Month: September 2015 (Page 3 of 8)

Cubism is the era of art that inspires the incredible diversity in modern styles of art. It was incredibly influential, and within itself developed and changed rapidly in a few short years. Perhaps the most well known artist of the Cubism era is Pablo Picasso. Though the general trend of the era runs in the opposite direction, Picasso’s art style shifts from the colorful and fractured to the gray and divided. Picasso’s earlier Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is the most well known work of the Cubism era, but his later Ma Jolie is more representative of Picasso’s matured style and his ideas of Cubism.

Though each era in art is revolutionary in its own ways, Cubism is the first era that breaks out of perspective that is seen literally. Everything that came before is a vision that could exist in reality, but Cubism breaks out of that mold. Its defining art style is paintings that portrays subjects in multiple perspectives in one dimension. Its defining principle is to present its subject in a greater context. While Les Demoiselles is well-remembered as the start of the Cubist movement, people often don’t recall its later developments.

-Jessica Ng

The definition of artwork has changed drastically since its conception. With each new art movement, new characteristics become imbued into what is collectively considered art. One of the most famous paintings today is Leonardo di Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, which revolutionized portrait painting during the Italian Renaissance in several ways such as the technique of sfumato and the presence of a fictional landscape in the background. Several centuries later during the movement of Dadaism, another artist again altered what people considered art with his use of ready-made pieces; Marcel Duchamp. With the belief that it was an artist’s decision to call something art that would make it so, he created “L.H.O.O.Q.”, a postcard reproduction of “Mona Lisa” with the addition of a mustache and goatee. While di Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and Duchamp’s “L.H.O.O.Q.” are almost identical in appearance, they differ greatly in intention such that “Mona Lisa” was a portrait that showcased new techniques while “L.H.O.O.Q.” was a parody meant to repose the question of what art is.

The Surrealist art movement began with the goal of accessing the subconscious mind and imagination, conveyed through images, in order to create a new perception of reality. However, many Surrealist painters, although united by their inspiration from the subconscious, often differed in their techniques to portray it effectively. Some artists depicted ordinary objects placed out of context, while some painted dreams, hallucinations, and primal desires. Others, such as Joan Miro and Max Ernst use contrasts between the art and its subject matter in some of their works, which emphasizes, and therefore, effectively conveys and stimulates the subconscious mind. Although Miro’s The Birth of a Nation and Ernst’s Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale are both examples of imaginative, surrealist paintings, Miro expresses the subconscious mind through the contrast between his abstract style and the use of ordinary objects, while Ernst does so through the contrast between his realistic, crisp style and reference to dreams.

The dance review that I read was titled “Blacka Di Danca Shakes His Way Through Borough Hall” by Siobhan Burke. I found this dance review interesting because I learned about the BEAT festival, which is something I have never heard about before. The idea of bringing performing arts to nontheatrical sites in Brooklyn such as parks, warehouses, and galleries is something I never knew existed or heard about before. I found this review very helpful and I noticed some of the aspects of a dance critique that Wendy Oliver mentioned in the reading. One of the things I noticed was the description portion of the critique. Burke says, “In the Nuh Linga (No Linger), the foot draws an S-shape on the floor while the upper body snakes and fingers snap. Down the Flank resembles the act of kicking a soccer ball and the Gully Creeper that of sneaking out at night.” Burke did a good job at describing certain steps and creating an image in my head of what it could look like. This was done really well and I liked how easy it was to understand certain steps and how they are carried out without even seeing them in person.

Another aspect of the critique that I noticed was interpretation. Interpretation includes the the writer’s personal views of the entire work or certain aspects of it in order to find the meaning of it. I saw this when Burke said, “The BEAT organizers aren’t always prudent in their pairing of artist and site; last year’s nocturnal performances in Green-Wood Cemetery, for instance, underutilized that locale. “Dancehall in Borough Hall” at first seemed like another mismatch, the bureaucratic vibes at odds with the dynamism of Blacka Di Danca and his sidekicks, Janelle Garvey and Aliyah Ali. But as they settled in for a 15-minute show, followed by a 45-minute class for adventurous audience members (the rest of us could just observe), the sterility of the space fell away. And it didn’t matter that only a few people were watching; a wiry, daring dancer with unlimited charisma, Blacka Di Danca can work a crowd of any size.” Even though Burke had his doubts in the beginning, after seeing the entire performance, he concluded that the overall dance performance was successful and he noticed that even though the place of the performance was odd it ended up working regardless. Burke also shows his final evaluation of the dance performance when he says “Excited to the point of giddiness by the history of his form, Blacka di Danca is keeping it very much alive.”

I can tell by the critique that Burke has looked into Blacka Di Danca’s style and his previous works. This helped him to be able to interpret the dance better and to come up with his final evaluation of the entire piece of work. Just like Wendy Oliver mentioned in the reading, I agree that a critique has to allow the reader to feel well informed about the performance even if they saw it in person or not. A good critique gives specific details but also gives general observations to better understand and visualize the performance being reviewed. I think that Burke could have possibly analyzed the dance performance more, but overall I do think it was a good critique in the sense that it allowed me to experience the performance even though I was not present.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner once said, “It seems as though the goal of my work has always been to dissolve myself completely into the sensations of the surrounding in order to then integrate this into a coherent painterly form.” Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was part of the German Expressionist movement which spread across Europe from 1905 to1920. German expressionism is said to be heavily influenced and even a form of Post-Impressionism, but there is a clear and distinct different between the two movements. Even though, both movements rejected the classic view of art, expressionism was all about expressing what came within the artist and interpreting the pieces of work through the feelings of the artist. Artists did not only capture moments in life but they actually put emotions and experiences of their own lives in their work for the viewers to interpret. The paintings “Self Portrait as a Soldier” and “Blick auf Davos” both by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner are examples of how an expressionist artist portrayed his own emotions and experiences in his pieces of art. Kirchner demonstrates this through the use of primitivism, vivid colors, and rough lines to portray his transition from an unstable and fearful mental state, depicted in “Self Portrait of a soldier,” to that of a relieved and serene one which is then depicted in “Blick auf Davos”.

