In today’s last class we took a trip to the Colby Museum and looked at works that were apart of the periods we have studied throughout the semester and also artists that we studied or in the textbook. One of my favorite paintings in the Museum is the David Clyde Driskell, Blue Pines, 1959. I love the color scheme of his work along with the distinguishing black lines that outline the trees.
Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 48)
I could not attend the last lecture class due to a sickness but what I took from the textbook reading about Post-Modern art was that it began in the late 1900s and involved lots of pop art and media. A famous artist from this time was Andy Warhol. I got to visit his museum when I went to Prague and I really admire his Marilyn Monroe paintings. I love the repetition of her face with the many different color schemes. I am also fond of the Cambell’s soup Cans, since it reflects the mass production of goods made and represented the “American dream”.
In today’s class we continued talking about Frida Kahla. She got into a bad accident when she was 18 and started her painting journey. She painted from her interest in naïve Colonial pictures and folk imagery. Her paintings derived from her mind and relationship in her lifetime. We looked closely at The Two Fridas, which she created wen she was divorcing her husband Rivera. On the left is a European version of Frida, all pale and sickly while on the right is a Mexican Frida, with darker skin and a more traditional outfit. This portrait identifies the trauma Frida went through.
We then looked into Neo-Plasticism. This style of art pursues the realization of utopian ideals. Then moved onto Post war art which was mainly abstract expressionism which emphasizes the direct emotions of the artists and the use of foreground and background to illustrate movement.
This class period we had the great opportunity to visit the Colby College Museum of Art, specifically the Landay room in the museum. Professor Plesch asked for us to choose one work from the Baroque time period to discuss in our midterm exam. As I studied the works, we were able to use the magnifying glasses to have the opportunity to look closely at the intricate details, lines, and brushstrokes of the works. We studied multiple works I found incredibly interesting and narrowed my choices for a work to use to two works of Jacques Courtois Bourguignon, a work of Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot (A Feast in the Country), Gaspard Dughet’s Wooded Landscape, and finally a work of Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck’s: Portrait of a Gentleman. I ultimately found myself coming back to Jacques Courtois Bourguignon’s Battle Scene (With Castle in Background), finding multiple comparisons and contrasts to other Baroque works and its ability to exemplify important elements of Baroque art. The work distances itself from the harmony and idealized beauty of Mannerism, representing a turn to naturalism, and showing a turbulent subject matter that reflected the conflict between Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation.
On Monday, April 8th, we continued our talk about Neoclassicism. I’d like to discuss three works that I believe reflect Romanticism as a whole: The Death of Marat, by the artist of Jacques-Louis David, Antoine-Jean Gros’s Napoleon at Jaffa, and Théodore Géricault’s, The Raft of the Medusa. Toward the beginning of class we discussed The Death of Marat, by the artist of Jacques-Louis David. The simple background and overall subject of the painting is minimalistic. The portrait portrays a contemporary event, serving as a memorial “to Marat” (as the side table reads). The portrait shows a revolutionary martyr, the body displaying similarities to Christ. The letter that the martyr holds describes a letter a woman writes in order to kill the martyr. As Professor Plesch states, this painting resembles a similar body presence (frail and deathly) like that of the Michelangelo’s Pietà and Titian’s The entombments of Christ. The paintings feel intimate and heroic, almost symbolizing Christ.
We continued class looking at Antoine-Jean Gros’s Napoleon at Jaffa, a scene depicting Napoleon visiting the people suffering from the plague in Jaffa. In the background of the work displays a French flag waving in the wind. The flag expressing that he has conquered the middle eastern place. The painting thus draws reference to David’s oath of the Horati and Theodore Gericault, Chagrin Chasseur, in terms of looking at a contemporary event and glorifying it. Gros’s work, as Professor Plesch states, appeals to the senses rather than the intellect. These artist during the Romantic period are especially trying to make you feel the scene’s emotions, both good and bad. The painting emphasizes death and suffering, ultimately displaying the importance of Napoleon’s act of being there. Gros does this by placing Napoleon in the center of the work, as the focal point. As Napoleon stands in the middle he dares to touch the disease of the plague. While not a king, the belief was that the King’s evil was able to cure the disease by touch. Gros’s work sparked controversy for depicting Napoleon’s despotic rule and inadequate medical services during the plague.
