, although they had yet to hire the marketing people to name these wars dramatically or appealingly yet. They were still in the store brand period of war, in which they sounded pretty dull and stuffy.

So, lots of people die in the 7 Years War. In the French and Indian War, started over a land claim in Ohio (which is, if you ask me, a frickin' dumb place to start a war over. They didn't even have Cedar Point back then), a lot of people die as well. Some natives do as well, something that both sides can be happy about while they contemplate their next plan to make themselves look like squabbling children. Britain gained all of France's possessions in the New World, leaving them with what would eventually become French Canada and a whole lot of culture clash that would mysteriously lead to one of the most polite and well tempered nations in the world. They also succeeded in doubling their debt, something which led to higher taxes on things like tea. I wonder where this is headed?

By the way, Spain and Portugal are still chillin' in South America and the Caribbean. But Haiti's about to open up a can of whoopass.

*Yes, the Indians fought on both sides. The American name for this war is really rather silly.
**Much like the Hundred Years War but a lot less impressive sounding, and a little under a third of the length of the 30 Years War. Europe was in a bit of a creative slump at this time.

A Break?

So, apparently we have this week off of school. And yet, I've spent even less time at home than usual and probably an equal amount of time in the school building anyways. Funny how life works like that, I suppose. But now, I find the time to write some bloggage which has been sadly lacking the last two weeks or so. What to write about, I wonder?

Well, I put out a fire with my bare hands.* A small fire, but I think it fulfilled my bad ass quota for the month. I spent a good deal of time working on publicity for the musical (which you should totally come see if you aren't one of my Denmarkian, Japanese, or Norwegian readers that apparently have visited the site) which involved a lot of page designing and calling people. I can't say I'm much of a pro at either of these activities, so there was a bit of a learning curve involved. But in the end, things worked out and I finished that thing. So now there's just the set to work on, which will happen at some point during the week.

There's been a lot of these sort of things going on, along with some League of Legends-ing and what not. Samantha is off in France doing whatever it is one does in France, which is sad but totally awesome. I'm sure she'll bring back a multitude of tales to tell and there will be good times for all. My goal for the rest of the break, however, is to actually get some relaxing in for once. And finish that AP Euro calender thing.

Speaking of AP Euro, we're writing satires after the AP test is over. Is Derek excited? Yes. Yes he is.


*Or bear hands. I'm actually part bear, as you can tell from my muscular physique.