Assingment #9

     In fifth floor, there is an artwork by a very famous artist, Pablo Picasso. The first time I heard about this artist was from my parents. In curiosity, I asked my parents that how come his artworks were considered as well-known and prestigious because in my eyes, as a child, it looked alike as something I can draw with my foot. Unfortunately, my parents weren’t able to answer or even if they did, I might have not understood it. However, as I grew up and learned the very basic of art, it seems very different. The artwork that I saw was “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (or originally titled “The Brothel of Avignon”) by Pablo Picasso. Obviously, the instant thoughts of watching it was still same as before, but as I took a time and reminded what I’ve learned in the class, the cubism, it slightly felt different. In my understanding of cubism is depicting the 3-dimension image of objects into a canvas or 2-dimension image. Hence, it shows every existing aspects in 3-dimension in the drawing and as a result, the artwork looks very ridiculously. Moreover, its size is really abnormally large, even bigger than my heights and it wasn’t what I expected; 243.9 cm × 233.7 cm (96 in × 92 in). It was painted during Jun ~ July of 1907 using oil on the canvas at Barcelona. There are naked 5 women who look very not attractive and none of them are conventionally feminine. If I look 5 women very deeply and thoroughly, their facial expressions, eyes, and poses are very menacing to me.

     In sixth floor, I saw something extraordinary that I never think of or even consider as a form of art, cut and paste. The artwork is called “Memory of Oceania” by French artist Henri Matisse. Its size is also large as the “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”; 284.4 cm × 286.4 cm (94 in × 94 in). It was painted? or I would say cut and pasted between the summer of 1952 and early 1953. It is really ambiguous compared to Pablo Picasso’s. It’s just combination of cut papers and pasted into one canvas. I still can’t understand the meaning of this work, but it definitely shocked me.

     The last artwork or sculpture that I also shocked was Robert Gober’s. There is a part of leg on the ground in an empty space attached into the wall or in my guess penetrated the wall, although I couldn’t find other partial leg. The size of leg is extremely realistic to me that if I wasn’t aware of that it was just a sculpture made of wood, I might consider as a real human partial leg. I stared the room, shoe, sock, torn pant, and partial leg for a long time. It was fascinating experience that I never attained from an artwork.   

Shahzia Sikander

            The artist that I watched from art 21 is Shahzia Sikander. She is from Pakistan and educated at the National College of Arts in Lahore. She also received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sikander studied the technics of Persian and Indian traditional styles and paintings. However, she also has to suffer from stereotypes of Muslim and also as a female Muslim. Her some of artworks are showing reconciliation or combination of Muslim and Hindu. She also, tried to break a common stereotype of female Muslim in various ways.

Assignment #7

Assignment #6

 Dada is an artistic movement to react about the World War 1. Artists who suffered from the war or who had been influenced protested and fought for the showing nonsense of the war by depicting a ridiculous artwork. Artists used common objects and made it very ridiculously. For example, this picture is “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp. Unfortunately, the genuine artwork was lost. He used standard urinal and laid flat on its back rather than upright in its usual position. The artwork seems very ridiculous and meaningless. It happened because of harmful consequences of World War 1. The trend of literature or art was chaotic or unrealistic.

Jacob Lawrence is an African-American artist who was born in America. Mostly, his artwork is about black labors and he was influenced by Goya, Daumier, Roscoe, Harlem Renaissance, and African-American history. Also, his art work was influenced by European Modernist Metis. He was good at using brilliant colors, flat space, and usage of patterns. This picture is “The Shoemaker” by Jacob Lawrence.   

Assingment #5

                     Impressionism is about capturing the short moment or glimpse and paint it very quickly. Also, the impressionist artist valued the light and the color. People divided impressionism into two part, as the first 20~30 years of impressionism and after that post-impressionism. At the beginning of the impressionism, people only cared about the lights, various colors, more objective paintings and less emotional paintings. They didn’t imply any meanings or interpretations on their paintings. Just the style was important. For example, this picture is “Sunrise” by Monet. He depicted the sun through the mist at Le Havre and he tried to capture the spontaneity of nature. If we look very close to the painting, then we can see the trace of brushes that Monet dapped with the brush.  

However, in post-impressionism, people not only tried same style of others, but they also implied meanings or imaginations on their paintings. For example, this picture is “The Yellow Christ” by Gauguin. It depicts some traditional women praying at a roadside, but it is not a documentary illusion of the scene. It is an attempt to portray the spiritual vision. 

assignment #4

                 The two artworks that I noticed while I was looking around the Metropolitan Museum were “Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints” by Raphael, Raffaello Sanzio, and “Venus and Adonis by” by Peter Paul Rubens. As I looked into these pictures for a while, I could notice a very distinctive style which classifies them as a Renaissance and Baroque art.

               

                 “Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints” was painted by Raphael, Italian, approximately in 1504 or 1505. This painting is an altarpiece which used to be hung on a small Franciscan convent of Saint Antonio in Perugia. Since this painting was for the Catholic Church, the theme is related to religion. Hence, in the middle of painting, Jesus Christ is seating on Virgin’s lap and Young Saint John stands on base of the throne in which Virgin sat.  Four saints, Peter, Catherine, an unidentified female saint, and Paul gather around the throne. Above them there is God of father who watches down the ground or maybe His son holding the earth globe. Next to Him, there are two angels and infant’s faces. The very distinctive description of this painting that classifies as a high renaissance artwork is that Raphael used oil painting and perspective. For oil painting, the colors of gowns are very vivid and powerful. Before the oil painting was made up people used tempera painting and with tempera, it was impossible to express light very clearly. Moreover, perspective was used in painting in renaissance first time. In the background of the painting, we could see very small tower, which never be able to small.

               

                  “Venus and Adonis” was painted by Ruben, Belgium, probably mid-1630. This painting is about Venus who accidently fell in love, because of cupid’s arrow, with the handsome hunter, Adonis. The very distinctive description that Ruben used is expression how he painted the human figure or god figure. Body figure and objects are really exaggerated, overexpressed, and very curved. Moreover, the word Baroque used to be originated form Portuguese word “barroco”, Spanish “barroco”, or French “baroque” which mean rough or imperfect pearl.

           

                  Understanding Baroque and Renaissance artworks aren’t easy. Yet, it is intriguing how the painting has been changed since people started

to draw on the cave.

Assignment #3

Before the renaissance, people were more focused on the god or related to religious factors because the church had all the authority and governed the country. However, as the war of crusaders kept losing the war, the Catholic Church started lose their power.  Hence, people tried to escape from the church by restoring the ideas of ancient Greek and Rome.  They started to concentrate more on human beings rather than god or religions and also human feelings. This picture is one of Botticelli’s works.  In the painting, everyone can find out that human figures are described very nicely and beautifully compared to medieval age paintings.
                                                 <ㅡ Medieval Age Paintings ㅡ>

The qualities of Van Eyck’s paintings are that he used a style of a profound ability to mimic reality and there are lots of implied meanings of objects.  He was an oil-based painter that he was able to capture rich colors and subtle changes in textures and surfaces.

This picture is “The Calling of St. Matthew” by Caravaggio. The painting is very realistic because in Baroque people cared about the realistic of appearance. The person who points the finger to someone else is Jesus and the person who bow down his head is Matthew. Moreover, drawing the objects as the way we see was the main point in Baroque.