Location | Paris: Meet Field School Faculty Member Dorothy Barenscott

Meet Dorothy! Resting and daydreaming at the Tuileries Garden in Paris (photo courtesy: self-portrait by Dorothy Barenscott)

Tell us a little about yourself—your teaching areas and interests and/or your background and how you became connected to the Paris field school?

Walking and talking with students every day was a higlight of the trip for me. Here I am chatting with Courtney-- Kenny to the right (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

Bonjour! My name is Dorothy and I work as an art historian and researcher in the field of modern and contemporary art history with interests in film/photography history and theory, urban studies, avant-garde movements, and the expanding field of new media studies. In a nutshell, I enjoy thinking and teaching about how techniques and technologies of seeing and art-making impact the way in which individuals and groups produce meaning about themselves and others. I am also very interested in helping students and artists understand and make sense of the dynamic visual worlds they inhabit and bring critical awareness to the history of art as a constructed body of knowledge—one in which they can intersect and leave their own mark. My blog (and the field school blog) have become extensions of these interests and attempt to reach beyond the classroom into non-traditional circuits of information exchange. I am also a lifelong traveler and organizing the Paris Field School was the realization of a long-standing dream I have had to travel with a group of students to one of the most influential art centers in the world and experience both the art and architecture of the city first-hand. The side trip to Documenta was icing on the cake and allowed students to immerse themselves in something that is truly special and one-of-a-kind in the world of contemporary art exhibition.

What was unique or memorable about experiencing Paris with a group of students already interested in and/or practicing art making?

I cannot tell you how happy I am that this moment was captured! It literally made my whole experience in Paris. Our group standing in front of Jacques Louis David's Oath of the Horatii (1784) (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

Watching students experience works of art they have studied in the classroom is among the most rewarding parts of my job. There is something profoundly unique about watching the individual faces of students light up when they come face to face with an art object recognized from a textbook or especially memorable art history or studio class. It is in fact one of the reasons I became an art historian! Many of the students on the trip were also visiting Europe for the first time, so Nancy and I felt a real sense of responsibility to help them get the most from the trip. I have shared the story on my blog of being a grade 12 student dazzled by my Western Civ teacher’s passionate tales of summer travel abroad, and it has remained a cornerstone of my professional goals to engage students more directly in the study and understanding of art through travel of this kind. There was one very special moment on this trip, when we were all gathered in the Louvre and standing in front of Gericualt’s Raft of the Medusa, that I literally felt overcome with joy. I am so glad this moment and others that day were also photo-documented thanks to Kyubo! Seeing a powerful painting like that come to life through the eyes of students is a beautiful thing and I know that it is an experience none of us there that day will soon forget.

How did you see students connecting what they were learning about the art and history of Paris during the time of the Impressionists with their writing and studio projects?

Nancy and I sit and chat with students outside the Architectural Museum (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

The connections started early in the pre-trip classes at Kwantlen where students were assigned an individual artist and artwork to research and negotiate in both their art history and studio based assignments. The final projects were remarkably strong and well-conceived taken the compressed time frame of the three weeks of summer classes before departure to Paris, but there was the additional excitement and enthusiasm of knowing that the work that was being completed ahead of the trip would only serve to enrich the time spent in Europe. Once in Paris, the students were assigned daily questions that pushed them to probe and revisit ideas and theories they had learned about in their studies and experimented with in their studio projects, but this time with the embodied experience of walking, breathing, and living in the urban context they had been studying ahead of the trip itself. I am very proud of what the students were able to bring to their writings, studio projects, and journals. I know many of them will continue to work in a creative and critical way with the ideas gained through the field school for many years to come.

Which of the activities during the trip stand out to you? Any special highlights or memorable moments for you?

