"As I please, in words."

This is part of a line belonging to Katharina from Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew."  The full excerpt is typed out in the "About Me" on the side of this page.  I've been saying these lines to myself, to my director, and to my fellow actors for a couple of months now, and I've had a while to think about them.  Theatre is an interesting thing; it's an art form collaborated upon by both a writer and a performer, and the writer might have done his part in the endeavor hundreds of years before the performer even exists.  I have to wonder what Shakespeare was thinking when he wrote these words.  "The Taming of the Shrew" is a fairly controversial play nowadays, and is often seen as antifeminist.  The text certainly seems to point to that, but then why would Katharina, or Kate, have so much potential to be such a rich character?  The people around her dismiss her as a shrew, but is that all there is to the play and the character?  She is outspoken and brash and quick-witted, doesn't let anyone keep her down, at least until Petruchio enters the scene.  There are a few ways to play out this character arc.  One: Petruchio succeeds in "taming" her, and she is forever obedient.  Two: He holds no sway over her by the end of the play, and her entire ending monologue (with lines like "A woman moved is like a fountain troubled/ Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty" and "And place your hand below your husband's foot") is delivered with palpable sarcasm.  Three: She truly loves her husband by the end, but she hasn't necessarily been "tamed" and is still her own person.  This last one especially may be just a modern construct sewn up with wishful thinking, but the potential is there.  Whether or not Shakespeare meant Kate to be tamed by the end of the play, whether or not he was "that sexist" (as I've heard someone say), the potential is there for her to keep her strength and fire.  The words are the frame, but the performer and director don't have to mind the edges.  An individual performance can fill the space provided in countless subtle ways and even twine around the framework itself.  Thus, theatre is a true collaboration, though one of the collaborators doesn't always know where it ends up.

This is not art

I've noticed that a lot of the time in class, we tend to use the terms "art" and "painting" interchangeably, as in "If that painting is used as a rug, is it still a painting?"  Sorry if I'm being too picky here, but I just wanted to define painting as being separate from art.  A painting is an image set down on some surface in paint that is presumably intended to be art; it is not necessarily art.  So the aforementioned example sentence might read, "If that painting is used as a rug, can it still be art?"
It occurs to me now, though, that the example sentence I chose is not the best.  Goodman places high emphasis on identifying things by their function, and if a painting is spread on the floor for people to walk on at their discretion, perhaps he doesn't care whether or not it is an image set down on some surface in paint.  Perhaps the materials used to make it are irrelevent compared with its new function, and he would stop calling it a painting and start calling it a rug.
Have I written in a circle here?  Maybe.  I still want to stay away from assuming that painting = art.
But what do you think?  Do you think that the function of an object outweighs not only the preconceived notions attached to that object, but also the materials that make up that object?

Representation/Exemplification

Goodman claims that there is a difference between representation and exemplification.  What is this difference? 
The difference is in how the material is presented.  A representation involves conveying something more directly, while exemplification offers a more abstract conveyance.  So something like this:

would be considered representation, while this:

would be closer to exemplification. 
And because I just can't leave it alone, I'm bringing "Ashes" back into this.  The expression on the woman's face is a representation of distress, as is the man's pose, to an extent.  The barren trees in the background and drab colors are an exemplification of distress.
But as to the second image in this post, do you think that this is a good exemplification of sadness?  The less direct approach of exemplification, after all, has the side effect of being possibly misinterpreted.  The artist may have intended to convey sadness, but I also see loneliness. 
Which do you think is more valuable/effective, representation or exemplification?

Second image: sadness by zaana on deviantart.com

Distractions

I think I could call myself an expert on distraction (I'm presumptuous like that).  Right now I'm staring at a gorgeous desktop background on a friend's computer and listening to energetic music.  I have eight tabs open in Internet Explorer, plus iTunes, email, and two assignments in Word.  I am constantly clicking between this window, Facebook, and Youtube to see what song is playing at any given moment (right now it's Tattoos Fade by World/Inferno Friendship Society).  I am young, sleep-deprived, and probably self-absorbed.  I would be considered rather unfit to judge art by Hume's standards.  However, I actually enjoy many works that are accepted by the art world.  I suppose that means I'm not entirely beyond hope.  But I suppose anyone who listens to, say, Lady Gaga (to go off a common class theme) would be considered too distracted.  It doesn't matter what a person "does right," if they like something "frivolous," there is something wrong with their judgment.  I wonder whether or not Hume ever liked any (art)works that another critic considered frivolous.

Mystery: Response to Brycen

Brycen recently asked whether people are so attracted to art because it is mysterious without a definition.  I'm not sure that that's the only reason people are attracted to art, but it's an interesting thought.  An air of mystery is usually seen as an attractive quality in general.  I hate to seem like I'm saying the same thing two entries in a row, but I think Edvard Munch's painting, Ashes, has a beautiful quality of mystery to it.  What is the source of the figures' distress?  What happened before this scene?  When I look at this image, I take in the picture as a whole, and then the details, and my mind starts trying to answer the questions it asks.  I want to know the artist's intention, but I also want to keep it a mystery.  There is a part of me, I think, that wants to fill in the blanks myself; there is a part of me that cannot help doing just that.  Maybe that is why people are attracted to art: the mystery seems to leave room for the observer to see herself in the artwork. 
Do you think people enjoy art more when they can relate to it?