Paintings from centuries ago, have gained tremendous amounts of praise and attention based on specific elements the artist has incorporated into their work. People come from all over to crowd around the timeless paintings of Monet and Van Gogh hanging on the walls of various museums. Both artists, from different movements in art, have a way of connecting with their audiences through their work. Monet’s “Water Lilies” and Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” attract hundreds of people each day at the MOMA in New York City. These two landscapes showcase very different styles and periods of artwork yet continue to obtain much fame throughout many years.

Re: Jessica Ng

It’s interesting that one painting requires some careful observation before you can understand what it’s depicting, while the other instantly communicates that it’s a painting of some people. Odd to think that two pieces that are very abstract can differ in such a way. Can it be said that Ma Jolie is “more” abstract than Les Demoiselles d’Avignon? What does it mean to be more or less abstract, anyway? I’ve also chosen two abstract works that have differing levels of abstraction – Matisse’s Woman With a Hat and Rothko’s No. 61. Matisse’s work seems much more concrete than Rothko’s, but they both eschew traditional colors in order to express emotion in a more abstract manner.

Woman With a Hat was an example of Fauvism, which stressed bold, unconventional color schemes.

Rothko’s piece is much more extreme in its reliance on color and only color to express emotion. In doing so, it asks, “How much can plain blocks of color, without context, make us feel? Can they make us feel?” Frankly, that’s a question that I’m still not sure how to answer.

What does this image make you feel?

(So I got really confused about the commenting and posting situation, so I’m writing my blog post portion separately from my comment. I’m in the Blog B group.)

When Nureen and I walked through the MoMA’s collection of Surrealist artwork, the first one that really caught my attention and stuck out to me was Joan Miro’s “The Birth of the World.” Sure, I wanted to see Dali’s work and Magritte’s “The False Mirror,” but they didn’t capture my attention the way Miro’s painting did. I didn’t understand it, but reading the plaque opened my eyes more to what the painting was and what it was about. I still don’t have a very clear idea, but I just found it so fascinating. To be honest, it’s now one of my favorite paintings because there are so many layers to it that I didn’t know about before. The geometric shapes are drawn without context on the large canvas, which was prepared for the purpose of allowing Miro to more effectively display his subconscious thoughts, which characterizes the movement.

I was originally very unsure about which other painting to write about in my essay. Originally, I was going to use Monet’s “Agapanthus,” but I found it difficult to use it to talk about the aspects of Miro’s painting that I wanted to discuss–mainly his use of paint and his depiction/view of the world. I then remembered Georges-Pierre Seurat’s “Evening, Honfleur,” a classic example of his use of pointillism. Though Seurat and Miro had very different painting styles, they used their unique styles to depict their view of the world. Whereas Miro believed in seeing reality through the subconscious mind, Seurat saw the beauty that makes up the world. It isn’t always easy to see the whole picture, but when we do, we see how beautiful it is. Up close, paintings utilizing pointillism look random and incomplete. You can’t tell what you’re looking at because the image is broken up into small pieces. Only from afar can you piece together the image and see the whole picture come together. This has always fascinated me, from the first time I saw a pointillism painting until now. Thus, though the two paintings and artists are very different, I wanted to discuss how they use their styles to show different views of the world.

Jessica Sun (Blog B)

The Birth of the World: http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79321
Evening, Honfleur: http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79333?locale=en

Picasso is well known for his abstract paintings from the cubism movement however this is only a small portion of his work. While visiting the MoMA it was clear that Pablo’s geometric abstract portraits and landscapes were extremely different than his other works. I decided to work with two paintings that were both portraits of women. With differing color schemes and compositions each painting depicts the woman in an intriguing way. I thought it was interesting how the two paintings were so different yet both projected this idea of youth and beauty onto the viewer.

In Woman Plaiting Her Hair (1906), Picasso uses a cooling blueish gray background to create a sense of peacefulness. The solitary woman in the center of the piece sits with a sense of longing on her face as she twists her hair. The warm tones of her skin radiate out of the canvas and fill the room in which she is hung. This painting was created during Picasso’s Black Period in which he incorporated a lot of styles from African art into his work. The face of the woman strongly resembles the shape and depth of the popular African masks with the eyes and nose protruding from the rest of the flat face. The face contrasts with the rest of the body. The body is created with many curves that give the the arms, torso and thighs a sense of three dimensional roundness and fullness. In the lower half of the portrait the woman’s legs are wrapped in a sheet. In the sheets creases the viewer can see some geometric shapes, some of which look fairly similar to the shapes that create the Girl with a Mandolin.

The Girl with a Mandolin (1910), is created with a variety of geometric shapes. Many of these shapes have varying highlighting and shadowing points as if many different viewpoints of the same object were brought together. The colors used to paint the body are very similar to the hues used in the background. This flattens the piece, blending the woman into the space behind her. When viewed from up close, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the subject and its surrounding areas. If the viewer steps backs and views the piece by trying to unfocus the eyes on particular aspects, the shapes and lines begin to connect. Picasso uses a few curved lines in this piece that contrast the rest of the blocky constructions. In this piece of art, the theme of youth and beauty is portrayed by the use of wavy done-up hair and rounded breasts.

Picasso used a variety of different styles and concepts as he moved through multiple modern art movements. His ability to create such a wide array of works truly shows his incredible talent and imagination. Because his works are so different in composition, there is plenty of contrasting information between pieces.

-Eli McClain