Water Lilies (1914-1926) is work by Claude Monet (1840-1926.) Monet was born on November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. His mother was a singer and his father led the family’s business of selling ship equipment. His father wanted Monet to continue the family business of sales when he grew up. However, Monet always had a passion for art and when he matured to an adult, he continued to pursue it at an art school with the support of his mother. Since then, Monet became widely known for his impressionistic artwork and oil paintings about nature.

Water Lilies is actually a series of oil paintings. Inspired by Monet’s interest in the countryside and his water-lily pond at Giverny, Water Lilies reflects one of the many aspects of nature one might experience or see at the countryside. This huge artwork is shown through three walls to create an aquarium-like feeling for the viewer. The colors are all blended with one another in a dream-like look to capture the constantly changing quality one would see in a pond (such as when the sun is glistening against the water.)

This work reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with Modernism, more specifically, Impressionism because it gives off a calm and peaceful energy to the viewer. The size of the painting absorbs and dives the viewer into a remote and huge pond. The colors illicit a dream-like effect as they are light and almost even seem like smudges. As Monet intended to make the colors a reflection of how the pond interacts with outside forces such as the sun, it makes the viewer feel almost lighter as if the sun was beaming against them as well.

At first, I was drawn to this piece at the Museum of Modern Art because of its size. While walking around the gallery, I noticed this one artwork took up three walls and had even three seats lined up in front of it. While inspecting it I realized I felt more calm and serene. I found myself standing in the middle of the art for five minutes before realizing I was so absorbed into the painting. The colors of the painting definitely made me more drawn because it felt almost as if  was looking through very fogged lens. One question I’ve wondered while looking at this work was out of all things in the countryside, why Monet decided to create a large project based on the pond.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) is a cubism and modern abstraction painting by Pablo Picasso. Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and famous artists in the 19th and 20th century who painted about the rapid changing of the world. Born in Spain in 1881 he created many works and paintings in different forms.
This painting depicts 5 nude women made up of flat geometric shapes in a room. Their faces look like mask worn by African tribes in rituals. The image looks very jagged and broken. The colors don’t tend to blend but they add to the atmosphere of the jagged room. The colors, just like the lines, have a weird asymmetry about them that fits the painting. It has a very dull tone to it even with the mix of the cool blue and the warm red.
The first thing that really draws me in is the faces. The shape and abnormal design paired with some of them looking straight at you pulls the eyes to the details and shapes. After examining the faces, I’m draw to the rest of their bodies. Just like everything in the painting they have an abnormal design, but they are also depicted as nude. Also, I was so curious to know about what was the main reason or message behind posting a painting of naked women in a public place where adult and children can visit together. This is a three-dimensional representation of women shapes very realistic about women bodies and doers in this modern life we are living now.
This work reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with Modernism because the jagged image doesn’t show them as fully nude, but it gives the illusion. The use of lines shows off the curves and minor details, like a bust line, without pushing it too far. It seems like the lines exaggerate the female body without much details being given away. This is also shown with the fruit and how they are exaggerated, especially the watermelon.
My question is: why Picasso decided to draw a nude women bodies to express the change of the world when we all know that this change is not only at the level of women?

Three Musicians (1921) is a work by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in October of 1881 as the first child in his family. He studied with his father, who was an artist and attended the Academy of Arts for a short period of time before moving to Paris in 1901 to practice new and different art forms.

This artwork is an oil canvas painting called Three Musicians; it shows what Picasso depicts as three musicians each playing a different instrument. The interesting thing about the musicians is that they each seem to be portrayed by a bunch of geometric shapes combined. They each seem to have some type of beard or mustache which tells me that they must be men. The one on the left seems to be playing a flute while wearing white, black, and blue colors. The one in the middle is playing a guitar and is different from the other two because he is wearing a bright orange and beige color suit. The one of the right is playing what seems to be an accordion with music notes on it while wearing mostly black.

This work reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with modernism because it shows an ordinary activity depicted as something more complex. The geometric shapes and slanted lines embrace artifice and reject narrative. The shape of the instruments also fit into the modernism period because they are distorted in a way that makes you look twice at them before knowing which instruments they are. I think that Picasso painted this to show that not everything is the way that it seems. If there was just a painting of three normally proportioned musicians with instruments there wouldn’t be any mystery or questions brought up if an audience were to look at it. The colors and the slanted lines and shapes really fit into the category of modernism since the painting flaunts difficulty and makes you want to take a closer look.

