R'n'B is back baybay!!!

Top 3 favourite sculptor

So like I told you in the first post of gumption 2.0, I fell in love with sculpture this year. When we have art classes in high school, we mostly see painters, so this new world was really a revelation for me.

So here is my top three favourite sculptors.

3. Naum Gabo

Russian sculptor; he was one of the first to do constructions instead of sculptures. He did not mold or carve but built, which permitted him to create things which were impossible before (you couln't mold or carve the sculpture on the right). With all these new possibilities, he was able to use empty spaces as a part of his sculpture (ex: all the spaces between the metal rods) and with that, he discovered that volumes of space itself was sculptable, not only volumes of mass.

He also sculpted time in his pieces. By having a rythm that would unite every part of his sculpture, he was able to introduce the 4th dimension; one that has never been mastured as well since.






2. Constantin Brancusi

Opposed Gabo, he was a 'classic' sculptor. He was the student of Auguste Rodin (the thinker), but he decided to leave the workshop of his master so he could become the master he is today.

Brancusi wasn't an abstract sculptor, he created things that really existed; however he wasn't representing it in its figurative way, he was only representing the essential. For exemple, the sculpture on the right is a bird, but it represents the freedom, the lightness and the mouvement of one.







1. Damien Hirst

He is way more modern than the other 2 and he also does a different type of sculpture. Instead of using raw materials, he uses things that are already made (it's a real shark on the right). He is a modern/conceptual artist, which means that the concept behind the sculpture is more important than the sculpture itself.

He works with the concept of death and life, examining the moments where both life and death are presents and ou living relationship with death (the piece on the right is called the physical impossibility of death inside the mind of someone living).

This post isn't supposed to be an extensive essay about those three sculptors, I just wanted to present you my fav 3. If you would like to know more, there are a lot of books out there. My favourite one is a little about Damien Hirst but mostly about contemporary art; and it's called 'The $12 Million Stuffed Shark'.

G.O.D.

The opinion on...open mindedness

The first 'The opinion on...' for gumption 2.0! Aren't we excited...

I want to talk about a cliché concept that isn't really what it should be. Having an open mind is something that's obviously necessary, but the way it's been explained to me, there's something missing. It's current definition would be something like 'being receptive to new and different ideas or the opinions of others' (definition from thefreedictionary.com). The problem is, what happen when another culture doesn't let women vote, or kill people without a fair trial; should we be open minded about these ideas? We aren't open minded about these things, because it's impossible (and not very practical) to be open minded about things that are actually different from ours. We're open minded about things that are already acceptable, like eating bugs, or having a different religion, or having 10 kids. We accept these things sayng we are open minded, but actually, it's because these things are not very different from our one culture.

The way I see it, we should ask ourselves to be open minded not about what other people do, but about ourselves.

Imagine if we would be attacked by someone else because are way of life isn't acceptable. Could we live with that? Would we be open minded about that idea?

I feel like it's natural and we have the right to say 'wow, this other culture is weird' or 'what their doing is unacceptable', but with that comes the responsability to honestly (and let me put some emphasis on the honestly) accept that we are also the weird ones.

When you say 'what this culture is doing is unacceptable', you have to know that you're way of doing it is as unacceptable because weirdness is always reciprocal. Only then can you really respect someone elses ideas, and only then can you really understand someone elses point of view. And only then can you really ask each other; is there a way that's better than the other?

Last year in a 140 characters

Went to university, fell in love with sculpture, quantum physics and philosophy, got accepted in architecture in Laval, missed mexico, lived

WE BACK!!!

I'm back, and just in time for the summer.

I haven't posted anything in a while (read 10 months) and I have decided that's it's time to get back at it.

Three things brought me to the same conclusion, which is pretty much YOLO baybay!!! (or hakuna mata if you're a 90's kid, or carpe diem if you're a pre 18th century kid and you can actually understand latin)

First, I started working as a janitor in a hosptial (please don't judge me on that one, it's only for the summer)... So I always see people dying, which reminds me, I'll probably die too.

Second, for the first time in my life; someone my age that I knew died, which also reminded me; damn, this whole death thing can happen pretty quickly.

Last but not least, my sister told something pretty cheesy/true. She said "you know you've gotten old when your memories are more important then your dreams''.

In a nutshell, I asked myself "What could I do right now that in 10 years I would say, 'Man, I was doing stuff back then'."

So here it is... "Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to post something every day for the rest of the summer"

It's going to be pretty similar as what I was posting back in the Mexico days (for the ones who just started following, this blog started when I left for Mexico for a year in the summer of 2010). So there'll be random posts, pictures, music and "the opinion on..." I know I'll get myself in trouble for some of them but hey, if you write the same opinion that everybody elses have, you pretty much become a news paper.

I'll see you tomorrow captains! Oh and by the way, thanks for the 5000th view!