First, we start off with a portrait of a woman that is naked, but the artist of this painting Ray Turner calls this painting “half-naked”. At the immediate glance, there are not appealing colors or patterns to this woman’s face. There is, however, emotion. Appropriately named, the woman in the picture is not wearing any articles of clothing and her pale skin and lack of emotion are the first things that one can notice. The lack of vibrancy in the canvas and bland nature of the artwork almost leaves the viewer thirsty for more information about what the picture is about and what information or mood the artist was trying to portray.  Once one looks at the face of the woman, one may realize that color or lack of, is the meaning of the painting.

The black, white and grey undertones of the canvas make the painting bare and only support to the artists claim of the painting being half naked. There is no frame to compliment what the viewer is experiencing. The first thing one may notice, aside from the fact that the woman is not wearing any clothes, is the jet black color that Turner used to paint her hair. This specific tone of color to paint something that is usually multiple tones of brown or dark shades is simply just painted in a dark rich charcoal black color. The texture of the hair in the painting is smooth, and Turner has not used specific brush strokes to differentiate the different parts of the woman’s body. In addition to not exhibiting many realistic features to her hair, Turner also paints her hair straight down as linearly as possible, there are no curves or stands out of place to distinguish an irregularity. There is, however, a black grey to white transition, an almost unnoticeable small ombre that separated the head and hair of the woman from the white blankness of the canvas.

The woman has almost a thin fragile face that has a plain emotion. She does not look like a certain distinguishable emotion. She has a poker face of plain emotion that looks somewhat unimpressed with what she is looking at. Also, Turner has painted the woman almost gaunt in nature because of her thin face, visible cheekbones, and narrow shoulders almost as if she has not eaten a proper meal in days.  Towards the lower bottom area of the painting, you can see that Turner incorporated the natural beauty of the female figure and lightly painted two breasts to show the actual nakedness of the painting and the female. There is a “half” nakedness to the painting despite the unclothed exposed nature of the woman, the other half of her is actually full of emotion.

Another large aspect of the painting is the woman’s eyes, they seem almost natural because of their color which in reality is just a mixture of black and white, but the almost graphite/sterling silverness along with the specks of white to resemble the reflection of light on a regular human eye make the painting seem natural in setting, especially in the  large open art gallery which would have light reflecting off a human eyeball. The gallery space definitely complimented the painting because the white gallery walls combined with the whiteness of a canvas truly made the parts of the painting with color pop in vibrancy even thought the colors used were not necessarily vibrant (white grey and black). Through deep analysis, one can realize why Turner titled the painting half naked. Because yes, she is not wearing clothes, but she is not entirely naked.

The second piece of art that I went to was public called the “Group of Four Trees,” by Jean Dubuffet.  Each tree does not look like a tree off the bat but if you look long enough you can make out what the artist was trying to portray. Dubuffet constructed the trees through varying amounts of cement and plaster planes that are all irregularly shaped and sized. A noticeable feature about the pieces of the tree is the thick black outline on each vertex of the walls as well as throughout the tree structure as well. Without the sharp black markings, the sterling grey color of the trees would blend in with the sidewalk and the buildings that they surround. The pitch black outline works almost like an eyeliner and extenuates contours the curvature of each bend in the tree. Even though the title of the sculpture is called “Group of Four Trees” the “trees” look almost as mushrooms because they lack the bodacious lusciousness of a tree’s leaf composition. Being flat-topped,  it is almost difficult at first to realize that the structures are representations of things we see around us almost on a daily basis, at least out of the city, and its parks.  Along with the tops of the trees, the columns that are supposed to be tree trunks are also irregularly shaped, many of which look wavey and unlike the straight nature of most tree trunks. Aside from the shape of each of the trees, you also can not help but notice their placement. Many times trees stand alone or single with only small grasses and shrubs around them but this compilation of trees are more intimately placed together in a large courtyard that definitely has enough space to spread them out but their closeness seems familial and had they have been separated it would have given the art a different meaning and uniqueness where one would be able to look at each tree individually and analyze versus looking at the entire sculpture and observing its meaning as a whole rather than each tree as an individual facet.

 

View from under all the trees looking upwards

View from under looking outside

The trees almost fit in perfectly in the cityscape that surrounds them, but yet they still manage to perform the functions of a tree. It blankets whoever is under them making them feel almost inferior to their presence. For comparison, there was a 7-year-old child next to the tallest trunk, and one can see the sheer size of the structure, even the smallest of trunks was in no way “small”. I believe these differences in the anatomy of a regular tree versus the tree sculpture makes us look at why Dubuffet wanted to give his trees these unique characteristics. Their location in bustling downtown Manhattan brings a sense of nature to a location that is not necessarily surrounded by nature, but ironically there is nothing natural that makes up the material composition of this sculpture.  Although mentioned before, the irregular shape of the trunks and foliage of the tree makes us realize that it is different. I believe it serves as a reminder that although it is different and not normative it is located in a metropolitan area that has been the foundation of difference, and it is the difference that made the art beautiful.