I was drawn to this piece while walking through the MOMA because from far away I saw that there were people in the painting playing instruments and having a background in violin and piano myself, I was interested in taking a closer look at it. I feel as if I can understand the painting on a musical level as well, since playing an instrument is much more different than just watching someone play an instrument. The one thing I am wondering about this painting is why Picasso decided to emphasize the musician in the middle with bright colors and different shapes than the two other musicians on the side. I want to know what made him choose those specific colors and shapes in order to make the one in the middle stand out.

During my visit to the Museum of Modern Art, there were plenty of images and sculptures that I found interesting but the piece that struck me the most was Joan Miró’s, The Birth of the World from 1925.

Joan Miró was a Spanish painter and printmaker born in Barcelona in 1893. He had a love for drawing at an early age which prompted him to pursue art-making and and study landscape and decorative art at the School of Industrial and Fine Arts in Barcelona. Miró was exposed to modern art movements in 1912 with his entry into an art academy in Barcelona.

Like many modernist, Miró rejected the restricted traditional painting and instead favored the Surrealist as well as the style of Automatism. Surrealism is a 20^th century movement in art and literature that south to release the creative potential of the unconscious mine. Automatism is a method of random drawing that attempted to express the inner workings of human psyche. By looking at his work, it becomes evident that Miró engaged in both of these artist methods.

In the painting, The Birth of the World, it appears as if the artist took a paintbrush and painted with his eyes closed. There’s a balloon, the only object that is of a bright color. The geometric shapes, particularly the red circle and black triangle appear to be floating. The painting seems irrational which can relate to the unconscious mind and surrealism as well as automatism. Miró most likely painted from his unconscious mind which is why its hard to decipher the meaning behind it. It appears to be his stream of consciousness in the form of art, though it is not clear what the meaning is.

According to the Museum of Modern Art, Miró described his method for this painting as, “Rather than setting out of paint something I began painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest itself under my brush… the first stage is free, unconscious.” This reveals the crude approach to Miró’s art.

The reason this piece struck me was because to me it appeared eerie and childlike in its composition. The overall painting lacks complexity yet its interesting to think of what the meaning is behind it. The juxtaposition of images doesn’t explicitly make sense, however, it follows modernist techniques. When I first encountered the painting, I was curious to know the deeper meaning is. As a person with meager artistic knowledge, it seemed different and that’s why I thought it was interesting.

Miró’s The Birth of the World is evidently a modernist piece, specifically a Surrealist piece, because of its peculiar form and the fact that it doesn’t pertain to traditional art such as a realist piece. One glance at it can keep an observer perplexed because it doesn’t immediately make sense.

Despite looking at this painting multiple times, I am still very curious to know what the meaning behind it is. To me, it appears to be very elementary yet sophisticated enough to be showcased at a museum.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)

Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881-April8, 1973), born in Malaga, Spain was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet, and playwright. He became one of the world’s best known modern artists of the 20^th century. One of his works that really caught my attention immediately was his Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). This painting was made using oil on canvas and depicts five naked prostitutes posing with different body positions as well as faces. Their bodies seem to absorb the presence of whoever is admiring them. Their limbs are oddly shaped in pointy angles which also gives emphasis to the women’s promiscuous nature in comparison to their surroundings.

This work reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with modernism by taking a huge leap from the expected types of paintings such as covered up subjects and high social status people. Through this aspect, Picasso managed to really connect with his subjects as he aimed primarily to paint the social outcasts on the streets. This included poor people, prostitutes, and homeless people and many other social rejects at the time. His aim was to shine a light on the real people he often encountered in the streets but he never hindered to portray them as they truly were in all forms, in the physical and emotional state.

As I was walking through the MoMA I came across so many different paintings that I loved. To keep a long experience short, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon caught my immediate attention due to the authenticity and vividness of the real human body at its prime. This painting was placed strategically on its own on a big wall, drawing everyone’s attention to the brushwork and colors used to paint. Most importantly, these women are working in a field that is shunned by many conservatives and hidden in the shadows of the night. In this instance, though they seem to embody their decisions and look entirely comfortable in their bodies. It is a real depiction of what every woman should feel like in their own skin. I am all for women feeling empowered with the skin they are in no matter the shape, size or skin tone and I believe this painting greatly speaks for itself to that aspect. Some questions I have about the work is to why the two women on the right have faces that were inspired by African masks. The fact that only these two women have these masks on must symbolize something that I am not understanding.