Every day brought unanticipated highlights! Who would have known that the Paris Metro would have been such a source of excitement and focus for so many of us? We had as much fun getting to the many different activities of each day as the activities themselves. Shopping daily and selecting from all the amazing food choices at local markets for meals, sitting outside sketching in many of Paris’s most beautiful parks, and learning about everyone’s unique talents and abilities over the course of our travels are among the day-to-day highlights of the trip for me. Nancy’s ingenious idea to create the moveable feast and start a tradition of nightly Salons was also instrumental to the real bonding and creative excitement that was fostered over the course of our field school. Other stand out moments for me include the much anticipated visit to the Orsay Museum to finally see the assigned Impressionist paintings; the Gerhard Richter retrospective at the Pompidou!; the wonderful group dinner in the Latin Quarter where we ran into the “flashmob” White Dinner Party on the way home; meeting up with past students Andrea and Jen at different points in the trip, the journey from Paris to Kassel (imagine moving 25 people with too much luggage through cobble stone streets, two metro stops, and two train stations!); the Kassel beer gardens; and of course, every moment of Documenta!    

Another fun moment-- meeting a Courbet lookalike on our biking excursion! Those who know this painting will get a big laugh. (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)

We really feel that this is just the beginning of a signature element of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s B.F.A. Degree and we now have plans in the works for another 6 credit (3 studio credits and 3 art history credits) New York and Venice Biennale Field School in Summer 2013! (I visited Venice last year and blogged about the exhibition here). Of course, an undertaking like this does not happen without a great deal of planning and support. I am especially grateful to my co-field school leader Nancy Duff (Department Head for the Fine Arts Department) for supporting the early idea of this field school and enthusiastically agreeing to plan and execute the first trip. I also want to thank Nancy and her partner Corrie for being such patient, adventurous, and fun travel companions—for anyone that travels a great deal, you know how important these qualities are! Important acknowledgements and thanks also go to Sandra Schinnerl and Andrea Reynolds in the International Office—without all of their logistical support and experience, the field school would not have been realized. Thanks also to the student fundraising efforts spearheaded by Stephanie MacKay—you leave a fantastic legacy for future field school students to follow! Overall, I feel privileged for so many reasons to have traveled with this specific group on our department’s inaugural field school adventure. Each and every student on this trip contributed to the success that it turned out to be, and I am proud that this blog project will allow these memories to live on and inspire future participants.

Experiencing Documenta-- priceless and hard to describe. This picture says it all! Here I am with students (and past students who joined us in Kassel): Tina, Jen, Andrea, Mitra, Tessa, and me (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

Location | Paris: Meet Field School Faculty Member Nancy Duff

Meet Nancy! Working away on the Documenta itinerary while enjoying a few drinks in Kassel, Germany (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

Tell us a little about yourself—your teaching areas and interests and/or your background and how you became connected to the Paris field school?

I have wide ranging art interests and expertise, and my teaching reflects this.  I teach all levels of Drawing, Painting and 3rd and 4th year Open Studio, together with 2nd and 3rd year Cultural Theory and a variety of other 3rd year studio seminars, including Subversive Art, Public Art – and coming to a classroom near you soon:  tada – The Graphic Novel: Sequential Storytelling with Critical Content.  Currently serving as Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, my goal is to contribute to making our BFA program rigorous, unique, and highly desirable – with an excellent national and international reputation.

What was unique or memorable about experiencing Paris with a group of students already interested in and/or practicing art making?

Nancy poses at the moveable feast for Kyubo in a contemporary update to the barmaid in Manet's infamous A Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1882) (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

Experiencing anything in a group is like seeing through insect eyes that have multiple facets.  Watching students respond to art that they have only seen in reproductions, watching them experience a new cultural environment, and helping them operationalize a disciplined approach to reflecting on these experiences visually and in writing has been most enjoyable.  I, too, had a unique experience seeing the world through their eyes, especially as we sat together drawing. A very memorable experience was the moveable feast, for which we had divided the students into 3 groups, given them money to buy food for appetizers, main course and desserts. Seeing how they worked together to shop, prepare, present and host the meal and coming as guests with wine pairings, was loads of fun.  Bed runners had been converted to table décor, cots had been turned into sofas; the food presentation was highly aesthetic and also delicious!

How did you see students connecting what they were learning about the art and history of Paris during the time of the Impressionists with their writing and studio projects?

