Look Pass the Label
A few weeks ago, I visited the Museum of Modern Art. As I was going through the second exhibition a particular painting caught my attention. Still life with three puppies by Paul Gauguin was titled. My first encounter with this painting was through the title, which made me create negative hypothesis on what the painting was depicting. When looking at this painting all I could think about was my lack of fascination towards animals, especially puppies, while the person standing next to me was sighing and smiling about according to her “how cute the puppies are”. Unlike that person, I am not an admirer of puppies and as result I move quickly from the painting. However, as I made a second round on the exhibition, this time when I saw the painting I was beginning to notice things like shapes, symbols and colors and immediately forgot about my initial reaction. I begin to realize that there might be more to the painting than what I originally saw, but I have been blind from my initial judgments.
In my second observation I was able to look pass this initial judgments drawn by the title. The title “Still Life with Three Puppies” confirm my assumptions about the painting and prevented me from continuing seeing what the painting is trying to depict. This name limited my thinking and didn’t allow me to see the painting from what it is.
In the still life with three puppies, Paul Gauguin painted the entire canvas white and then added some color by painting blue
The settings and environments of the documentary Painted Babies position the viewer to respond to how beauty
In art, there are qualities that speak louder than words. It expresses many different messages and emotions and each person has an experience different from the next. In this paper, I will be discussing two artworks I encountered. The piece is a good example of how people can encounter different experiences in one piece. I attended the Orlando Museum of Art a while back with family and overall enjoyed my experience. On my visit, I found the museum quite impressive and felt a deep connection with specific pieces.
In a world that has become immune to accepting all types of art, Marya Mannes believes we have lost our standards and ability to identify something as “good” or “bad”. In her essay, “How Do You Know It’s Good”, she discusses society’s tendency to accept everything out of fear of wrongly labelling something as being good or bad. She touches on various criteria to judge art, such as the artist’s purpose, skill and craftsmanship, originality, timelessness, as well as unity within a piece rather than chaos. She says that an individual must decide if something is good “on the basis of instinct, experience, and association” (Mannes). I believe that by using standards and the process of association, we will be able to judge what makes an art piece good in comparison to others. However, Mannes forces me to consider the difference between what may be appealing versus what is actually good, and when deciding which art we should accept, which is truly more important. I believe that “good” and “bad” are two ends of a large, subjective spectrum of grey area. It is possible for a piece of art to be good in some areas and bad in others, and if something does not live up to all of our standards, it does not necessarily mean it should be dismissed. Thus, I believe my personal standards for judging art are based on which my standards are largely based on the personal reaction evoked from a piece of art. Though I agree with Mannes’ standards to an extent, I believe that certain standards, such as evoking a personal response, can be more telling of if a piece of art is good as opposed to its timelessness, or the level of experience of an artist in his/her craft.
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.”
To begin with the analysis, we must look at the general shape of this piece of art is very 2D meaning its flat and it has some well-defined lines. As you look at it you can see that it is not balanced and not proportionate. The subjects are identifiable. There are three people in this piece of work along with a dog. As you look at it you can see a mother and her two children and their family dog. One child is sitting on the dog and the other girl is looking ar her sister while the mother watches them closely. You can clearly see a narrative being portrayed on the canvas because the two girls are looking at one another. The style is realism because their features are not over drawn to exaggerate a body part. The title relates to the piece of art because it’s a picture of a woman and her children. The message is conveyed very clearly and the style is very realistic looking.
We can also see the use of black shades to create a hole at the bottom part of the rock. With his excellent use of colors, we can identify the good, healthy and green grass from the bad, unhealthy, brown grasses. Looking beyond the main focus of the painting, he uses colors to separate the sky from the land in the background creating a solid form of perspective on the painting. He also uses colors to create water forms as seen behind the young character. Now, for the sky, he uses shades of white to magnificently differentiate the thick clouds from the light ones. He also uses this to create a source to light to the whole area. All these put together creates a splendid, realistic and familiar atmosphere for the viewers to relate with.
