Oscar Wilde once wrote, “All art is useless, except that it is intensely admired”. If so, then what is the use of painting? Sculpting vases, panels or jewelry? What makes them so special that The Museum of Metropolitan Art would exert so much of their resources into obtaining almost over 150 pieces for an exhibit?

The answer lies quite simply in the title of the exhibit. “Love and Romance in Renaissance Italy. All these objects were created as everlasting symbols of status, piety and love. As I trembled in the slightly chilly marble hall where most of the exhibit was housed I could not help but embrace how aptly titled it was.

  The painting of a beautiful woman probably commissioned by a doting husband stared across a blue and white ceramic vase. Celestial cherubs and gods like Venus, commissioned by those who tried in every way to be closer to God were recurring motifs. It is difficult not to generalize or to be overly sentimental in analyzing Renaissance art because the artists themselves deliberately exaggerated the subjects. Immense oil paintings of partially nude women of impressive proportions gazed the viewer out of countenance. This was considered beauty! Past tense is used because standards of what stands for love or beauty has drastically changed in a society that is so insecure.

            Historically, the High Italian Renaissance was a period where the pursuit of perfection was channeled through the skill of artists and their craft. Looking at their preindustrial era surroundings they saw potential for beauty and divinity reminiscent of the grandeur that was Rome. One such man was Fra Fillipo Lippi. He was a painter and monk. I recognized his style instantly as I my eyes skipped across the room. He specialized in profile paintings of Italian nobility and mostly couples as seen in the painting “Portrait of a Woman and a Man at a Casement”. In his pursuit of idealization he focuses on the details of an elaborate headpiece and dress rather than the woman that wore it. Her exaggeratedly high forehead, lack of eyebrows, and wan pallor though disconcerting the viewer was considered beauty. On her right arm he wrote the word “Leal” in Italian. Understandably to further emphasize her perfection as a loyal wife. Lorenzo Lotto also undertook to paint in this time and his portayal of “Venus and Cupid” is awe inspiring. Venus as the godess of beauty reposed and completely at ease with cupid at her feet gives and indescribable sense of serenity and peace. This was art and love in renaissance Italy.

This romantic idealization went beyond the human form. In the artist’s eyes and in my minds eye it transcended into human nature itself.

“Les Ecailles De La Memoire”, better understood as “The Scales of Memory” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, better known as “BAM”, was a disconcerting piece of African interpretive dance.

An enviably muscular dancer in her late twenties wearing an turban oddly reminiscent of an onion proclaimed “Je suis Creole!” to start off the night. “Ben, Je le crois!” I murmured back to her half jokingly, half in earnest. Loosely translated in English she said she was Creole, and  I said I believed her. Swelling slighty with a strong sense of self satisfaction I reflected on my French. It is a strong point I am rather proud of.

Yet there is little room to be irreverent or cheeky when it comes to the forehead creasing issues of African history that danced before our eyes at this performance. Featuring seven Urban Bush Women and seven men of the Senegalise compagnie Janti-Bi respectively, it was a mixture of interpretive dance, historical retrospection, and yes a bit of romance for entertainments sake.  A company collaboration between leaders of African interpretive dance Jawole Willa Joe Zollar and Germain Acogny proved nothing short of visual and moral punch in the face.

There was no clear story line or narration but later we learned from our programs that it was meant to reflect the social and geographic journey of African Americans. It spanned the time of freedom, diaspora, slavery and the general cultural diffusion of the race. The Senegalese men flexed their ripped limbs in crouching positions all the while uttering shiver inducing guttural grunts. Their physical antics were undestandibly difficult and thus appreciated but it did not address clearly its purpose in the play.

One moment in particular where I felt befuddled was when five dancers were positioned separately so as to fit the points of a five point star and they all proceeded to execute steps deserving of a solo performance.  Audience members winced as one member of Janti-Bi proceeded to beat his bare back with a long wooden rod. It was taken to be a reflection of the abuse and hardships African Americans went through in slavery. Elevated on platforms of different levels these numbers were really an overdone visual assault.

