I have to say while really observing Rachel Ruysch Fruits and Insects I was reminded of many things one of them has to be the cycle of life. I love how she uses color and textures to show life and death in the flowers and fruit. Including insects really brought the paintings to life by showing movement and how their drawn to the fruits and dark shadows cast by fruits and flowers’. I really enjoy how Ruysch shows both life and death, by adding fresh ripped fruit vibrant colors and new life such as the eggs and small butterflies she shows the beginning of life as well as life as its peek I say that because the fruit is just right one more week and it will end up like the dead flowers. The way she displays death is very beautiful and sudden she used earth tones and soft strokes to paint the dead flowers to cast dark areas the style reminds me of romanticism using neoclassical colors .

Rene Membreno-Canales art I must say is very heavy handed and in your face. I never got the feeling that he was glorifying the food and showing life and death Canales wants to discus war and make you uncomfortable at the dinner table. I almost get the feeling of like how dare you be enjoying this wine and cheese while people are dying .the use of weapons of mass destruction shows that this is in no way suddel he wasn’t to make were aware of the hell hole he has gone through and it almost show to me that he used religion to get by with the use of wine, grapes, bread and brass cups in some of his pieces.

Dutch still life painting shows a meaning of life with animals or plants or the state it is currently in. Most paintings show a dead animal or dead plant next to a live organism. For example, in Rachel Ruysch painting Fruit and Insects, 1711, there are lively pants and animals and there’s a few dead leaves behind the grapes. The eggs at the bottom depicts life and the slowly dead leaves represents death.

He wants to show it because it shows life and death. In his first photo, he is shown and a table full of grapes, a tusk, a wine cup and strawberries. The tusk represents death and a bowl of grapes and strawberries depicts life.

The painting creates a metaphor by using metaphorical objects that was easily translated by the audience in which she painted for. In the pieces displayed, the background are often very vague, and not important. They all have very concentrated palettes.

Hector uses the style by adding his own twist with it. Since his story was very similar to the style it was a very was adaption of the two. The work made by hector does have some links to the style in a very modern day relation and he uses the style correctly. For the image about “the creation” i believe that the photo was not heavy handed, but very slick in its execution.

Describe in your own words the style of Dutch 17th and 18th Century still life painting. How does this painting style create a metaphor for mortality? Be specific and use as evidence things you can observe in the Rachel Ruysch painting Fruit and Insects, 1711 or the Jan van Huysum painting, Vase with Flowers, c. 1718-20.

Why and how does Hector Rene Membreno-Canales use the style of Dutch still life painting and the idea of Vanitas in his series Hegemony or Survival? Do you think the use of this style and the implied Vanitas metaphor for mortality is effective or heavy-handed? Please state clear reasons for your answer.

In this excerpt from Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire, he reveals the mystery of the food chain and how it’s being administrated. Things that consumers usually take for granted such as buying potatoes and planting them appear to be much more complicated under federal regulation. He also expresses the concern about potato plants, under Environmental Protection Administration, are considered as pesticides. It brings our attention to the safety of the food we eat everyday.

The dramatic changes in agricultural production and productivity not only have an impact on us- the consumers, but also cause harms to the American farmers’ health and financial stability. As a solution for those issues, the agricultural biotechnology companies such as NewLeaft propose a new generation of plants with engineered genes that can act as pesticides against insects and diseases. That revolution can create a totally new notion of  so-called Information age of Agricultural in which a company has the right to own and take control over the plants’ gene information. If that happens, what will the price be ?