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.