The Adventures of Tulip, Interlude
Jun. 16th, 2022 07:20 amTulip is taking a break from Lordran while I go to Toronto.
I was just saying to a friend on Twitter that Dark Souls has become the education about European art history that I always wanted. The architecture is so beautiful that I've been looking up the real-world references, and I've been learning a lot.
I have a fairly solid education in East Asian art history, and I love Japanese architecture so much it's unreal. What's cool about architecture in Japan is that, like... I'm not sure how to put this. So you know how, when you go to like a museum or a botanical garden, and they have a Japanese teahouse or something, they'll have cordons around it so that no one touches it? In Japan, it's the exact opposite. They'll be like, "This is the oldest and largest extant wooden building in the world, and it's built without a single metal nail, and it's still in active use, so come on and put your hands and feet all over it, also would you like to sit down on this thousand-year-old veranda and have some tea." The same thing goes for Japanese ceramics. You'll be casually having tea with someone, and they'll just randomly be like, "Oh yeah, that cup is four hundred years old." And the same goes for more recent architecture, where there will be a beautiful Victorian-style brick building from the Meiji period housing a café where you can get beer and pancakes.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that art history is more interesting if it's something you can touch for yourself. And for me, Dark Souls is exactly that sort of experience.
I was just saying to a friend on Twitter that Dark Souls has become the education about European art history that I always wanted. The architecture is so beautiful that I've been looking up the real-world references, and I've been learning a lot.
I have a fairly solid education in East Asian art history, and I love Japanese architecture so much it's unreal. What's cool about architecture in Japan is that, like... I'm not sure how to put this. So you know how, when you go to like a museum or a botanical garden, and they have a Japanese teahouse or something, they'll have cordons around it so that no one touches it? In Japan, it's the exact opposite. They'll be like, "This is the oldest and largest extant wooden building in the world, and it's built without a single metal nail, and it's still in active use, so come on and put your hands and feet all over it, also would you like to sit down on this thousand-year-old veranda and have some tea." The same thing goes for Japanese ceramics. You'll be casually having tea with someone, and they'll just randomly be like, "Oh yeah, that cup is four hundred years old." And the same goes for more recent architecture, where there will be a beautiful Victorian-style brick building from the Meiji period housing a café where you can get beer and pancakes.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that art history is more interesting if it's something you can touch for yourself. And for me, Dark Souls is exactly that sort of experience.