Panagis Mikelatos Peter Blume’s “The Eternal City”

The work I have chosen was Peter Blume’s painting called “The Eternal City” at the Museum of Modern Art. Peter Blume was an American painter and sculptor born in Smarhon, Russia ,October 27, 1906 to November 30, 1992. Peter Blume emigrated with his family to New York City in 1912. The Eternal City is described as Peter Blume’s visit to Rome in 1932, ten years after the fascist takeover of Italy. This painting was created by Peter Blume on 1932 and he used oil on the canvas for his painting. The Eternal City reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with Modernism by the style it is presented. For example. in the painting we can see how their are these different unique shapes, vibrant colors and how expressionism with the faces in this painting. We can also say how it is considered modern to take a dictator like Benito Mussolini as we see in this painting and use him for artistic expression. This would be considered modern because of how the artist took his expression of a powerful dictator and painted him as this non-threatening jack-in-the-box in this painting. If this painting was not Modernism it would have not depicted Benito Mussolini as this toy but painted as a more threatening character. What drew me to this piece was how realistic it looked, even though this painting has this cartoon style to it, their is an amazing amount of detail behind it. For example, if you look where their is the pillars and tree’s, you can notice this attention to detail and how it look’s like two paintings into one. What also drew me to was when after I saw this painting’s description. As stated before, this shows a jack-in-the-box Benito Mussolini which I would have never guessed. When reading the description, it states how he is looking over a woman begging for money and in behind him you see threatening officers attacking citizens. It also states how this shows what was once a beautiful city and now in this nightmarish vision of what is to come when Benito Mussolini is in power. Their was one question that was puzzling me when looking at this piece and that was the dismantled pillars and statues in front of this old woman. Were these dismantled pillars and statues an indication of the downfall of democracy for Italy when Benito Mussolini took over? The description does not really give any notice to it but it makes me wonder if that was Peter Blume’s intention to make the viewer interpret it.The Eternal City”