'Compartment C And Woman Reading On A Bench'

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe they are worth far more than that. Pictures, although seemingly simple in nature, are extremely complex. Far too often, people overlook what a picture truly is. When a person looks at an image, they most likely see only the image, nothing else. Many people do not look deep enough into an image to fully comprehend the true meaning of it. However, when an individual begins to truly study an image in an attempt to understand the true complexity of it, they will be surprised at what they overlooked before. As stated by French Realist Painter, Gustave Courbet, “Fine art is knowledge made visible.”

Aztecs Beliefs ⁃ Creation story The Aztecs believed that several worlds or Suns existed prior to today’s present world. There was originally the void, in which the god Ometecuhtli created themselves, and had children. To fully finish the universe, a world, or a Sun, was created, but it got destroyed. Each of the four Suns all ended in catastrophe after their creation. After all this destruction, the gods decided to all come together and sacrifice themselves for the creation of the fifth Sun, or today’s world.

Art by its nature is a subject of the philosophical, social, economic, political or religious context surrounding its creator. More often than not, a work of art addresses a specific topic or somewhat revolves around a particular person. Therefore, it is impossible to separate the context of a piece of painting, either historical or cultural, to its intrinsic value or the artwork's meaning. On the other hand, different cultures and time utilized specific conventions that govern the representation of objects of creativity. This essay highlights various pieces of art and their relationship to particular cultural, political, economic, or social settings. Moreover, it pinpoints how different times influence art presentation.

While walking around on the second floor of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, I came across the portrait, “The Figure of a Girl in Blue” (portrait of Miss Minnie Clark) which was painted by Thomas Wilmer Dewing circa 1892. It stood out from the rest of the paintings, because it was a portrait of a woman amongst various paintings of nature and landscapes. She is trying to embody being a woman of high society, but the details of the portrait indicate otherwise. As I observed the portrait more closely I questioned why she would she would want to portray herself as something she is not. After spending some time and making more detailed observations of the woman’s characteristics, the the artistic technique, and the paintings surrounding, it lead me to think more analytically and understand the meaning behind the portrait of Miss Minnie Clark.

The Starry Night (fig.1), painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1889, and Fountain (fig. 2), created by Marcel Duchamp in 1914, are generally known as Modern Art. The professor Nalini Rao always taught her students about the importance of analyzing artworks by various viewpoints in order to appreciate underlying purposes of each artwork and how artworks are created, and The Starry Night and Fountain actually have both similarities and differences. While both Vincent van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp used new methods for depicting and reinterpreting the world, they differ in their reasons why they used new techniques. Duchamp is the pioneer of Modern Art because his artwork is more related to modern society than Van Gogh’s.

Even though this was my first trip to the Museum of Fine Arts and second to any art museum, I could tell that it was a unique place. After walking through the thick, futuristic glass doors into the first exhibit, I was awestruck with the sheer amount of paintings on displays. In all directions, there were hundreds of paintings lining the walls. Even though there are so many paintings, each one was aesthetically pleasing and representative of mastery of the craft. Surprisingly, after taking a closer look at each painting, I realized beauty could not possibly be contingent on superficial aesthetics. Even though all the paintings were well-thought out and executed, each one made me reflect beyond the paint strokes, colored shapes, and even the

The second artwork that caught my attention was Piet Mondrian’s piece titled, Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray, 1921, a Cubist-inspired painting, expressing balance and tension of form and color. At this time, Mondrian created many similar paintings, same form, same abstract and same palette, consisting the colors white, black, gray, and three primary colors, with the composition constructed from thick, black horizontal and vertical lines that delineated the outlines of the various rectangles of color. Reflecting a lot upon Mondrian’s piece titled, Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray, and Blue 1921, sharing the same rectangular and cubist shapes, color, and abstract.The subjects of his paintings are down

One pleasant afternoon, my classmates and I decided to visit the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to begin on our museum assignment in world literature class. According to Houston Museum of Fine Art’s staff, MFAH considers as one of the largest museums in the nation and it contains many variety forms of art with more than several thousand years of unique history. Also, I have never been in a museum in a very long time especially as big as MFAH, and my experience about the museum was unique and pleasant. Although I have observed many great types and forms of art in the museum, there were few that interested me the most.

