Spring 2013 URSP Participant Catherine Brown:
Down the Rabbit Hole: Studying Don Quixote
This project started with a paper I
wrote comparing Don Quixote and Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film, The Dark Knight for a Spanish literature
class. The requirement of the project was to compare Cervantes’s epic novel to
a pop culture phenomenon such as a television show or a film. I had no idea I
would end up expanding that idea into a project encompassing two art styles
(Baroque and Neo-Baroque), linking contemporary films as diverse as The Matrix Trilogy and The Wizard of Oz, and the iconic figures
of Don Quixote and Batman.
This project is forcing me to be even
more independent than I have had to be in my academic work to this point. I
have to be not only confident as I write what I have observed from my research,
but thorough and precise. This intense kind of research and extensive writing
is the type of work I will be doing in graduate school. My ultimate goal is to
be a doctor of Spanish and Portuguese, to be a colleague of that field and
contribute my ideas through publication of research like what I have been doing
this semester. URSP is giving me a taste of what that will be like.
Up to this point in the project, on
a weekly basis I do a lot of reading such as on the history of the Baroque and
the development of the Neo-Baroque aesthetic. I have also been researching art
and film. The Baroque body of work is massive because it includes painting,
sculpture, and architecture. Furthermore, it’s a global art form. It spreads
through Europe and then to the rest of the world due to colonialism and Jesuit
missionary work.
One thing I discovered this week is
something I believe to be extremely interesting concerning art, especially
Baroque art: the fact that it is self-referential across modes and distinct
periods. This particular characteristic makes it possible to link styles of art
to each other across centuries. Because the Baroque shares particular stylistic
aspects with the Renaissance, I’ve had to research the characteristics of that
period as well in order to understand what makes Baroque art so different from
what was produced previous to it. What is interesting to see is the way artists
recall past work through imitation or re-creation. For example, in 1926 Frida
Kahlo imitates Botticelli’s 1486 Birth of
Venus in her Self-portrait in a
velvet dress. The elongation of her fingers and neck reflect Renaissance
artistic renderings of women. However, the central figure of Botticelli’s
painting is inspired by the Venus de’ Medici, a sculpture of the Roman
Capitoline Venus type known as the “modest Venus” for the way the hands attempt
to cover her naked form. Ultimately, the Capitoline Venus is based on a lost
work by the ancient Greek sculptor Praxiteles known as the Aphrodite of Knidos
now only rendered in copies. Furthermore, in 1981, Salvador Dalí also draws
inspiration from this Greek figure in his painting Apparition of the Face of Aphrodite. These types of connections and
references that artists make is the basis of my project and the connection I am
attempting to illustrate between 17th century European art and
contemporary films.