Finally, The Raft of the Medusa implicates a broader commentary on the practice of slavery. Géricault places at the top of the pyramid a dark-skinned figure, waving heroically and more visibly than anyone else, for the salvation of himself and the entire group. Another Black man sits on the raft, central to the entire painting, and a dead Black man lies sprawled across a white man’s lower body. The composition urges consideration not only of the immediate tragedy of “La Meduse” but also of the greater tragedy of slavery. The Raft of the Medusa thus remains perhaps the greatest representation of Romanticism.
For our last day of class, we took a final trip to the museum. Three works particularly stuck out to me in discussion.
Jackson Pollock’s Composition with Masked Forms was another of Pollock’s studies of archetypes, similar to Male and Female. Although it is not fully abstract expressionism, there are some features of the style that emerge: the non-central composition and the control of paint placement, to name a few. I myself chose this piece in my list of works particularly because of the impasto. The use of texture in this painting makes the piece seem more frenzied, implying revisal with the mass amounts of paint build-up. I found interesting Prof’s point of the layers of paint being literally “masked” by the existing, surface image.
Richard Pousette-Dart’s Shadow of the Unknown Bird’s canvas is not covered uniformly; the layering of paint used to define shapes sculpturally, applied with a palette knife in some areas. Although the painting seems monochromatic at first, color begins to reveal itself with time. While conversing about the painting, Prof asked the question, “how do we know the correct orientation?” which is both a funny and concerning concept to think about.
Finally, Romare Bearden’s The Payment of Judas (although the title is inaccurate, as Prof pointed out, as the scene depicted is the kiss shared by Jesus and Judas), is a painting with cubist composition, but almost fauvist, arbitrary colors. The distortion of space in this painting particularly called out to me, the background was clearly painted after the main figures, and is bicolored, playing with figure-ground, which we also talked about when analyzing Al Held’s The Big D. Prof mentioned that Bearden had a jazz career, and pointed out the splatters of paint on the canvas, suggesting a fast completion, and also improvisation.
Continuing our discussion from the previous class, we finished looking at Andy Warhol’s pop art. His work ranged in subject theme, stretching from one extreme of car crashes to the other of dance steps. He used images from everyday life, like photos from tabloids or popular products, to comment on consumer culture and the effects of fame. His famous series on the Campbell Soup cans featured remarkably similar cans, just changing the soup flavor, emphasizing mass production and the standardization of society. Minimal art, like that of Donald Judd and Richard Sera, represented art that made the artist’s intervention as absent as possible.
Looking at the postmodern art era, attitudes towards artistic periods changed. There was less of a goal to advance from the art that came before and creating radical ideas; instead artists began to work in groups again, paint, and focused on expressing art in the way they wanted to. Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party created a table set with a places for powerful women left out of history books, playing on the saying “to be invited to the table.” A representation that wouldn’t be considered high art, and that was created by a team of over 400 female artists, used their work to raise societal awareness. Deconstruction art was also popular as it gave art the ability to be interpreted and change meanings with time, with no fixed intent from the artists. Basquiat began as a graffiti artist before switching to paintings, but kept the speed of street art in his works. Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial shocked the nation with nonrepresentational and noncelebration. The sculpture cuts through the grass like a gruesome gash, accurately representing her feelings towards the war. Finally, various artists in postmodernism used art as a form of protest and to share political or societal messages. A new openness to the definition of art paved the way for a variety of pieces.
Today, we discussed Pop art, a term first used in England. We began by talking about Andy Warhol. Warhol started as a commercial artist and in the 60’s he started making work based on mass media. We see Elvis, Jackie Kennedy, the Electric Chair, and a car crash. These subjects appear to have a sort of dark meaning behind them. Warhol would play with the colors in his work to remind you it is not a direct representation. We also see multiple images of the same figures to show it is from mass media. It is clear Warhol is commenting on fame/ celebrities. This is his way of saying everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame at some point.