In the instructional half of the course that was based at Kwantlen, the students produced very interesting and well-conceived and executed projects in relation to aspects of Art Historical Modernity that they were learning about.  They installed two exhibitions in the Kwantlen Art Gallery and the Arbutus Gallery, both of which garnered much positive response from the Kwantlen community. For the Field School half of the course, without studios or facilities, the students were asked daily to respond in writing and visually to specific questions based on our itinerary.  Of course, these sketchbooks were very experimental forms, and much more reactive than analytical, reflecting the being-in-the-moment of the experience.

Nancy planned and organized  two exhibitions at Kwantlen Polytechnic University of student art work based on the combined themes of the two field school courses prior to our departure to Paris (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)

Which of the activities during the trip stand out to you? Any special highlights or memorable moments for you?

On our first day in Paris, Dorothy and the students colluded in a crazy surprise:  my sister, Jane, and her partner Maria, were at the pyramid entrance to the Louvre, when I had been expecting to meet with an administrator.  Jane had secretly celebrated her 50th birthday in Paris, and on this, their last day, we invited them back to the moveable feast where they got to meet the students they hear about all the time. I was very lucky to have my partner, Corrie, join us in our 2nd week abroad.  A former emergency room nurse and nurse educator, her expertise always brings a sense of relief to any unanticipated health concerns.  Having completed the readings for the Art History course, she really enjoyed seeing Paris through the lens of this particular history, and she was also very impressed by the student work, as an invited guest to the critiques.  In Paris, we spent a couple of lovely afternoons on our own: one in the Place des Vosges, and another in the Marais where, on a sunny outdoor terrace, we ate actual French onion soup! The drawing salons, being on the Paris Metro with the students joking around – getting to know them a bit better – was quite delightful.  I really appreciated seeing them spontaneously help one another.  We had a fabulous group, and despite a few inevitable dramas, the group became close, cohering as its own entity.  These kinds of experiences change us, in how we look at the world, at art, at each other.  Hopefully they make us more open, curious, analytical, friendly and compassionate.

Nancy, Corrie, and Dorothy stopping traffic along the Champs-Elysees with the Arc de Triomphe in the background. (photo courtesy: kind stranger using Dorothy's camera)

On the strength of a personal connection (thank you Annetta Kapon at Otis in LA!) we made contact with a highly respected art school on the outskirts of Paris – Ecole Nationale Superieured’Art Paris-Cergy  (the school from which Orlan recently retired!!)-- with whom we hope to develop opportunities for student exchange.  They invited us to a student exhibition of work based on a similar concept to what our students had been doing in the course:  a conversation with specific works from a particular art historical collection.  I think our students were very interested to see the work of their contemporaries, and they subsequently made themselves at home, participating happily in some performative projects – perhaps even contributing to the success of the event.I feel very fortunate to have been able to help develop this paired offering at Kwantlen, and for it to have been so successful.  This was largely because of the students, who I admire and respect.  Also, I owe a great deal of gratitude to Dorothy Barenscott, who did so much research for our itinerary, and was a great traveling colleague (whose husband Brian was unfortunately unable to join us).  Our friends Andrea Reynolds and Sandra Schinnerl in the International Office were a great help in organizing our accommodation and travel, and we had the pleasure of spending some time in class and in Paris with Andrea, who now has a much better idea of what it is we do. 

Nancy's much anticipated "salons" were well attended by students looking to sketch, chat, and reflect on their activities at the end of the day. Nancy and others sketch Shannon as she performs a butoh dance (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)

With the success of this 6 credit, 3rd year Studio/Art History offering, we hope to develop an annual Field School that will become a signature flagship of the BFA degree.  Next year: NYC and Venice – here we come!  For 2014, perhaps Chicago and Berlin …

Location | Paris: Meet Field School Blogger Shannon Nixon

Meet Shannon!

Tell us a little bit about yourself—school, background, major, reasons for taking this trip, anything else interesting you want to share.