In our course book, Van Gogh was the father of expression. He expressed, “Painting things not as they are but as they feel.” (Lewis & Lewis, p. 391). I found in observing the many painting he made. Van Gogh was a very tortured soul. I was not impressed by the dark colored paintings. They were telling me he was a depressed, troubled man and made me feel depressed. The Vincent Van Gogh painting I have chosen is an oil canvas he made in Arles, France: June 1888. Van Gogh called it “Fishing Boats on the beach at Saintes-Maries. (Van Gogh Gallery, 2015). I felt by looking at this painting it was different from the others. The fishing boats on the beach seemed to be clearer and detailed to my eyes. The colors he used seemed to be on an even and bright

In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger, an English art critic, argues that images are important for the present-day by saying, “No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer literature” (10). John Berger allowed others to see the true meaning behind certain art pieces in “Ways of Seeing”. Images and art show what people experienced in the past allowing others to see for themselves rather than be told how an event occurred. There are two images that represent the above claim, Arnold Eagle and David Robbins’ photo of a little boy in New York City, and Dorothea Lange’s image of a migratory family from Texas; both were taken during the Great Depression.

I have been blessed with such an opportunity, to view the art of the “modern man.” I am taken to a location called the SoHo Contemporary Art Museum, where I am placed before a picture of a man by the name of Charlie Chaplin. As I study the painting, the colors catch my eye in ways that I am not accustomed to. They are vibrant and catch the viewer 's eye in such a way that makes your eyes gaze outwards, but then lures them back to the image of the man standing in the center.

Architectural qualities of the Guggenheim Museum in New York have an expressional capability of conveying meaning onto its user. William Whyte suggests that this is able to be read as a language, related directly to its spatial features and geometries. This essay attempts to examine the Guggenheim’s meaning in a contextual framework of time, through the medium of photography. Discussing critical interpretation at the time of the Guggenheim’s completion, and how socio-cultural changes have translated different means of understanding the architecture and its language, and importantly, whether this is a good thing or not. Meaningful interpretation of architecture has been suggested by Whyte to be readable, complex across different sets of media, and subject to change throughout time. The contrasts of the photographic medium in the 1950s with today’s era vary greatly in terms of accessibility, abundance, and publishing control. Architectural photography in the 50s was placed in edited sources, Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Journals, Advertisements, whereas today images of architectural photography are largely obtained through online search engines such as Google Images, and Flikr. Some key questions examined in the essay relate to the intent of the photographer, production bias, and the medium in which the photograph is presented and how this has an affect on the way in which the Guggenheim was likely understood at the time of its opening, and how it is read today, by users

Have you ever had a painting that really spoke to you? When I visited the David Owsley Art Museum there was one painting in particular that stuck out to me, it was: Right Bird Left by Lee Krasner. This painting made me feel happy and gave me a lot of energy during the time I was at the museum. The reason I was happy and energized was because the painting conveyed extremely bright colors. I am a fan of these colors, which gave me a sense of joy and the energy. It caught the attention of my eye by using several different visual elements to depict an abstract representation art piece. Along with that, it used the principles of design to help the visual elements play out and work in the painting, allowing those elements to be depicted to my human eye correctly. This piece resembled bird feathers, but the artist used many different techniques to provide a bigger underlying meaning that was hiding behind such a complex painting. This piece was one of the first to the start off my learning abilities of how to understand and appreciate artwork for what it is truly worth.

The two arts work displayed at Los Angeles County Museum of Art have been selected to demonstrate how figures of human beings are portrayed through artwork. Both artworks are analyzed to see that how far they are similar and different to each other but still hold true to their own philosophies, ethics and values to create a definite style. Thomas Eakins painting Wrestlers, 1899, oil on canvas, 122.9 × 152.4 cm and Mary Cassatt painting Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child, 1880, oil on canvas, 121.76 × 87.95 × 12.07 cm have been selected to represent a figural concept in American

In ancient society, the established hierarchy placed men above women. Women were, for the most part, defined by their role as wives and mothers, their ability to bear children giving them worth and social recognition. As stated by Ovid’s Niobe, her children made her “worthy of praise and [the] envy of men and women everywhere” (Ovid 110), highlighting their importance not only for ancient women but for society in general. Since children are the key to continuing a bloodline or people, women’s reproductive capacities made them essential. While motherhood was an occupation which both involved and was dictated by men, pregnancy and childbirth are things that no man can imitate, ultimately making them a purely female domain. For example, there are several instances in which a female immortal conceives without male participation, such as when Hera “bore [Hephaistos] without making love” (___Hesiod 87 line 932____) and when Gaia gave “birth to the barren, raging Sea without any sexual love” (____Hesiod 64 line 131). Furthermore, Artemis’ statue in her temple in Ephesus seems to uphold this idea (___Lecture___). The goddess’ statue is covered in what many scholars believe to be breasts which is typically considered to be a symbol of fertility (__Dr. Lecture___). The fact that a chaste goddess such as Artemis, who turned Actaeon into a stag and caused his own dogs to tear him apart simply for glimpsing the goddess bathing (_____Ovid____), could also be a fertility symbol emphasizes