In the beginning, I was anxious and excited to see the his paintings since religion influenced Zhang Huan and I am Buddhist as well. However, my feelings were actually opposite of how I thought I would feel. I thought it was going to be about peace, but it’s totally the opposite! First of all, the paintings I saw were definitely NOT “Poppy Fields.” They do have that concept but it’s not as beautiful as it seems. Instead of poppies, there are heads in the paintings, specifically skulls. When I saw it from a far, I thought they were heads of dragons for because I thought of the Chinese background and the love for dragons. The eyes did freak me out a lot. I thought the colors were pretty, in the beginning. However, as I got closer to the painting, it shocked me and I felt really uncomfortable. It made me dizzy and scared by the weird eyes, colors, and the popped up paintings of some of the heads and colors.

I was so shocked to know it was about hallucination and used real incense ash in his paintings. The colors, repetition of the skull, the 3-D pop ups gave the negative feelings. I wonder what inspired him to create this painting. Why hallucination out of all the topics in the world. I wonder if he secretly did drugs or had an experience with hallucination, which was why he created this painting. I do agree with him that it does lead to death and the painting sends the strong message. I wonder why he made so many “Poppy Fields” paintings but with different colors.

How did you guys feel about the painting? Did you feel disturbed as I was when you saw the painting or was it just me? More importantly, do you like the painting?

I take the 7 train quite often in order to go to Manhattan. I have seen this building several times after the stop from Court Square. This building has many graffitis on it. When I first saw it, I was amazed by the beauty. I knew that this was art. It was a once of a kind building. I haven’t seen the graffiti in a while until last week. It was rush hour when I came across this building once again. It was beautiful and I realized it’s been retouched and added then the first time I saw the artwork. I’ve noticed that it was different than last times. For example, a picture of the woman was added on and some words had other touches on it. It was so beautiful. I wondered who the woman was? A celebrity? A lover? That was when I realized that some art pieces could be never finished. The different perspectives add to the beauty of this artwork. That’s the art of the art piece. It could always be retouched, added, modified, and changed like this graffiti. This graffiti will never have a finishing touch but that’s the art, the beauty of this artwork.

I was shocked and amazed by this photo. This photo had the most impact on me. First of all, I never saw a photo so big before! The size surprised me at first since I never saw so many photos displayed in a massive rectangle. However, the frame was the thing that amazed me the most. It is a simple back frame but the color and the simplicity helped me understand the big picture of the photography. It helped me get the “click” in my head. Although people might not think that the frame has a big impact on the photo, ironically, it is very significant. It can influence someone’s interpretation differently like how it affected me.

The frame helps emphasize the mini of the many pictures as well. As I observed the photo from the bottom up, it shows the development of the city, which I see as Manhattan, from my perspective. It shows the process of the land developing into a city. The different windows show the different perspective and angles of different people from the same building. Not all windows show an image of the city though. There are closed curtains and people closing the curtains. I interpreted the curtains as people rejecting the city life or not wanting to see the development. The windows showing the city shows the beauty and the art of the city. Even some curtains show the city a little bit which shows how people can’t reject the beauty of the city. Like the professor said, it does look like a skyscraper which symbolizes manhattan. The way the pictures are put together creates a Manhattan image. The bottom part of the picture creates a Central Park image as well as showing the develop into the city. The water shows the water surrounding Manhattan as well. The pictures gives off the different perspectives of manhattan. I wonder what the photographer felt as he took the picture. Maybe it’s because I’m in New York, I see Manhattan.

What do the rest of you see?