Hello Paris Fine Arts Field School followers. My name is Shannon Nixon and I am currently in my third year of studies for my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Last summer, when Dorothy first mentioned that the school might be running a field school in Paris, I immediately began saving. Not only was it a great way to earn 6 credits towards my degree and travel to Europe for the first time, it was also a great opportunity to practice speaking French. I was in French immersion from grades 6-12 and since graduating high school in 2006, I haven’t had any chances to use the language outside of the classroom. I even took a beginner French class at Kwantlen last semester to brush-up on the vocabulary I lost over the past 6 years. Those three reasons were more than enough for me to apply to the Paris Field School.

Shannon hanging out by the Seine.

What has met or exceeded your expectations or surprised you about Paris so far?

As soon as we arrived in Paris I was eager to begin conversing with the locals in French. I would try to distance myself from the group in order to not stand out as a tourist. My attempts to blend in as a Parisian only seemed successful until I began speaking. People could instantly tell by my accent that I am not a Parisian and that French is definately not my first language. Sometimes it was so obvious that when I would ask someone a question in French, I would get a response in English. Although this made it slightly discouraging to continue practicing French, I still kept ‘truckin on’.

Give us some insight into your assigned art work from the Musee d’ Orsay. After seeing the work in person, what struck you most about it and/or how did the art work’s form, content, and context shift for you when seeing it?

Gustave Caillebotte, Rooftops in the Snow (1878)

Before the trip I was assigned Gustave Caillebotte’s, Rooftops in the Snow (1878) (or its French name, Vue de Toits (Effet de Neige) as my central focus for studying artworks from the Impressionist period. This work is currently at the Orsay in Paris and after closely studying it for a month through online representations I finally got to see it in person. Rooftops in the Snow, along with many other works by Caillebotte and the Impressionists (Renoir, Degas, and Manet just to name a few) are located on the very top floor of the museum. The gallery space resembled an old attic that had been transformed into a place to exhibit art. I found this interesting because after the Haussmanization of Paris in the 1850’s, the very top floors of buildings were commonly inhabited by artists and people of lower status. In addition, Caillebotte’s Rooftops in the Snow is an urban landscape that predominately depicts these spaces. To place the Impressionists work in this space speaks to the ways in which their group was rejected by the institutions in their time. After seeing their work in the Orsay, I would argue that they are the most highly regarded in the museum today. I found these rooms, even though quite large, were filled with the most viewers.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a month studying Rooftops in the Snow before coming to Paris. When I first came across the painting I was amazed with how much texture there was in the way Caillebotte painted the snow. His buildings appear to be painted with very thin layers of paint while the snow appears to be smothered on with a palette knife. The results were that of an urban landscape that had just been blanketed with a heavy layer of snow. Suddenly the French title, Vue de Toits (Effet de Neige), made sense to me. When directly translated into English it means ‘View of the Rooftops (Effects of Snow). Caillebotte successfully portrayed the effects of snow in this piece with his contrast of thinly painted buildings and thickly painted snow.

Today’s activity was located around Documenta. What were your impressions?  What will you take away of the experience?  What, if any are the memorable moments for you?

Our hotel at Documenta has been hosting large groups for decades-- memorabilia from past exhibitions was on display throughout (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

Enough about Paris and the Impressionists. After our two weeks in Paris a few students went home while the rest of us hopped on a train to Kassel Germany. Documenta 13 was our reason for this little side trip. For those of you who are unfamiliar about what Documenta is, it is the equivalent to the Olympics of contemporary art exhibition. It showcases works from artists all over the world and only happens every  5 years. We planned for 2 days to be spent at Documenta and at first I thought that would be too much time; I quickly discovered that was hardly enough time. All the works are scattered over the city center and after 2 days I had only explored about half of the works, many of which I wish I could have spent more time with.

Andres and Rosaura making their own imprint on Documenta outside the main exhibition hall.

