Cantor Observation

When first arriving on campus nearly 11 months ago, my interest was piqued by one attraction imparticular. This attraction was the Cantor Arts Center. What truly drew me in about this building was, at its core, what it represents. More important to me then was what was displayed inside the complex rather than the complex itself. I was dazzled by its various exhibits and was interested in the art that filled the rooms inside. Fast forward to Spring Quarter of my freshman year and I am put to the task of dissecting the Cantor and exploring it through the realm of the actual building structure. It is interesting to realize that even though this building houses hundreds if not thousands of exhibits and artifacts, it is an exhibit in its own right.
The nature in which thought is advanced through a painting is a peculiar idea that eludes most average onlookers. Another work of art that contributes to this idea that art can add to the human experience is Frederik Marinus’s “Tranquil Landscape with Women Washing by a Stream with Cattle and Sheep Resting”. At a quick glance, this work is strikingly dissimilar to Nathan Oliveira's “Stage #2 with Bed”, but with a careful eye and further analysis, this painting allows us to turn a new page in an effort to extend our understanding in what the question is and allows us to move further in our journey of finding a concrete answer to the most abstract of inquiries. This painting, although completed over 100 years prior to Oliveira's is moving and striking in a very similar way even though their content is completely different. This derives from aesthetic. This picture is beautiful and tranquil. The colors are soft and the setting is dreamy. To this point, maybe the answer to the question actually is aesthetics. Beauty, if you will. The answer could be enjoyment. As complex and developed as us humans believe ourselves to be, maybe our instinctual and primal desires of pleasure are the true driving force for anything that we seek to accomplish. And even moving further, past just plain aesthetic, maybe we seek to find things that move us, and that is the human experience, and the fact that we are
This is another work by Nathan Oliveira and it includes a stage as well. However, instead of being figureless, there is a figure lying in the bed. This work is more somber and less aesthetically pleasing than the first two, even though there is a figure apparent in the scene. This gives rise to discussing the role that relationships play in the journey of life. As mentioned prior, a large part of this cascade involves the subjective experience, but with over 7 billion souls existing on earth, the subjective experience can be intervened with and changed by interactions with others. This labyrinth of communication changes people every day. In this image, the figure is seen to be alone and thus the mood somber. This implicates loneliness as undesirable even if that contradicts our journey to finding the ultimate answer of life. As we said before, subjectiveness and finding answers through oneself is the most pure and direct way to getting to the bottom of it all, yet we yearn to belong. We strive to be included. Why is this? In theory this would support the previously discussed idea of our primal instincts being the driving force of our life motivation. Even though love may seem divine, and might very well be, the cycle of life has been completed again and again for thousands if not millions of years. Born, reproduce, die, is a cycle that is based within the most basic foundation of