I have chosen to analyze The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and Water Lilies by Claude Monet. The Starry Night is a timeless classic made up of thick brush strokes and vibrant colors to create a wondrous well known masterpiece. Framed on a small wall at the MOMA, hundreds of different people from all over crowd around just to get the smallest glimpse of the painting. Water Lilies is a huge 3 panel piece of artwork covering an entire wall of the MOMA consisting of light colors and small thick brush strokes. At first glance, the landscapes appear to be polar opposites. However, both are extremely well known. I want to know what makes these two completely different paintings so famous. Which similar qualities do they both possess or what makes them different that people love? Although Van Gogh and Monet come from different time periods, both had such an affect on people with the work they created. I am drawn to the beauty of these paintings and I am curious as to how the artists were able to successfully reach out to their audience. In the reading Barnett says, “such things as the size of the work, the kinds of brush strokes in a painting, and the surface texture of a sculpture – is part of the meaning (52-53)”. My goal while analyzing these two famous paintings is to look deeper into all of the previously stated elements and see how they affect the meaning of what the painter was trying to portray. After the readings of Barnet and Berger I was able to question these elements while looking at the two landscapes. I wasn’t just another person at the MOMA trying to upload a “snapchat” of the work on their Iphone just because it was famous. I was able to stand there and question as to why these people were so drawn to the work and even ask why I was drawn to it.
I agree that, often times, many people are drawn to famous works of art such as The Starry Night and Water Lilies without ever questioning why each painting has such an effect on people or why they are so famed. Is it because of the way it was painted or the different brushstrokes? Is it because of the size? Is it because it controversial at the time of its creation? People might not question these paintings or their meanings because they are so popular. It is similar to how Berger mentions many are obsessed with the original version of an art piece in the age of reproduction; many today are obsessed the popularity of a piece in an age where we follow what is mainstream.
I chose to analyze Joan Miro’s The Birth of the World and Max Ernst’s Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale. When I first saw Miro’s painting, I was confused. I could not decipher any concrete images or meanings in the painting. It simply looked gray, with a startling red circle in the middle. But I slowly began to notice that there were some ordinary, real objects in the painting, such as a balloon, kite, and shooting star. I noticed how simply these objects were drawn, almost childishly. However, I could not figure out why Miro chose such a background. Why was it such a dreary gray, dark in some spots and splotchy in others, behind such cheery, child-like objects? After reading Berger, who states that the “painter’s way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on canvas,” I understood that this unusual context in which Miro places ordinary objects is his own perspective, his own “ways of seeing” (10).
Ernsts’ painting caught my attention because of its three-dimensionality and aesthetically realistic style. It has an actually doorknob, a fence (hinges and all), and wood pieces to make up the house.These real objects, literally sticking out of a two-dimensional painting, were eye-catching. The painting itself is realistic, according to Barnet’s definition of realism as: “realism is defined as the representation of visual phenomenon as exactly as the medium allows” (131). The people in Ernst’s painting are true to form, and the house is depicted as any typical house. However, I am curious about why and how the work had a dream-like, hallucinatory quality despite the fact that it was painted and made with such crisp detail and adherence to realistic objects and people. I later found out that this was based on a fever dream, and I would like to know what made Ernst think this bizarre dream was worth painting.
-Nureen Ahammed