17. On my museum experience, I took it in like every other visit to the museum I have ever had: much like other children expressed wonder and amazement at a circus performance or sports game; I was awestruck and mesmerized by the colors, the atmosphere, and the same restrained joy that I felt evident in the eyes of all the other observers. My girlfriend and I made our way through the museum, blending in with crowds of other viewers to see Cezanne, Gauguin, Brueghel, O’Keefe and the like in the permanent collection, making time to go from one end of the spectrum to the other. But my heart has always had a soft spot for
Frans Snyders created the painting Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits, and Vegetables in a Market, 1614. At first glance, the painting depicts a horde of dead animals on top of a table, morbidly displayed. With the abundance of food placed on the table, the small section of the painting with the child pickpocketing creates a sense of enragement in the viewers. The animals set on the table such as the swan and the hog notify the readers that these animals are not for common people, but for the wealthy. Setting the painting before a fancy dinner, and in the process before has the viewers infer of the good life of those eating the animals but the struggle of the man and the boy.
Intrinsically intriguing as the artworks and themes are for many viewers, what lies with greater uniqueness is the visual context of art, as emphasized by Helena. Artworks, despite the era or time period, are always initially distinguished based on the surface; for example, what’s present and what’s going on. As I tour the Grohmann Museum with Helena, I was taught to look at the furthest distance in the portrait rather than the surface.
Imitating the expressive shading and strong example used by Paul Gauguin, his point was to investigate a type of beautifying painting. Called the Nabis (Hebrew for "prophets"), his impression on French craftsmanship was quick yet permanent. The Nabis seperated around 1900, and Bonnard would spend the next forty-seven years looking for the right expression as a painter. Bonnard clearly admitted that he could only paint the familiar such as taking tea, feeding a cat, leaning to the dinner table. He did drawings of his subjects, recording notes about how the moment felt, or the climate, or shading connections, and in some cases, up until 1920, he took photos, catching a painting or drawing of a moment . In any case, he painted entirely from memory,
This paper will take a look at Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931. As the viewer can tell, this is a story of time and life. The memories start in the background where all is well and things are straight and calm. Moving on to the cliff, the observer possibly sees a well-behaved teenager. There is nothing horrible here that leads the spectator to gasp, and the viewer knows this person made it through that time in their life. Then the picture moves on to the age of about twenty, the memories are fond but in the distant past. The memories are protected by a white blanket so that they do not just fall into the background. Then something happened where the person had some
After Reading Camera Lucida written by Roland Barthes, I was both confused and interested by his ideas. Though I did not understand much of the book, I was able to take a couple of his ideas and really think about how I see photos. In the future, I intend to use these ideas when I look at photos. One of his ideas that I was able to understand is the way he looks at pictures. The other one is his second definition of punctum.
As onlookers peer into the artworks in front of them, there is no question as to whether or not they considered what the artwork means, where it came from and what the artist was interested in who created it. The
After getting over my initial reluctance, I got butterflies in my stomach. This was only the 2nd time I’d been to an art museum, so I wanted to make the most of it. When we first arrived, we looked around at some paintings. I visited an exclusive temporary exhibit of Edvard Munch which included a surprising amount of paintings of naked women. Nothing caught my eye in the first few galleries, but then I stumbled on an exhibit called “In Character” by Nam June Paik. As soon as I walked in, I got embarrassingly excited. I constantly had to stop myself from running around the museum like a madman. All the TV sculptures and simple, childlike drawings had been just so incredible to me. The piece that I really enjoyed the most was a sculpture called “Self-Portrait.”
The area of art is popularly known for heightening emotions, challenging stereotypes, and ultimately providing insights into how individuals view the surrounding world. The artist and the observer time and time again see pieces in overwhelmingly different ways. Individuals may wonder why this is so. What could possibly create such a drastic change from one perspective to another? When it comes down to it, experiences are the answer. The artist and the observer have different