On my visit to The Museum of Modern Art I encountered a lot of beautiful art work. Many of it was difficult to understand but one painter’s art work caught my attention many times. That painter was Claude Monet. Claude Monet was born in 1840 in Paris, France. In 1974 after an art exhibition a critic called Monet’s style of painting “Impression” as an insult. That was because it was not realism. Monat suffered from depression, illness, and poverty throughout his life.

The painting I chose is called Agapanthus (1914-1926). It is a part of many paintings by Monet called Water Lily paintings. They are based off of his observations of nature. They were usually of his garden. Agapanthus is a plant native to Africa which Monet planted a lot of in his garden. This piece is a great example of modernism because it focuses less on shapes and focuses more on abstraction and techniques. In the painting it is hard to notice any prominent shapes but rather different colors stand out. Also everything is abstract so it is hard to tell what the painting is of. The colors in the painting help viewers understand the beauty of the painting. From the colors it can be comprehended that it is about nature. Also the lighter colors can be associated with flowers. The different tones of green also project grass and stems of plants. The parts of brown depict soil. The painting shows that this is some sort of garden or meadow.

I was drawn to this painting because of its colors. I am usually drawn to paintings that depict nature and its beauty. What’s interesting to me is that Monet suffered from depression but a lot of his work is about his observations in nature. Nature signifies peace which may have been why he spent so much time in his garden. The amount of time he spent in his garden could have been a time where he can reflect on his life. Another thought is that because he lost the love of his life, his paintings can be a reflection of her beauty or even his love for her. His depression is thought to have been triggered by his loss.

A question I have about his work is, does his work represent his feelings or what he was physically looking at while painting? I would also like to know what was the significance of this significant flower to him?

What drew me to this magnificent piece of art was its mere size. It was the biggest painting displayed on the 5th floor of the Museum of Modern Art. This painting, consisting of three panels was painted by the French Impressionist Claude Monet. Monet was born in 1840 in Paris and died in Giverny at the age of eighty-six. It was when he lived in Giverny that he created this peaceful painting that he named Water Lilies. Monet’s gardens are the source of his inspiration. His representation of the water lilies in the painting are abstract. An inspiration that required six full-time gardeners to upkeep.

According to Monet the aim for Water Lilies was to show “the illusion of an endless hole, of water without horizon or bank”. The painting is an observation of his garden in Giverny. It was made with oil on canvas during the period of 1914-1926.

Monet was the first French Impressionist. Impressionism was an art movement that was not popular among the French establishment. They violated the “right” way to paint by not using lines or contours but instead small brush strokes. The impressionist emphasized to accurately display light and nature, often with a context of time. When I first sat down to gaze upon this mighty creation I could feel its importance to the human soul.

This artwork was displayed in a big room, with two of Monet’s smaller paintings on the opposite side of the room. In the middle of the room there was a big place to sit and gaze into his great work. I sat down with strangers surrounding me on both ends. Instantaneously, a calmness started to grow from inside and within a few moments the painting had managed to shut out the outside world. The Museum of Modern Art had became quite at 3 pm on a Friday. Going from a stressful day to a quiet day in a matter of seconds is not possible for me. This painting infused me with a relief, it washed away all the worries and then there was a calmness in my mind that I haven’t felt since summer.

The peace came from the scale of the painting but also that it made sense. Everything in the picture was connected. Shockingly, I heard a rumour that while Monet was painting during this period he was losing his sight. Which makes me wonder if he made the painting so large because he could not see detail.

This piece that I found from the Museum of Modern Art is called “Picture with an Archer” by Vasily Kandinsky. The work was created in 1909, in Germany. Vasily Kandinsky, also known as Wassily Kandinsky, was a Russian painter and art theorist. He was one of the pioneers of abstract modern art, and the first modern artist to paint an entirely abstract piece. Kandinsky was an important figure who followed the Expressionism movement. In the Expressionism movement, an important theme was to use color and form to create an artistic experience that capture the sound, and emotions of the public.

I was drawn to this piece because it was aesthetically pleasing. It caught my attention at first glance because of its range of colors and creativity. All the colors in this piece are so vibrant that it’s hard to tell what’s going on in this piece. He uses an array of vivid, yet dark-ish colors, including blue, orange, red, pink, yellow, and green. Because of its vibrant paint and abstraction, it sparked my curiosity and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on in the piece. After a little bit of research, I found that the scene in this piece is set in his Russia, though he was living in Germany at the time. On the left, you can see men in Russian dress, on the right a horseman with a bow. Behind them are trees and a house. They all seem to be on hills or mountains.

You can tell from this painting that Kandinsky is not trying to paint a realistic objective scene, but rather trying to express emotion/thoughts. He tries to achieve this by distortion, exaggeration, and a dynamic application of his colors. His style is very bold, with lots exaggerated and swaying brushstrokes. I thought that what he was trying to convey was his emotional state of negative emotions (because of his dark colors) like anxiety and stress. I think he painted a setting of Russia even though he was living in Germany at the time to emphasize the idea of total abstraction. Because expressionism was all about the artist’s inner state and experience, copying from nature would only interfere that process.

