Welcome to Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University!

Alright, since I have had the day off from classes, I thought I would take some pictures of the hall and let everyone see where I am living and studying. So here is a brief tour. More from Oxford later probably, as I see new and cool things. These are just pictures from my college in Oxford.

Okay, the top picture is of the building I stay in, with my room being the one on the second floor, the window in the middle of the picture. It has a pretty sweet set-up from the outside, now I am working on making it the ultimate Oxford bachelor pad - suggestions? The second and third pictures are of the main building of Wycliffe Hall, where most of the activities like teaching and library stuff go on. My building and one other building make up the College, all right next to each other. Second picture is the back of the main building, walking from my room to it, and third is the front entrance.

Inside the main buliding: first is one of the lecture rooms where we take our lectures during the week. We don't have nearly as many lectures as in the States because most of the work is meant to be independent research. Interesting. To the right is the dinning hall where the entire college takes its meals. Every dinner is a more formal occasion, sitting down together and such, but we don't wear the gown like other colleges do. Then we have our chapel where we meet for worship everyday before classes start. It is amazing!

Well, it is having trouble putting in the pictures of my room, so you will have to use your imagination for now. Keywords you can work with: red, fire, dragon, ball-Z, Calvin, Not Drinking Water (yeah right), and $26 towel. Let me know what you come up with. Black and white sketches are fine.

So that is the place and everything is going great. We start classes on Monday for orientation week, and then off to the grind next week with real classes. Until then, cheers!

I Can't Believe I Just Paid $26 For A Towel!

Okay, so this is my first post from Oxford (!), and I have to say everything has been pretty sweet so far. This place is unbelievable, and by unbelievable I mean expensive (or totally awesome). So I will list a few pros and cons so far, just to give you a taste of an American gone bloke (or broke?):

Pros:
1. Oxford is the most amazing town in the world. Learning and erudition is around every corner, especially in the Pubs (today I bought a fruit drink and I was told only women buy it. Here's to not drinking!).

2. My room is gigantic! I don't have internet in there yet or I would put a picture up, but it is great. Plus, the hall way right in front of my door always smells like powdered doughnuts. Ummm....doughnuts.

3. You get to call all the professors by their first names. Awesome. Alister? Sitting at the same lunch table? Plus, the Old Testament professor is going to teach me how to play squash. Sweet.

Cons:
1. Everything is twice as much if not more than what it costs in the states. The cheapest towel in Oxford costs £13, or roughly 5 billion American dollars. Unreal. I used my undershirt the first day, but I had to suck it up and buy one for long term use. I am still trying the find the diamonds hidden in the lining, they have to be there...

2. I only have to walk up two flights to go to the restroom and shower! Plus, all showers were designed in the 1200s when people were only 4 feet tall. All those pencil diving routines we did as kids are paying off big time.

3. Being friendly to a British person means not saying hi. Apparently when you introduce yourself you are not supposed to give your name, because that would be too arrogant of you. This leads to awkward starts of conversation with references to "you there" and "hotness."

So basically everything is really expensive and I almost run into people three times a day because I am walking on the right side of the sidewalk. But other than that Oxford is totally amazing and I am really excited to start my course of study (and squash) next week. Once I get my computer up and going I will add images, but I leave you with an image of the most expensive towel in the hsitory of the world:

Or not. Apparently blogger doesn't like UK pages. Blimey!

Where Art Thou?

So Buffalo is home to one of the best modern art galleries in the country, The Albright-Knox Gallery, which is full of amazing pieces of art like this:

I mean, it is a bunch of doughnuts on a plate under a light. Wow! Inspirational! Outstanding! I don't think so. But it makes you think about the definition of art. What is art, anyways?

In one of the concluding passages of The Beauty of the Infinite, David Bentley Hart compares the "optics of the market" with the "optics of Christ", and one of the comparisons he makes is between "conceptual" art and "real" art. First a little background on the optics:

"To be drawn to the beauty of Christ is to encounter with joy the infinite intensity, resistance, and generosity of his form, its enduring and radiant particularity; but the market embraces only forms that can be dissolved, displaced, and replaced. Beauty, as such, is really not a marketable commodity, anyways, because it excites a love that is made perfect in dispossession, that requires distance, and that is awakened by the sheer gratuity of what is given."

DBH sees the battle between "the market" (or the materialistic culture the West finds itself in) and "the form of Christ." Both are competing for aesthetic sway, but from different ends of the spectrum. The market sells cheap goods, quick fixes, and finite materialism wheras the form of Christ offers eternal beauty in conforming to his image and accepting his gifts, being brought into relation with the Triune God. DBH finds this comparison particularly evident in art today:

"modern 'conceptual art' - that perfect coincidence of intellectual banality, technical incompetence, and gustative philistinism - answers the demands of the market(evanescence, intrinsic poverty of merit, insipience, vulgarity, imbecility, pomposity)as no other kind of 'art' possibly can."

"Real art, though, in its true nature, by virtue of its intricacy, craft, and splendid inutility, repeats the gesture of creation, its gratuity, its generosity, its character as gift; art proclaims a delight more original than simple function."

Art, under DBH's lens, is nothing other than the reflection of creation, a poor man's mirror, a childish attempt to represent and declare the artwork of the Master. Art is to be defined according to how well it displays the creation, which in turn displays the Creator in His Triune motion. Art is an adventure into the divine, a human representation of the analogy of being that God gives to creation. This is true art, reflecting the Creator's strokes. Modern art on the other hand represents nothing, signifies nothing but the carnal and man-centred desires of the creature. It raises up not creation (and therefore the Triune God) but rather the passions and emotions and desires of the creatures. Art should force us to see the aesthetic in life and contemplate the Glory of God, not play on our own sensual abnormalities or banal affections. I mean, which one do you think best represents "art"?

Secondly, why are the two kids in the lower right of Velasquez's painting so ugly?