 One work that really struck me was in a large tent that presented the work of Paul Ryan and his invention of Threeing that he created in 1973-1976. People were invited to enter the tent (provided they removed their shoes) where volunteers were assisting in teaching the ideas of Paul Ryan’s "Threeing."  When I first arrived, a German woman was explaining to three other German women how Threeing worked. Because I cannot understand German, I stood off to the side and tried to understand what they were doing based on their body movements, a video that was playing, and some instructions that were written in terrible English. Just as me and a few other students in our group were about to leave, we were approached by a woman named Sara who spoke English. She explained to us in clearer form what Paul Ryan’s concept was around Threeing. She explained the different roles of the three people involved: the first person’s role is to be spontaneous while the second person’s role is to be reactive to the first. The third person is the mediator and their role is to mediate the actions of the first and the second person. The three German women were doing exercises in three through body movements. Sara showed us how you can also take this practice and apply it through drawing.  I believe this exercise could be useful to art students as an aid in collaborative art making.

Overall I have really enjoyed both Paris and Kassel. A few of us have decided to stay and continue our travels around Europe. I am off to Munich for a couple days then finishing up my trip in London where I hope to go on a guided tour of all the street art. I fell in love with street art after seeing Exit Through the Gift Shop and I even bought a book about the myths and legends surrounding Banksy while I was at Documenta. 

Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer's epic collage was another art project that garnered a great deal of attention at Documenta (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)

Location | Paris: Meet Field School Blogger Rhea Paez

Meet Rhea!

Tell us a little bit about yourself—school, background, major, reasons for taking this trip, anything else interesting you want to share.

Rhea taking photos at Versailles (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

When I heard about the Field School trip to Paris, I leapt at the opportunity to be part of it.  Paris is one of the major arts and culture hubs in the world with a large history in connection to the arts, so I knew that it was going to be something I could take away from.  Being able to experience first-hand the history I was taught, in the space and environment that the history happened, has definitely reinforced what I learned in school, especially since it will now correlate with my physical experience of it.  Text book pictures and projection slides alike are no match for seeing the actual art pieces in their physical form.  No post cards, mugs, posters etc.. can ever replicate the phenomenal sensation of seeing a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Manet or a Courbet for the first time.  I am a fourth year Fine Arts student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University completing the fourth year of my degree, and this experience, by far, has been absolutely memorable and life changing.  For as long as I can remember I have always been a creative individual who has a thirst for making art.  I started out painting, drawing and working with ceramics, but being in post-secondary school has made me branch out to using other mediums of art such as video, installation, sculpture and print media.  At times I have been be discouraged while making art, especially in school, but what I’ve learned is that your experiences are sometimes one and the same as some of the artists you learn about, which then becomes an inspirational and catalytic element in creating new art.  

What has met or exceeded your expectations or surprised you about Paris so far?

Rhea, Courtney, and Kyubo atop the Eiffel Tower

Aside from the art I had seen, it was the row upon row of Haussmann buildings, heavily decorated in their ornate design that made quite an impression on me.  If you were above ground, let’s say at the third floor of the Opera House, looking at the city from the balcony, you can easily drink in Paris’ stunning aesthetical experience.  The best view I have seen of Paris, as cliché as it sounds, is from the Eiffel Tower.  You can see the entirety of Paris’ layout being able to spot all of the monumental buildings.  At street level, you will notice the small boulangeries where you can order your daily baguettes, the butcheries where you order your deli meats, and patisseries where you grab a pastry treat for the day.  Paris is also littered with coffee shops that allow one to flaneur while drinking their Café au lait, or their Nissoit outside the shop.  My most favorite part about the infrastructure in Paris is their Metro layout and network systems.  It is the most efficient metro station I have ever experienced, especially having over ten lines, not including their RER commuter rail system.  At one point in the trip I had to leave my group behind because I had forgotten something important back at the hotel, so I informed everyone I would meet them at our destination, only I had never ridden the metro on my own because I had been following everyone else beforehand.  Quickly looking over the metro map I was able to hop onto a train and make my transfers with no hesitation at all, not getting lost once.  It was quite an achievement for me.  The convenient thing about their metro system is that their fourteen lines plus their RER rail cover the city of Paris, which makes for convenient travelling across the city without a vehicle.  

Give us some insight into your assigned art work from the Musee d’ Orsay. After seeing the work in person, what struck you most about it and/or how did the art work’s form, content, and context shift for you when seeing it?