I guess what I’m wondering about the painting is why include the the archer, Russian men in dress, and the house in the painting? What do they mean/signify?

Reference: http://www.worldsbestpaintings.net/artistsandpaintings/painting/140/

After my trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this piece of art stood out to me the most. “The Cathedrals of Wall Street” (1939), as you can see written along the floor of the oil painting, is a painting by Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944). Stettheimer was an American poet from New York. This painting has Wall Street viewed as an integral part of an everyday New Yorker’s life. According to the description of the painting, “Wall Street” was composed of financial leaders like Bernard Baruch, John D Rockefeller, and J P Morgan. From looking at the picture, I see that President Franklin D Roosevelt is right in the center being remembered and this could show how closely connected the politicians at the time were connected to the big businesses, especially the New York Stock Exchange.

I believe that this work represents Modernism because it isn’t really what a cathedral looks like. This painting is a trying to show how patriotic the New York Stock Exchange tries to be. It is trying to make the image of not praying to a God normal and basically giving in to the “Cathedral of Wall Street” whatever that is. It also shows the Salvation Army which could represent the charitable and helpful people who give their time up for a good cause. In the back shows big letters saying bank, trust, I think I might see it say the word Mortgage back on the right side along one of the pillars, all of the American flags, the American Indian, and Florine Stettheimer herself is pictured paying homage to the George Washington statue by holding a ribbon that reads “to George Washington from Florine” on the right side of the painting. All this isn’t really in the cathedral it is in Stettheimer’s imagination and I believe she is trying to show who the very few rich people are worshipping.

When looking for a painting that struck out to me it was hard at first because everything was just weird and made no sense, but when I came across this there were 5 similar paintings and they were all very detailed and beautiful. Reading the name Baruch in the description really drew my attention and hearing that the name of my school being represented is always nice. One question I had was why are the soldiers faces red and some have blue suits while others have red ones. I was also curious on what the flags which weren’t American flags like the blue one in the back.

-Nahian Emon

The Museum of Modern Art features an array of artistic masterpieces. One creation that I found myself analyzing was Water Lilies by Claude Monet. Monet was one of the French painters who began the impressionist painting movement, having rejected the traditional approach. Impressionism consists of paintings that express the distinct effect that color and light has on nature and other still life. Water Lilies is one of Claude Monet’s longest series to exist, consisting of approximately 250 oil paintings over the course of almost 12 years (1914-1926). The pieces in the series were meant to supply “the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon or bank”, according to Monet, himself.

The picture above that didn’t seem to have a definite title other than the series’, Water Lilies, was showcased through three large panels side by side. And as explained by Monet, himself, of what he hoped the painting expresses, there was only a visible lily pond and nothing beyond; it was whole, endless water without a shore in sight. Because of the oil pastels, it was difficult to figure out exactly what is being seen, but eventually, the lilies began to appear before me. The light blue around the lilies can also give off a sense that it could be a blossomed flower tree that is being reflected upon the water, as it closely resembles a clear sky that is slightly peering through. Although many impressionist artists prefer to make their pieces more vibrant and lively, imagining colors that can cause the scenery to lighten, there are several that showcase darkness, a bit like this one. It almost seems real without any added twist, and possibly even a life to canvas creation as Monet observed it, which now thinking about it, is exactly what impressionist paintings depict. In them, there is nothing perfect, but rather everything is flawed, as observed in actuality.

Other than the amount of space it had taken up on the museum wall, the painting has a calming vibe that greatly draws attention to it. Along with the other pieces in the series, gazing at this brings about several thoughts of nature and traditional art. By now, nature has been encountered countless times in various artistry as a backdrop. Oil paintings, in general, are crafts that have recently made a breakthrough. Traditional paintings were subject to viewing the world through a different lens, to counteract the basicness. I feel that artists were eager to show how exactly they found a complex meaning in something so simple. Paintings such as the Water Lilies series really depicts that something as simple as a pond with lilies can just be that, a pond with lilies; that there is no ulterior hidden interpretation. The essence of it is that art can be made to elicit emotions of pleasure, rather than a deep analysis. The form which Claude Monet has taken upon to portray this is simply a different means of creation.

During my visit to the Museum of Modern Art, one artwork that stood out and caught my interest was “The False Mirror” by Rene Magritte. The work was created on 1928 at Le Perreux-sur-Marne which is a small suburb in Paris, France and was called “Le Faux Miroir”. Rene Magritte was a Belgian painter who followed the surrealism movement of art, in this movement a common theme majority of his artwork share was the sense for viewers of his artwork to “question their perceptions of reality.”

The work I selected is a picture of an entire eye, including the eyelids, with a view of the beautiful sky as its iris which is briefly interrupted by a solid black circle as the pupil. A small detail that is easily missed during the first glance is the lack of eyelashes which gets overlooked by the depiction of the sky. Overall, the description of the artwork is straight forward with what you see, but it can be interpreted in many ways.

