Visual Analysis Of Art By George Seurat

Julie Mehretu’s paintings are loosely termed history paintings by Douglas Fogle and called psychogeographies by the artist herself. A viewer is supposed to find something in themselves much like exploring a city and figuring things out for one’s own self-interest. Mehretu is quoted as saying “my aim is to have a picture that appears one way from a distance-almost like a cosmology, city, or universe from afar- but then when you approach the work, the overall image shatters into numerous other pictures, stories, and events. Historically drawing is seen as inferior to painting which makes it interesting that Julie Mehretu would employ so much drawing into her canvases because drawing is important to architectural drawings. How does the mapping nature of Julie Mehretu’s paintings convey a sense of identity in a very political nature and how is it a representation of the post colonialist world in which we inhabit? Scholars all seem to agree that Mehretu’s canvases are maps, but what do they seek to accomplish? My analysis of Mehretu’s Stadia III will use a biographical and post colonialist methodology to explore the ways in which Mehretu’s own upbringing and how the very nature of her map making, though very artificial, can be seen as a way of both bringing us together and giving those groups that have previously been neglected throughout history a voice.

One of the last topics we discussed in class turned out to be a form of art that probably interests me more than almost every other type of art that we have discussed this entire semester. That form of art is the impressionist style of painting. I really love all the different brush strokes that form different images for different people. I also enjoy much of the images that the impressionists painted, because they are usually very relaxed and mellow images that put you into a comfortable place. The post-impressionist period, especially very early post-impressionist, is even better I think. I think it’s better because it is just a little more refined and puts more emphasis on the figure and form of different objects. Since I enjoyed the post-impressionist’s

Jean-Francois Millet’s Potato Planters is a portrayal of two farmers; more likely husband and wife, planting seeding to grow potatoes during the day on their farm. This art has a lot of emphasis, movement, color, line, light, and depth.

I believe the artist used the yellow-green color for the cats coats to communicate that something bad could possibly happen if a nuclear war

Raymond Pettibon art work, Untitled (The bright flatness), on page 535 fig 25-35 shows a tiny surfer in an enormous wave in a California landscape. The subject matter is a large wave that a surfer is riding. The content of the artwork could be how people are a small compared to the big world we live in. I think this piece of art was painted on with watercolor and a type of paper. These lines in the artwork is very loose and free. These lines in the artwork reminds me of Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night lines in his artwork which are loose ,but the viewer can tell what the meaning of the picture is. In the artwork Untitled (The bright flatness) colors mostly used were the primary colors blue and red. The surfer is red and the waves of the ocean is blue. The wave color could be a local color that the viewers know the ocean color is blue. The blue color has different tints from dark blue to light blue. The wave in the art is three dimensional it represents the wave as if it was being seen in an ocean. In the picture, there is a highlight where the ocean has lighter white spots throughout the wave. Another highlight would be

    I chose George Rodrigue for my art showcase project, because his artwork was one of a kind. He was born on March 13th, the year of 1944. George was born in New Iberia in Louisiana. He spent most of his childhood life living there. George passed away in 2013, December 14th, unfortunately from lung cancer.

I believe that the artist is expressing himself when he is creating a painting, sculpture, drawing, etc. I also believe that art can be interpreted in many ways. One way that I thought an artist was able to express the way he thinks was through a drawing that was created by Otto Dix’s drawing Krigeskruppel (War Cripples). The time that Dix created this piece was the time of World War 1 (pg 40.) Dix was able to first see the effect that the war was having on soldiers. The drawing contains four men walking, to what seems to be downtown. The leader of the four men is smoking a large cigar and is needed the support of a cane because he is missing an arm and both of his legs, the next is man is also missing a leg and supporting himself by a cane.

“A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”, depicting the accumulation of individuals on the island of the Grande Jatte, was painted by Georges Seurat from 1884 to 1886. To create this painting, Seurat utilized multiple pure pigments, a canvas, and a technique called Pointillism. Pointillism is a technique of applying dots of pure paint on canvas.

Each one contains a subject matter of either urban scenes, landscapes or seashores. A Sunday on La Grande Jatte is his most famous painting and the one that set the stage for his new found techniques. The size of the painting was very much different than that of the smaller paintings of the Impressionists. It was huge for the time, roughly taking up an entire wall, the painting commanded attention from any viewer within the vicinity. The colors of the dots blend together optically by the viewer’s eyes to create a magnificently composed work of art.

In upper Paleolithic times in Europe, there was an insurrection in the construction of art. As was suggested by stalwart science writer, Lewin Rogers (1993) since 40,000 BC., there has been archaeological record that displays that structurally present-day humans excellently interchanged Neanderthals and persisted to be the lone hominid dwellers across continental Europe. The earliest art was constructed about this same time as it was directly linked to this development.

The two works of art that I have chosen to analyze are 1) Jordan Casteel. Miles and JoJo. 2014. Oil on canvas, 54” x 72” and 2) Aaron Fowler. He Was. 2015. Mixed media, 134” x 165” x 108”. The themes that these works of art represent in regards to the exhibit are love, family, and pain. However, they also fall into other thematic categories. The main theme that seems to apply to both “Miles and JoJo” and “He Was” is Human Experience. Additionally, these arts differ in some ways.

Shepard Fairey’s piece titled Pay Up or Shut Up is a representation of the role that money or your role in society dictate the power of your speech. This piece of art by Fairey was released in May of 2015. It is a screen print on cream speckletone paper.

While visiting the Art Institute of Chicago I viewed “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat. “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” is Georges Seurat’s best-known and largest painting. Georges Seurat depicted people relaxing in a suburban park on an island in the Seine River called La Grande Jatte. It took Seurat almost two years to paint. He began in 1884 with a layer of small horizontal brushstrokes of complementary colors. He later added small dots, also in complementary colors, that appear as solid and luminous forms when seen from a distance. This technique is known as “Pointillism.”

Memories can be as short-lived as the moments that created them. The recollection of events and the deterioration of memories over time is a constant process that cannot be stopped. This inevitable passing of memory is fused to the inevitable passing of human life. Emily Davis’s still life photograph of wineglasses is reflective and fragmented, allowing the image to act as a metaphor for this fleeting aspect of memory through its own memory-like qualities. The photograph is also symbolic of the transience of human life through the use of the traditional symbol of the wineglass, ultimately serving as memento mori.

One of the most influential graphic artists of their time was M.C. Escher. Many of his pieces include impossible geometric contradictions as well as mesmerizing architectural anomalies that would be almost impossible to duplicate in real life. Many of his pieces included perspective elements influenced with the use of mirrored surfaces creating distorted views of his own sight. A few pieces that stand out most are the Hand with Reflecting Sphere, Still Life and Street, Balcony, Bookplate, and Still Life with Mirror. Along with his art, his journey to becoming the artist he was known to be was an incredible story.