There was too much matter and not enough art. The actual number of the dancers detracted from the attention to their execution of dance steps. Women were separated and distinguishable from the men with billowing robes of various rosy hues.  The men, in togas of varying cuts made a comical picture as they strenuously danced their way into couples. After all the hardships that they suffered they still were connected by their culture and dancing chops. In one mellow moment the couples relaxed the difficulty of their steps and just swayed along to a soft drumbeat, like the padding of feet on a bare floor.

Considering and conceding all the drama, pain, confusion of the African experience, The Scales of Memory left us oddly at peace and curiously looking to the future. Of course the future could be choreographed by Ms. Zollar and Mr. Acogny or we could write it ourselves.

“Human nature can be broken down into love, hate, ambition, and disappointment,” Samuel G. Freedman pointed out to a class of students that he visited at Baruch College. It can be assumed that someone with extensive experience and vast knowledge of human life and our behavior can make such an argument, and in Freedman’s case, such an assumption would be correct. He is a columnist for Saturday’s New York Times, for which he is constantly interviewing people. He is also a professor at the prestigious Columbia University. However, it is probably his latest book, Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life, that gives Freedman the most credentials as a respectable writer.
As Freedman spoke of his late mother, the subject of his most recent book, it was clear that he took her close to heart. He said that although he has always despised the genre of memoire writing, this book was like an “act of penance” for him. He wanted to make up the debt of not being a great or caring son to his mother for the short nineteen years that he spent with her. In order to complete this rather personally fulfilling project, Freedman conducted four years of research. He interviewed his mother’s relatives, friends, neighbors, etc. “No rules apply for history or memoires,” he said, however, “One must not sanitize the topic.” After reading Who She Was, I realized that such advice must be heeded.
In addition to giving very helpful advice on writing a memoire/ biography, such as how to interview people you do not know, using photographs as tools, and retrieving old documents, Freedman gave some guidance for living a fulfilling life, something he claims he did not know when he was a young adult. He respects his mother because she had to put bread on the table when she was younger, something he was not responsible for. In other words, do not take things for granted. What he learned while writing Who She Was was that you should be careful about denying your kids what their hearts desire. Most importantly, the reason why he felt the need to write this book is to not spend your life hating a parent. It is not worth the stress and the very likely guilt that you will feel later on in life.
Clearly, Samuel G. Freedman is more than just a brilliant journalist, professor, and author. He is a man who has reached a point in his life in which he can reflect on his past mistakes, learn from them, and share them with others. “Not only famous lives are extraordinary or worth writing about. Any life can be dramatic,” he said. He can be a considered a philanthropist, one who through his writing and teaching wants to expose the good and bad of human kind, one person at a time.

Author of the well-respected book, Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life, Samuel Freedman discussed the process behind his research and the makings of his mother’s biography during one of my classes. Freedman was very honest when responding to questions asked of him, and was open with information concerning his personal life. As a student, I was amazed at his ability to uncover information about an obscure past. As a reader, I was amazed at his ability to articulate details that might have otherwise been overshadowed.

Freedman is a professor at Columbia University, an author of many award winning books, and a popular columnist for the New York Times – quite the résumé. Who She Was was one of his most recent works, and it’s essentially a biography of his mother’s life, a life that he did not get to know very well. After his mother passed away, Freedman journeyed to discover the history that gave birth to his mother’s character, a journey that took him to a foreign country, and called for the revisiting of old friends. I applaud Freedman for the effort and the time he put forth in his venture, which produced a book that captured the essence of his mother very well. His method of researching was something he tried to convey to us that day, and I was very much influenced by his work in producing a Who She Was piece of my own.

