Northern Summer Window
Oli Canvas
Marsden Hartley
This picture attracted to me because i liked how the flowers weren't painted exactly how they would look in real life. The picture has a bad cartoon kind of look. Marsden spent his summers in Nova Scotia so they say this picture was most likely painted there.
Composition
Oil Canvas
Auguste Herein
This piece makes me think, I wasn't really sure what was going on so i decided to read the description and explained that Herein was a co founder of a group called Abstraction creation. The founders of this group declared their principle was they opposed "any element of explanation, anecdote, literature or naturalism" i defiantly got that sense when i first saw this.
Two Girls Reading
Oil Canvas
Pablo Picasso
This caught my eye first because its Pablo Picaso and he was one of the first artist that iv ever learned about so its always fun to look at his art. and second I love his way of distorted forms..it keeps my head thinking. When I look at this i get mother daughter feel. It made me smile because during this project I got to be with my mom.
Untitled (March 5th) #2
40-watt light bulbs,extension cords, porcelain light sockets
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Im not a very out of the box thinker so before I started all these art classes I always thought art had to be a painting or a sculpture. This piece proves I was wrong in so many ways..I enjoyed learning about the background of this piece. Gonzalez had a lover named Ross Laycock who was diagnose with ADDs..After they found out about it Gonzalez started making lots of art using objects like the ones portrayed up above. The plaque on the wall said this piece "Implicit romanticism of the works metaphor of two luminous, connected bodies-evoking those of Gonzalez and Laycock-is tempered by the knowledge that at any second one of the bulbs could burn out, with the other left to shine on alone." If I wouldn't have read the description I would have never thought these objects symbolized something so deep.
Untitled
Acrylic on canvas
Frank Stella
This portrays symmetry, repletion and constant color. I liked the simplicity of this art, its just fun to look at.
Mercurius in the Vessel
Oil on canvas
Richard Anuszkiewicz
I looked at this because I love optical illusions, when I was younger I would always look on the internet for cool optical illusions. I didn't really get what the artist was trying to make me feel. The description said he was was interested in making something romantic out of a very, very mechanistic geometry. I didn't get the romantic feeling when I looked at this.
White Front
Oil Board
Josef Albers
I just liked the colors and simpleness in this one, it reminds me of my aunts art that she does.
Boy
Tempera on card board
Ben Shahn
This painting makes me feel sad, with out knowing the background to this picture..I felt a boy who was lost or didn't have much. Shahn made this to show the brutality of the Pearl Harbor, WWII and the holocaust. He often focused on children or innocent victims. Shahn said that his work did not attempt to create an image of a specify event but rather conveyed "emotional tone that surrounds disaster, what you might call the inner disaster." I thought this was cool cause you could insert your own disaster that makes you feel blue cause there is no specific detail of war just the effects and feelings it has on people.
Standing Figure
Bronze
Alberto Giacometti
This sculpture freaked me out because when I first looked at it i thought immediately of the Holocaust and then read the description and it said "scholarship suggest that the skeletal things of his figures during this period was a manifestation of working though trauma from the ever-increasing flow of evidence from Nazi Concentration camps." It startled me how Alberto was able to get his message across so well.
Alber's Chain
Acrylic on nylon
Sam Gilliam
This piece was just very pretty to me, it made me happy with all the bright colors Sam used. Sam became associated with a group of painters called Washington Color School. They adopted and extended the soaking and staining techniques, this is wear pure color stained or poured onto the canvas. Sam made this during the radical period. I defiantly get the "radical" feeling with all the colors spread threw the canvas.
Helmet and Face Mask
Iron, lacquered and gilt wood, and silk
This helmet made me laugh, this was part of Samurais suit of armor. I enjoyed looking at the details that were put into designing this helmet. It has real animal fur, metal and silk cord. I enjoy looking at fashion and this helmet is a piece of their fashion during the Edo period. I find the materials that were used on this strange because they are very pretty materials but they are using it to for war and scaring people off. Most people would find these materials very luxurious. The description said who ever wore these would have looked one of the ferocious guardians figures that ward off evil spirits at Buddhist temples.
Cabinet
Lacquered and gilt wood glazed metal inserts
Thailand
This cabinet attracted me, it reminds me of a lot of the furniture in my house at home. These manuscript cabinets housed sacred text in Buddhist Monasteries in Thailand. The hands and faces of these figures are carved in high relief. During this time period decorating object with reflective material is typical later Thai art.
Stones From the River
Afzelia burl from Burma and Nigerian black ebony
Dan Kvitka
I thought this was an interesting, the meaning behind it is really complicated but the piece is so simple looking. This is suppose to represent Judaic practice of Tashlich (casting away). The word is taken from the Biblical verse "you will cast away all your sins into the depths of the sea." This is recited on Rosh Hashannah. This caught my eye due to being jewish so i thought this was interesting. Every Rosh Hashanna we throw bread into a body of water to cast away our sins from the previous year. The artist explained "The orange afzelia burl are the stone in the river..the black ebony stones are Tashlich stones, the stones containing both dark and light; they are us."
Apsara Warrior
Metal
Ouk Chim Vichet
This made me laugh, it reminds me of a transformer so i decided to learn more about it. This was a project to raise public awareness of the need for nonviolence in society, and to translate weapons technology and technical skills sustainable for peace-time opportunities. Vichet sculpture represents a figure deeply symbolic of Cambodia's native history: an Apsara, or female divinity of the Khmer civilization. This piece is suppose to represent peace, so this confused me. Usually with peace you would see bright colors, flowers, hearts, and more friendly, happy looking things. This is the total opposite, its dark and made out of metal. When I think of metal I think cold not warm and if you were trying to get the message peace across you would want to use something that would make you feel warm? So in the end I had a million questions going across my head why the artist chose these materials.
Sunset
Oil on canvas, laid down on panel
George Inness
My favorite color is red so this painting attracted me. I read that Inness drew on visual memory to create scenes inspired by specific places, he didn't want his paintings to replicate nature or describe a particular place but to convey the spiritual meaning he felt the landscape around him possessed. I think this is a really cool way to paint from, he used his feelings to help add to the scene and that can make the meaning and painting so much more interesting.
The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
Oil on oak panel
Jan Sanders van Hemessen
You can't really see this picture because i couldn't use a flash and the lighting around it wasn't very good. I wanted to post it anyways because i thought the characterization of the faces were really cool. They Faces on the people in this painting were realistic but had a cartoon feeling to it. In my own words (could be totally wrong) i feel like he made everything so realistic but added an over the top look to it.