In my 8^th grade French class, I had to give a speech (en francais) about the painter Edgar Degas. I’m not sure I can really describe it as a speech; it was a string of simple, present-tense sentence that were interrupted by idiotic questions for the teacher like, “Madame Boucher, comment dites ‘ballarina’?” As part of a unit on Impressionism, each student was assigned one of the great early-twentieth-century artists to speak about. One by one, we stumbled through our presentations – Claude Monet, Marie Cassatt, Paul Gauguin, George Seurat; the artist I had the strongest response to was Henri Matisse.

Matisse was born in northern France in 1869. As a young man, he studied law and then worked in a law office. He took up drawing in his free time, and moved to Paris when he was in his early twenties to pursue an education in painting. He was traditionally trained but soon became influenced by the progressive painters of the day, especially George Seurat.

As it turns out, Madame Boucher’s interpretation of Impressionism was very loose. Matisse was actually a part of a post-Impressionist movement called Fauvism. In French, “les fauves” means “the beasts”.

The Fauvists used big, bold swaths of color and were concerned with conveying mood and emotion. Matisse was actually a pioneer in the movement. Fauvists were building on the abstractions and deconstructions of earlier impressionist movements such as pointillism (painting tiny dots rather than using brush strokes). This was a period of painting that rejected the realism of the 19^th century, and embraced innovation and experimentation. Like the Impressionists before them, the post-Impressionists were concerned with how to evoke the sensual experiences of the physical world, but they went even further by embracing less literal representations of people and objects. The Fauvists exemplify Modernism.

The picture I selected is titled “The Red Studio”. Painted in 1911, it’s a rendering of Matisse’s own atelier (or art studio). I selected it because I think it’s a great example of Fauvism. It’s painted almost entirely in a passionate red. The paintings on the atelier walls are miniature versions of Matisse’s recently completed works and they exuberantly jump off the canvas. Except for the window, the only fully formed items are the artists’ works. The other items in the room are only suggested; the table, chairs, pedestals, and floor are only sketchy outlines. Taken all together, I get the sense that Matisse was extraordinarily ardent about his craft.

There are two features of this work are particularly striking. First is the chair in the foreground. Not only does it play with perspective in a way that rejects traditional perceptions, it’s also the only “unreal” item to obscure one of the artist’s works. This visual obstacle gives the atelier depth and proportion using a very few lines. Second is the far left corner of the room. There is no line to suggest it at all. The viewer “feels” the corner because of the way that the other artwork is situated against the invisible walls of the room.

This work is situated in the fifth floor gallery of the Museum of Modern Art. It hangs alongside many other iconic Matisse paintings such as “La Dance”. As I moved through the room, I was impressed by the artist’s range. While there are definitely unifying features of the works, there is an impressive diversity in form and materials.

I’ve encountered Matisse many times in the past – first in that 8^th grade French class, but then in museums like MoMA here at home, the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. For me, Matisse’s unique ability to convey emotion through the audacious use of color and geometry make him a 20^th century master.

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Here are some other works by Matisse that show his range.

–Do you think that Gregor is more powerful BEFORE or AFTER his metamorphosis? Explain your response.

–How is Gregor’s family transformed in the wake of his metamorphosis?

–At the end of the second section of the story, Gregor’s father pelts him with apples. What do you think this episode is about?

–Gregor emerges from his room one last time when he hears his sister playing her violin for the lodgers. What is the significance of this? What meaning does music hold for Gregor here?

–Ultimately, what do you think Gregor’s metamorphosis means? What does it mean to be transformed into a giant bug?

–Explain your understanding of Gregor’s death. How/why does he ultimately die?

–The story’s narrator is revisiting a place he once lived.  Explain the significance that this “revisiting” has in relation to the themes of the story.

–What is the connection between our narrator and Weifu?  Why do you think so much of the story is spent on Weifu’s life, while the narrator shares very little about his own life experiences?

–Explain the significance of the story about reburying Weifu’s little brother?

–Weifu recalls when he and the narrator used to pull the beards off religious statues in the Temple when they were younger.  What is the significance of this memory?

–Describe an instance of filial piety in the story.  What is its significance?

–What aspects of this short story seem to you to be particularly modernist?

–The poem opens, “Let us go then, you and I….” Whom do you think the speaker is addressing here?
–What is Prufrock’s relationship to time?
–Look at the description of the yellow smoke in the second and third stanzas of the poem. What do you make of this description?
–“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” laments Prufrock. What do you think this line means?
–Describe the overall mood of the poem. What feelings does it leave you with?
–In the final lines of the poem, the speaker shifts from “I” to “We.” How do we explain this shift?