Freedman uses many sources to build his mother’s past: old photographs, immigration records, interviews. Freedman was very attentive to the details of old photographs he had, and was able to piece together subtle information. For example, he deduced that it was Rosh Hashanah in a series of photographs because of the date and the clothing worn by the people in them. Also, with only past records and documents in hand, he created the environment that his mother grew up in – Samuel Freedman is a man who knows how to extract information from a variety of sources.

Freedman’s tribute to his mother is both moving and revealing. Many people can relate to his mother’s story one way or another, as an immigrant or as a parent, and many others can appreciate the story of a mother tied to her childhood fantasies while trying to make something of her life.

Performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Urban Bush women displayed African American culture and traditions as well as the struggle that came with African Diaspora, migration of Africans to America and later on to the world, through expressive dance performances. For many members of the audience like me, it was difficult to understand the story of the dance performance.  Only in the end did I realize that there was no plot. Without sufficient introduction in the beginning of the performance, Urban Bush women confused its audience.

Instead of focusing on the theme of the performance, I decided to look at the dancers, persuading myself that it was not as dull as it seemed. Penetrating on the struggle of many Africans, the facial expression of the dancers matched the tension of African descendants, battling to accept the heritage and adjust to the new culture. For the most part of the performance, individual performances weren’t as fluent as group performances. The female dancers were often times too dramatic in their interpretations of the meaning of tension. To show internal conflict, the female dancer did not have to show the contortion of arms and wild movements.

Though I felt I was exposed to a different genre of dancing performance, the Urban Bush Women did not affect me. I would recommend the dance performance to people who wanted to see the dance techniques. But the theme of the performance was no where to be found.

The theme of my collage is childhood. Though I came to America when I was 11 years old, I still have fresh memories of my childhood in China. What I remember the most was the old culture of China that helped to shape the person I am today, especially my elementary school. Separated from my parents, I lived in the city alone for the four years before I came to America.

In my collage, I chose to include the old Chinese reading textbook used for elementary school students. Though the textbooks today have become more standardized, the textbooks I used were artistic and more descriptive of the learning topics. The old textbooks also served as communist propaganda because most of the topics in them were memoirs of soldiers who sacrificed their life during the Chinese revolution. The old textbooks also included a fabricated role model “Lei Fun” who was used to promote philanthropy. I also had a multi-functional pencil box that had a pencil sharpener, erase, mini calculator, and ruler. I remembered that I purchased one of those on the collage for one yuan.

Pledging to be loyal to the party and reciting the little handbook, I was among many of my classmates who were granted the right to wear the red neck scarf. The red scarf symbolized the first time I was labeled as a communist. I hated the red neck scarf because I would always lose it. I bought a hundred of them over the course of three years in elementary school. We also had a bureaucracy in school, where everyone was in the same class until graduation. For every month, a group of ten students were required to present a theme on the blackboard, placed in the back of the classroom. I was assigned to write all the Chinese characters on the blackboard, though later on I was criticized for my rusty penmanship. Though I was timid in class, I would be punished by my teachers and told to write a sentence 100 times after school.

In leisure time, I would play marbles with my classmates. While the students today are more occupied with their electronic devices, my classmates and I never were more involved in physical activities such as badminton. The cotton candy in the collage was worth approximately 5o fen  It was inexpensive and the seller never needed extra customers because it was popular around school.

All these memories from elementary school in China are permanent reminders to me that I lived a life which many people today in America have never experienced.

In the distance, a crowd of people walk along the road with heavy footsteps. With the sounds drumming closer, she glances out the window at the wide steel gate and at once realizes that the guests were not the usual friendly neighbors offering food or the kind salespeople trying to sell a product. Instead they were Japanese soldiers wearing green uniforms, carrying a bayonet on one hand and a Japanese flag on the other. They break the wooden door and march into her house, heading towards the stairs to destroy the house from top to bottom. Immediately the caretaker’s baby begins to cry. She runs over to carry her and together they hide under the dinner table. Before long, she beings to cry with her and the screeching cries startle the soldiers. At the foot of the staircase, the soldiers start talking in Japanese and one points to the door. In an instant they leave and the children stop crying, sniffling and gasping for breath. The mothers, unaware of what had happened until they had heard the cries, come downstairs and embrace their children.