In relation to modernism, the aspect being shown in this artwork is surrealism. The intention is to show more of the unconscious mind as opposed to the conscious and rational side of thinking. What Magritte shows through imagination and experimentation is unique to everyday life as it breaks the fundamental art style of realism. The aesthetics of the work are imaginary and creative which is depicted through an eye representing a mirror of the sky.

What caught my attention regarding this painting was the reflection seen in the eye, which is the main attraction of the painting and a focal point of confusion. Normally, you wouldn’t expect to see what the eye is viewing, but Magritte captures this perspective and puts it into art depicting both the instrument (eye) and the view (sky) into a single frame. To me it signified the difference between what we actually see and how we interpret it differently. It reminded me of Magrittes painting of the pipe we had seen in class where it was technically not a pipe, but a painting of a pipe. Using the inference of not being what it actually is helps with interpreting this painting; while it is an eye, it is not really an eye but what the eye sees. In a sense, everything we see is mirrored back to us through our eyes which justifies the title of the work Magritte produced, “The False Mirror.”

A question I have is why Magritte chose to depict the eye this way. Was it Magrittes goal to question the anatomy of an eye? The lack of eye lashes on the eye is also questionable.

–What do you think the significance of Allende’s title is? What does it mean to be made of clay? –

-What happens to Rolf in his encounter with Azucena?

–Why do you think Azucena becomes a symbol of the tragedy that is unfolding in the story?

–What did you make of the President’s visit to the site of the disaster? What kind of commentary is Allende making here?

–How can you connect this story with your own experiences of natural or other disasters? Are there elements of the story that you can relate to? How?

The artwork that I found very interesting at the Museum of Modern Art was the “Sleeping Gypsy” by Henri Rousseau (1897). Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was a French painter also known as Le Douanier. In this painting what you see is a woman who is in deep sleep by her jar that is full of water. The setting is what looks like a desert and mountains in the back. A lion approaches the woman and nears her but does not devour the woman because of the “moonlight effect”. As an artist, the woman in the painting is a craftsman; as an explorer, she has no reasonable social place. Lost in the self-retention that is profound, envisioning rest, she is hazardously powerless and the lion is calm. Rousseau plays delicately with brightness on the lion’s body in the painting. Rousseau intentionally utilized different social things to depict a meaning. The painting of the woman as she is dozing under the lion can be recognized in numerous ways.

1. the woman speaks to the mother of all societies and minorities and the lion speaks to the overwhelming leaders of society.
2. the artistic creation demonstrates we are dependably prey to the intense.
3. the lion is only a risky, capable creature misconstrued with no aim of hurting the woman yet basically cherishing her.
4. Possibly the lion is interested about her way of life and her weakness.
5. Perhaps the wanderer speaks to every one of us resting in the night, not realizing what is to come and what is to fear.

It is very conceivable that the picture demonstrates how little control we may have now and again in our lives. I think there is a moral, dependable approach to blend and utilize societies other than your own to make an all-inclusive message conveying values imparted to individuals over the world. The enormous thought here is that numerous implications and images can be drawn from a solitary masterpiece. Rousseau utilized his own viewpoint of different societies to take a picture very widespread to the audience. He put social thoughts, pictures, and things into an advanced painting demonstrating the solidarity of the way of life and the weakness of every single individual paying little heed to their disparities. The Sleeping Gypsy is a genuine champion piece and sets a standard for its kind. I really enjoyed analyzing this painting as it had so many different meaning to it that ne can portray in its mind, all you need to do is think outside the box.

The artwork that I found very interesting in the MET museum is called “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” by Umberto Boccioni in 1913. He is one of the most influential artists among the Italian futurists, an art movement. He lost his life at the age of thirty-three while supporting the modern technological concept. He created this artwork before a year World War I broke out. It is one of the artworks from futurism. Futurism basically is the prediction of what the future looks like with evolution of technology and industrialization. The futurist painters at this time period practiced this idea in every medium of art to make people aware of their vision through their forms of art like painting, sculpture, designing and much more.
This sculpture is one of the few pieces of Boccioni. This unknown figure is made with bronze. It stands about three and a half feet tall. It is given a human-like body with three dimensions attached with wing-like extensions in the body parts. When we look at the sculpture, we can see how one leg is placed forward and the other is placed backward almost like a human position of walking. It looks different from different angles. It gives us an idea about the rise of modernism through an art. It is unbelievable how our ancients were able to predict how the world was going to look like in a couple of decades with the help of technology. It kind of depicts the concept that man will slowly distinct and will reform in a man like robotic object who has more power and energy that human. It is a perfect example of the Futurist movement in Modernism due to its strength and capable qualities that could evolve the modern society.
For me, this artwork is a meaningful sculpture and anyone looking at it for the first time can guess why the person would’ve made this back in the days before the rise of technology. The thing I liked the most about this sculpture is that you can see it from all the angles and it is interesting how at some point it looked more abstract than a figure itself. I think it is a great idea of the artist to deliver his concept to the people by turning his work into an artwork which is easily understood by all the common people who can or can’t read and write. It gives us a sense of hope for the future and human destiny.