Pierre Bonnard, A Bourgeois Afternoon (1900)

I was assigned Pierre Bonnard's A Bourgeois Afternoon (1900), which I got to see at the Orsay, and after having seen it I was quite impressed by it.  It was more saturated than I had imagined and as I had mentioned earlier, text book pictures and slideshow images do not do paintings any justice.  The image was also not as flat as I had imagined it because of how saturated it turned out to be.  The cool palette choice gave it a bright but subtle illumination because of the array of colours chosen. It was also quite large in size being around seven feet wide and five feet tall.  Being so large I noticed other details that I had not expected to be there such as an extra cat or dog, and extra figures in the back ground in the garden, such as a child holding onto a large potted plant, or two other smaller children off in the distance.  They were hard to spot, but none the less, they were very much present.  Clearly they are difficult to see and in the background because they are insignificant to the overall theme of the image, yet they play a major role in contributing to the image’s narrative.  The painting is littered with symbolism towards the bourgeois attitudes of family leisure in country homes.  There is so much going on in the painting especially with what you see on the edges, such as figures entering the house in the background or figures inside of the house peering out, it is clear why I was able to miss such details.  To be honest, it is not one of my favorites by Bonnard because previously before seeing The Terrase Family I had run into a small exhibit of Bonnard’s lithography, drawings and paintings in a separate wing on the bottom floor of the Orsay. Those overwhelmed me and gave me a whole new appreciation for the artist. Perhaps the frustration of not being able to find my assigned piece because the Orsay was so large slightly tainted my view of the image and had I seen it prior to any of his other work I might have been more impressed. 

Today’s activity was located around Documenta. What were your impressions?  What will you take away of the experience?  What, if any are the memorable moments for you?

Yan Lei's Limited Art Project captured a great deal of interest at Documenta. Each day, the artist will have 3-4 of the 360 canvases painted over for the duration of the exhibition.

At my first day of Documenta the word “overwhelmed” describes my entire experience of it.  I had first ventured into the Documenta Halle building where there were works from such artists like Gustav Metzger, Etel Adnan, Julie Mehretu and Nalini Malani.  The first one in that building that I thought was interesting was Yan Lei’s installation called Limited Art Project.  The installation was made up of over a hundred paintings, some displayed and some filed in this large storage area.  Every painting was different, and each one was a copy of an image he had found browsing through the internet.  The images are random and are of ones that had caught his attention while surfing the internet.  Every day he paints over a few canvases, eliminating them from the rest of the installation, yet it is still displayed to indicate its removal.  This piece comments on the facile entertainment and the consumption of art.  In painting over his paintings, he “slows down the audience’s consumption” giving his piece a fleeting ephemeral quality.  The interesting thing about this piece is that if I had seen this any later in the month, many of the images would have been eliminated and thus would give me a completely different perspective of the piece.

After the Documenta Halle, my friend Shelly and I decided to see all of the pieces scattered throughout the park, which we realised, at the end of the day, was quite a long and exhausting process.  Mind you I am extremely happy that I decided to see the outdoor installations that day because the next day it rained quite a bit.  Anyhow, after having spent ten hours looking at the outdoor pieces, I was only close to a third of seeing everything.  Most of the outdoor pieces were housed in these little cabins that made for a more intimate experience of each piece.  Walking through the park, Shelly and I were crossing out each piece we had seen on our map, and making up short titles for each one so as to easily remember them.  We made sure not to skip any of the pieces, but with the limited amount of time we had, we missed a handful.   From what I had seen that day at the Documenta Halle, the Orangerie and pretty much the entirety of their outdoor installations, I was thoroughly impressed.  Two days is not enough to see all of Documenta’s brilliant artists but it gave me a taste of something I’m sure to come back for in five years time.  Hopefully one day my work will show in an exhibition of that calibre, or in Documenta itself.

As Rhea describes, Documenta is as much an outdoor as an indoor experience. (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)

Location | Paris: Meet Field School Blogger Amanda Powell

Meet Amanda! (photo courtesy: Kyubo Yun)

Tell us a little bit about yourself—school, background, major, reasons for taking this trip, anything else interesting you want to share.