“It was life-changing. Looking back on it now, I was really scared I was going to die but I was lucky the baby and I started crying,” my grandmother, Mu Juan Huang, reminisces about her frightening encounter with the soldiers. The soldiers’ intentions were not to kill, but to intimidate the people and destroy the house to obtain firewood to make dinner. There had been rumors, no, facts, that most young men were captured to do strenuous labor and women were captured as a source of entertainment and pleasure. Because of this, women smeared dirt on their faces to make themselves less than appealing. My grandmother’s older sisters and brothers left the area to avoid being captured and tortured by the Japanese, leaving only my grandmother’s mother and her in the house. “The experience was traumatizing”, she adds, smiling at the thought of being uninjured and alive.

“The Japanese were so superstitious,” she chuckles. When the soldiers heard the children crying, they quickly left and tore down the house next door. The Japanese believed that the cries would chase away good luck and fortune and therefore did not persist in ruining my grandmother’s house. The house was grand, unusual for an impoverished family that grew up in a provincial farm village. To my grandmother, the house symbolized everything and nothing. It was the only thing that her family had. The house was evidence of her grandfather’s hard work in America. He had made enough money in America to build a house back in China to shelter his family. Each month he would bring several cans of salmon to his family.

She ate the salmon, savoring and remembering the taste forever. As a child, she had admired her grandfather for coming to America to make a living as an immigrant. She became exposed to what she thought as good food and saw his financial success. After the death of her grandfather and the abandonment of the house, she arrives in America and looks for the same delicious taste of salmon that she had tasted decades ago. After her daughters were employed and money started circulating at home, she bought loads of canned salmon to find and recreate the same taste but never found it. Her daughters say, “Because you were impoverished you thought it was really good but now after coming to America, you are no longer in poverty, so you cannot find the same taste.”

Today she lives with her daughters, son, and grandchildren. When her children went to make money to support the mortgage, food, furniture and family expenses, she took care of her three grandchildren who were born within 13 months. She taught them to be well-mannered and kind, yet aggressive and confident. She never hit them or scolded them when they got in trouble; instead, she made them stand against the wall for what seemed like hours on end to repent for their mistakes. As my sisters, cousins, and I grew up, we constantly heard the story of how my grandmother was directly involved with the Japanese when she was 6 years old, how she treasured the house that her grandfather worked so hard to build and maintain, how she came to America hoping for success and how she disciplined us to be better people. Today, the house still stands in China. After the Japanese left China, the Communists dominated and took control of one-half of the house, leaving the other half for her family. My parents tell me that life was cruel at the time; poverty flourished in my grandmother’s native village of Sun Woi in the Guangdong province of China.

Each week, my grandma would throw in an ancient Chinese proverb that my older sister, cousin and I have never heard. The most recent adage she told me was “A book holds a house of gold.” Another included “Perseverance can reduce an iron rod to a sewing needle.” Over time, these sayings interminably buzzed in my ear and I learned to understand what they meant. “Study hard and get a better future”. “Success is won through long-term commitment and diligent effort sustained over time.” From these proverbs, I strove to do well in school, persevere through life’s strenuous obstacles, apprize and spend time with my loved ones and embrace my identity as part of two cultures. No matter what I do or where I go, I will always keep these Sundays and proverbs in mind, as well as my Grandma. I respect her for the struggles she has gone through and the life she had lived in China. Through her past experiences in China as a young child and her present experiences in America as a parent and grandmother, I have come to realize who she is – a strong woman with multiple roles.

My cousin (left), her daughter (center), and her husband (right).