We also talked about Richard Serra and “process art”. We looked at his Corner Prop. This is a confrontational element. Something that weighs a ton is just simply propped up. It gives off a fearful element as there is uncertainty about its stability. It also explores what it means to have a mass of something.
Next, we talked about Sol Lewitt, which I particularly enjoyed. We looked at his Seven Walls and Wall Drawing #559, both at the Colby Museum of Art. His Wall Drawing was installed in 2013 using clothes and blending to make the colors/work. It is important to note Sol himself did not install these works at the museum. Instead, multiple artists did as we have bought the rights to reproduce his work. This is with the saying that “the idea or concept is more important than the work”.
We talked about the Post-Modern Era of Art since 1980. In this Era, art has shifted to a greater focus on themes and subjects. Modernism is the master narrative. We see linear and connected notions. I found Robert Venturi’s Vann Venturi House interesting as it rejected the international style. This is against the saying “Less is more” by Ludwig Mies Van Dev Rohe. Comically, in Venturi’s book, he states, “Less is a bore”. This is a playful jab at Mies as he states he wants to have fun. The Venturi house is not symmetrical, but it does reference traditional elements. In a sense he “plays” with it. I also found Jean-Michel Basquiat’s graffiti work very intriguing as well. He utilized the symbol SAMO@ for his works. He also collaborated with Warhol prior to his passing.
Today, we began class by looking at Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas. This is not really a surrealist work as it is depicting reality. We know that Frida was in an awful accident and was disabled most of her life as a result. She struggled with miscarriages and repercussions as well. We also know she is a Westerner and indigenous Mexican. In this work, we see a representation of both. On one side, she is dressed in a long skirt. We also see differences in skin tones, her unibrow, and her mustaches, which are accusations of Western culture. This work is similar to religious folk painting and of the Mexican retablo.
Next, we began discussing De Stijl, or the style and Neo-Plasticism. We first looked at Piet Mondrian’s composition en Rogue, Bleu et Jaune. This is a reduction as we only see horizontals and verticals. The colors are primary as well, and the work is asymmetrical. Next, we looked at another aspect of De Stijl: architecture. We looked at Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus. This was an art school and a workshop-like school that embraced modernity. This was also during the machine age; we see a large glass curtain. We then looked at Charles Demuth’s My Egypt. This was an interesting title as he refers to his Egypt as grain elevators. This is basically saying what is more American that grain elevators. These are sort of like big monuments for America, just like the pyramids in Egypt. We then looked at Arshile Gorky’s The Liver is the Cock’s Comb. We know that Gorky immigrated to the States and was a surrealist at first. He was fleeing Europe, and most were members of the communist party. In this work, we see violent shapes and gestural abstraction. It is evident this was not painted calmly. It is also difficult to identify what the subject is. We see possibly an egg? The work has a slightly organic feel, and it resembles an automatic painting. Or letting your pencil simply wander. By 1950, Abstract Expressionism had two tendencies: the action of painting or gestural abstraction and the color field or chromatic abstraction. Mark Rothko’s No 61 (Rust and Blue) is the best example. This work is completely abstract and the figure/ground is irrelevant. It resembles what you feel when you lay in the grass and look at the sky. It sort of sucks you in as it is very large and vibrating.
In today’s class, we shifted our attention to postmodern art. Postmodern art challenged many cultural “norms” throughout society, rejecting many modernist ideals. Postmodern art deliberately used earlier styles and conventions of art. One of the artists we examined was Judy Chicago. In her “The Dinner Party,” there are a triangle of tables set up for specific groups of people. The floor contains a list of names, all of which are names of successful women. This artwork celebrates successful women, which is a contrast to many art periods we have examined which tend to only portray triumphs and heroics of male figures.
We also discussed the Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial at the national mall in Washington D.C. This memorial is an important piece of artwork as it addresses fallen heroes during the Vietnam War, many of whom were drafted into war. It speaks to the bigger overall issue that existed during this time, when many college students protested because of the draft rules in place. The discussion regarding art within the Colby Arts Museum was fascinating as well. We are very fortunate to have such amazing works of art right on our campus for the public to view.