Today, we took time to analyze the background of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and Hopper’s Nighthawk. Normally I do not analyze an entire painting. When I see a piece of artwork, my eyes skim the surface of it, and I move on. Today I learned that if you take time to look at a painting and analyze it, you begin to see many hidden meanings in the painting, and it becomes more complex. I also learned that when you look at a painting closely, you can also create a story from a painting.
So today it was interesting to look at art in a different way. I saw that in both of the paintings, there are many levels of complexity, and it is up to us as the viewers, to try and put ourselves in the mind of the artist and figure out different aspects of the painting. Some of these aspects are easy to decipher, while others are more difficult. For example, a simple aspect of Da Vinci’s work would be the river in the background. The river was painted there to bring the viewer’s attention to Mona Lisa’s eyes. When you look at her eyes, you find a more complex aspect of Da Vinci’s work to decipher because her eyes convey many different expressions.
In Hopper’s work, there are fewer complexes than Da Vinci’s work, and you can create more of a story from this work. The different emotions that you get from each of the people in the work, allows you to create a story out of it. For example, you get a sense of loneliness from the man that is separated from the rest of the people. Hopper sort of painted him into the darkness of the background, so he has a depressed feeling about him as well. Maybe he lost his job. Maybe he had a fight with his wife. Who knows? The story of the man is left open and for us to decide. The second man, and the bartender, seem to be deeply immersed in conversation and could be conversing about an important topic, since the painting was made in 1942, it could something about the war that is going on. We don’t know for sure, but that is the interesting part in analyzing an artwork like this, and the artist keeps us guessing.