Amanda enjoys sketching in a Parisian rose garden. (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)

Bonjour! My name is Amanda Powell. I am a third year student currently doing a French major at Simon Fraser University. After completing the coursework for this class, I am now considering doing a Fine Arts minor! In my spare time I enjoy listening to live music, spending time with my family, and watching films. I am one of the few non-studio students on this trip, but I am definitely an art enthusiast. I enjoyed participating in the sketchbook activities given each day; it was a new experience for me to sketch en plein air like the Impressionists we studied! I wanted to take this trip because:

1. I am interested in art and art history.

2. I had never been to Europe (and was keen to see it under an artistic lens with like-minded individuals.)

3. I wanted to practice speaking french.

This trip has been an absolute whirlwind for me; I've learned a lot and I've thoroughly enjoyed my time here in Europe.

What has met or exceeded your expectations or surprised you about Kassel (Germany) so far?

The difference between Paris and Kassel is astounding. We went from being in a busy city with lots of people to a smaller town with lots of greenery. The one thing I really notice here is the language barrier. In Paris, I had little to no trouble communicating with the locals because I can speak, read, write, and understand French. In Kassel, however, the majority of people speak German, a language of which I know very few useful phrases other than: "My name is Amanda," and "Hurry up!" Most of the young people are proficient in English, and the others try very hard to understand you with a giant grin on their faces. Because of this language barrier, Kassel feels a lot more foreign to me than Paris, even though all of the trees and friendly folk remind me of home. In terms of Documenta, the whole exhibition has far exceeded my expectations. I was surprised at how much there is to see! I pictured it being in one big museum, similar to what they have in Paris. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the exhibitions were scattered around the city (especially in the park!)

Erin, Tessa, and Kyubo sort through an interactive installation of "Occupy Kassel" featured at Documenta.

Give us some insight into your assigned art work from the Musee d’ Orsay. After seeing the work in person, what struck you most about it and/or how did the art work’s form, content, and context shift for you when seeing it?

Georges Seurat, Landscape with Puvis de Chavannes' Fisherman (1881)

When I saw my assigned work in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, I felt a little blasé about it. My piece was entitled "Paysage avec "lepauvre pecheur" de Puvis de Chavannes." I think my reaction was mostly due to the small scale of the work (for some reason I expected it to be larger!). The colours of the piece were more vibrant than the dull pixelated image I had studied online all semester, so that was a highlight. The room it was displayed in was very dark, but the lights they had pointing at each artwork made the paint shine, which was a nice touch. I think just the fact that Seurat touched and painted the exact work I was looking at was what made the experience better for me, also, being able to see the work Seurat was inspired by (Puvis de Chavannes' Poor Fisherman) and know that Seurat was once in my shoes, looking at this particular work of art.

Today’s activity was located around Documenta. What were your impressions?  What will you take away of the experience?  What, if any are the memorable moments for you?

Documenta is one of the most important international art exhibitions, held every five years in Kassel Germany. (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)

Today I ventured out into town with a few others to find some of the many Documenta exhibits. We got lost trying to find the main building, but we stumbled across some smaller venues along the way. My favourite ‘accidental’ Documenta discovery was a tent made of blankets in a corner of a park. They invited us into their space, we took off our shoes, and we sat on small benches and were offered tea. A nice volunteer informed us of the plight of the people living in the Western Sahara and the work of Robin Kahn, who made a cookbook of recipes on behalf of the women living there. I left the tent feeling enlightened, and mentioned the tent to a few others along the way, insisting they also go and visit the oasis in the corner of the park. Around noon, we met some locals, who insisted we try the German dish called döner. At only three Euros, it was filling and absolutely delicious (with vegetarian options to boot!). We spent the rest of the day looking at art with our new German friends, as they were also here for Documenta, and ended the day at the local biergarten, Fiasko, with our peers and teachers. What a lovely day it was! 

Many nights were spent as a group at the Fiasko beer garden in Kassel-- excellent schnitzel! (photo courtesy: Dorothy Barenscott)