May 17, 1988.
On the morning of Xiao Yan Li’s (李小燕) eighteenth birthday, the air, diffusing through the opaque windows, was as hot and suffocating as normal. There were no signs of celebration. Not even a tinge of love did she feel, as she watched her mother, preparing her younger brother and sister for school. She envied their boiled eggs and new school uniforms. Soon, she was bored at the sight of it, for she knew that she would never be treated the same and that going to school was just a dream. For many mornings and nights, she had thought about the same fantasy of going to school, meeting new friends, and reaching above the low ceiling of her potential. But she now quit, for it was no longer a dream of a teenager girl. She had finally become an adult, and her dreams and wishes had now all been shattered and destroyed into millions of pieces. She was angry and hateful, not toward her parents who had lost affection since she was born, but toward herself and the harshness of the reality.

At noon Xiao Yan was in a room all by herself, the only time without cold supervision and bitter sarcasm from her mother. At the age of eighteen, she became a professional needlewoman and a dispassionate working machine. She was working tirelessly in the house. Though she earned fifteen yuans a day, she never had a penny in her pocket. Her parents would use all the money to provide for their family. An old neighbor came by the door that day, as usual, and brought in more clothes for her to sew. Xiao Yan did not know how long she must have waited for the delivery. Seeing the neighbor at the door comforted her. It became an illusion that for a moment, she was ordinary. Soon the neighbor left the front door, and her life went back to reality. For the next six hours of her life she would only be dedicated to sewing, free of mind, body, and dreams. Xiao Yan looked at the locked refrigerator and front door– tears oozing down her cheeks and penetrating through her rugged clothing. Looking at her scarred hand, she wondered how long she could bear her isolation from the outside world.

Xiao Yan had never left the house for the past few years, partially because she was albino. Her permanent white hair and crossed eyes at the time of birth had humiliated the parents and reminded them of this shameful memory everyday whenever they caught the sight of her. Her mother had even suggested to Xiao Yan’s grandmother to drown Xiao Yan when she was still an infant. Though the grandmother later persuaded the mother to raise the young Xiao Yan herself, she was sent back to her mother once she was capable of babysitting her siblings. For the parents, locking her in the house was the best option for them to hide the fact from the public. Often relatives would come to the house, and Xiao Yan would hide upstairs. She, too, was embarrassed by her frightful physical appearance.

Later that night, the parents came home arguing downstairs. Five more hours and Xiao Yan would become eighteen. She had never expected her parents to buy a cake for her after all these years ignoring her existence. Still, she hoped the mother would allow her to cook herself a noodle soup with red colored egg. She never recaptured that same hope again after the mother ran upstairs. Without explanation, she started beating Xiao Yan. “Because of you, my husband looks down on me,” the mother screamed in anger. What was left of her, after the beating, was a young girl without love and passion.

For the next two days, Xiao Yan had no food, and the parents took away all her remaining allowance, fearing that she would escape. On the third day, a neighbor, who saw what happened, gave her 10 yuans. Xiao Yan saw hope from this money, though she did not where she could escape to.  She feared that if she had escaped to a relative’s house, his parents would eventually find her. But she was determined to escape; with 10 Yuan in her hand, anything was possible for her.

At five o’clock in the morning on May 20th, Xiao Yan was prepared to leave the house and her misery behind her. Though she didn’t have any extra clothes or savings on her, 10 Yuan was enough, especially for a desperate young adult who could no longer endure the oppression of mind and body. As she made for the front door, she heard footsteps from upstairs, in the parents’ bedroom. Each footstep came with rising anxiety. After making sure that her father was going to the bathroom upstairs, Xiao Yan opened the front door. It had been a long time since she had inhaled the fresh air. This would be her first journey, alone, to see the world that had almost closed its door on her.

Xiao Yan ran as fast as she could to the harbor, bare footed. Unsure of what her future might be, she boarded the ship to Tang Xia, a town where no one knew her. For the next four years of her life, she spent her time at the Buddhist convent. She was convinced that the world she lived in was meaningless and cruel. She wondered why the siblings who were also albino received better treatment than her. In reality, Xiao Yan did not have the worst physical appearance among her siblings; she was the only one with the burden of misery and rejection.

I knew my cousin Xiao Yan since I was barely able to walk on my own. Prior to interviewing my mother, I never noticed her disability. Not until a few weeks ago did I learn that Xiao Yan’s parents were first cousins. Because of this marriage, Xiao Yan inherited albinism from her grandfather. Though she would bring me home from Kindergarten, she never discussed her life before she started working for my mother, at the age of 24. This memoir helped me to clarify all the disconnected memories I had about my cousin. I had always known the tension between Xiao Yan and her parents, but never understood why she was never invited to any of my aunt’s family celebrations. For the past few years since my family moved to America, my mother still keeps in close contact with her on telephone and gives her financial support.

In the world we live today, we often ignore what is surrounding us, even if it’s free of charge. I had the opportunity to visit the exhibition Art and Love in the Italian Renaissance, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though the Renaissance occurred hundreds of years ago, the values of marriage and family were preserved through the paintings and jewelries at the exhibition. Though I had limited knowledge of the culture during that time period, the exhibition guided me to learn the culture not from words but with my own eyes.

From the Portrait of a Woman and a Man at a Casement, painted by Fra Filippo Lippi, I noticed a common trend among all the paintings. They were not only about the artificial life of the upper class; instead the Italian Renaissance focused on the private life as well the customs of marriage. The portrait of a couple was one of the earliest surviving double portraits, and it emphasized the details of the  clothing of the newlyweds as well as the element of the unknown.  The woman was covered in gold accessories, with the word loyalty placed on her flowing drapery.  Contrasted to the clear usage of the clothing to symbolize the importance of marriage, the portrait left many questions that continued to puzzle me. While the painter placed the woman in the middle of the portrait, he intentionally placed the man in the left corner, with his head sticking out of the window. Though I did not what the painter intended to achieve by placing the woman in the middle, I believed that it represented the fidelity of the wife to the husband. With the wife occupying more space than the husband, I believed that the painter was trying to show that the husband, on the contrary, was unfaithful to the wife. While the wife looked at the husband, he looked away at something else.

With keen observation, I found the paintings at the exhibition to be engaging. For most of my time at the exhibition, I focused on a few paintings and tried to interpret the real essence behind them. I think what makes history special is that we can always have a different interpretation on of it.

Going through Susan Meiselas’s work at the International Center of Photography (ICP) was truly breathtaking. Never before have I been exposed to such “in your face” photography. I was taken back with one of her works, her Carnival Strippers project, but Meiselas’s other piece about the political revolutions down in Central America did more than tell a story, her photos put the viewer in the story.

Susan Meiselas is a very well educated woman, having earned her masters degree in visual education at Harvard University. Her first major work which essentially introduced her to the world, was her Carnival Strippers project mentioned before. In this project, she focused on the lives of strippers at fairs across the New England area. Her work offered a new vantage point of strippers, making it out to be something revolutionary. Meiselas was both straight forward and not withholding with her photography style – she is up close and personal. This style of hers carried over to her future works as well. In her documentary of Kurdistan, Meiselas took pictures of burning cars, deeply dug graves riddled with bodies, and a slew of other revealing photographs. Meiselas covered the Nicaraguan insurrection as well. Not only did she do photo-journalism, she helped direct two films that were integral to her journalistic agenda, “Living at Risk: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family” and “Pictures from a Revolution.”

Susan Meiselas is known throughout the world, having had exhibitions in countries as far as Japan and France. She is also the recipient of many honoraries, such as the Engelman Award from the Institute of Contemporary Art. Meiselas helped shed light on various global issues, and as a freelance photographer for the prestigious Magnum, she continues to do so.