Monthly Archives: May 2019

During my visit to the MOMA Museum, the painting that caught my attention was the one called “Man with a Guitar” by Georges Braque. He was a French painter born in May 1882 and died in August 1963. Some of his most important contributions were related to the Cubism movement.  This work I selected is very intriguing, he used light and dark shadows and a range of grey, yellow, brown, black and white tones. Some shapes are visible such as triangles and lines and some curved lines. At first, I was impressed by the tones and shapes but it took me a while to see the man with a guitar. I consider this work complete breaks the traditional forms by complicating reality and giving the viewer a chance to experiment with the eye. It makes you question the tittle, because the first thing you want to look for is for the actual man playing the instrument. However, as a modernist pioneer, he makes his painting very abstract. This work is related to the Cubism movement which is commonly known for the use of geometric forms in order to depict different points of view and dimensions. His work is related to that of Pablo Picasso.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Musem Of Modern Art. While walking through different art galleries, I noticed a painting that instantly captured my eye. It was a painting by Umberto Boccioni called ” The City Rises”. Umberto Boccioni is an Italian painter who is best known for his contributions to the futurism movement. Boccioni is often credited as the leading artist during this movement, creating iconic paintings and sculptures that incorporate a lot of color and dynamism of modern life. Some of his iconic paintings include ” The City Rises”, “States of Mind I: The Farewells”, “The Morning”, etc.

Boccioni ” The City Rises ” was completed in 1910. The painting is on an oil medium canvas. “The City Rises ” exhibits futuristic and realistic elements containing manual labor, modern cities such as the suburbs and modern necessities. The painting centers around the vast progress of cities and the manual labor movement, whilst shining light upon technology, horses, and architecture. Boccioni himself stated that the painting is “a great synthesis of labor, light, and movement.”

” The City Rises ” showcases a lot of futurist elements that coincide with modernism. The painting itself brings forth different variation of modern ideas and dynamism such as the realistic portrayal of labor in society and technology as well as movements. Boccioni broke away from the traditional style of painting at the time and brought different styles such as cubism more colors and captures current and future advancement of society.

What first drew me to this painting was the pop of color. I thought the ray of colors stood out to me because he connected a lot of different colors and tied it in with different subjects in the painting such as the horses, people, building, etc. The colors overlapped with everything in the painting it made me focus on the painting as a whole and capture the true essence. What also grab my attention was the people in the painting. I stood by Boccioni painting for a long time trying to figure out what do the people represent and what was their purpose.

While trying to understand the painting, some questions had occurred that I was more-so curious about. What leads Boccioni to incorporate many district elements in his painting? and what was he inspired by ?

Rene Magritte’s 1927 painting “The Menaced Assassin” exudes the modernist period of painting through a depiction of mystery. We saw another of Magritte’s works, the famous “The Treachery of Images,” painted in 1928, in which Magritte raised the question of modern painting, “if it is not a pipe, then what is it?” Magritte’s intellectual history informs us of the origins of his work. His mother committed suicide at a young age. As a boy, he fell into painting, and pursued an art education in his home country of Belgium. Yet he struggled after graduating, and took to painting wallpaper to support himself and his wife. His early career was under the influence of Picasso, but after moving to Paris in the early 1920s, he became befriended Andre Breton, founder of the surrealist movement. Thus currents of Freudianism and Marxism, interest in the subconscious and the working class, bend through his paintings. Magritte would become tremendously popular in France by the 1950s, before dying in 1967 at the age of 69.

“The Menaced Assassin” hangs at the Museum of Modern Art. The piece features seven figures in four groups. At the focal point, a woman on a divan, a kind of fainting couch reminiscent of the rooms of the psychoanalysts office. She is completely nude with blood trailing from her mouth which is agape. That slight detail makes her the most expressive body in the painting. To the right a man without his coat on stands over a record player. Closest to the viewer, and hidden behind a wall from the coatless man, are two figures in bowler hats with a club and net respectively. The last group are three men looking into the room from an otherwise unsettled background often seen in Renaissance painting.

The work is an exemplar of modernism because, unlike dramatic depictions of tragic scenes as one would see in Baroque paintings such as “Judith beheading Holofernes,” or life like depictions such as the paintings of Thomas Cole, Magritte compels the reader to question the narrative of the painting. Where Baroque and Classical work compels the viewer emotionally, showing them a mimesis of some grand thematic act, and realist painting had served to depict life in a world prior to photography, modernism as exemplified in Magritte can entice the reader through uncertainty and doubt. It seems immediately obvious that there is a dead woman laying a room, but upon further inspection of the characters that surround her, the very scene comes into question. The painting becomes like a mystery novel, where one must apply a thesis and see if the pieces work, in a way that painting had resisted prior to this. Where other modernist works such as Dali or even future works of Magritte demonstrated a dream like sequence, this work demonstrates the mental image of of the detective’s imagination. A raw and uncertain perspective, where faces are washed, but murder weapons and the scene of death, which the detective would no doubt have the clearest idea of, can be placed into the imagination with certainty.

I would ask narrative questions – Who is the murderer here? Most readings assign the man over the record player as the killer, and conjecture that the men surrounding him are the “menacers.” This doesn’t seem so obvious to me however, considering that he’s not the one in the room with the weapons. Another question, is it a mark on Magritte to paint a scene of violence towards a woman in such a way? It seems to me to be a repetition of tired tropes in western art, one that could use less dramatic depiction.

The Menaced Assassin, 1927

The work I have selected is, Umberto Boccioni’s, The City Rises, created in 1910. The painting was placed in the Modern and Contemporary art gallery 908 amongst other works of Boccioni. Umberto Boccioni was an Italian painter and sculptor. He is famously known for his futuristic works as he helped shape the aesthetic of the Futurism movement. He became a student of Giacomo Balla, a painter focusing on the modern Divisionist technique and in 1906, he moved to Paris, where he studied Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles. Boccioni became the main theorist of the artistic movement. The City Rises is an oil on canvas. The artwork is considered the first futuristic work by Umberto Boccioni as it depicts realistic elements such as buildings, a modern city or town. It shows the urbanization of a city as high buildings is portrayed throughout the artwork. Construction seems to be occurring as there are plenty of workers who are in the middle of a task. The building takes up the background while what we see more prominently are several men and large horses. The painting itself shows an almost chaotic, moving and busy scene as there seems to be an effect of a motion blur. In the visual arts, the roots of Modernist painters broke away from ideas of perspective and subject matter. The avant-garde movements followed and Futurism was included. Futurism can be defined as Modernist. Artists increasingly abandoned past styles and conventions in favor of a form of architectural painting such as buildings because of what was going on around them in terms of the advancement in technologies after World War I. The tendency to create art in this form and leaving behind old traditional techniques became more of an international style and aesthetic. In this painting, we can see elements of futurism as we see the force and power of human work and see how important and necessary the creation of a modern town can be. Umberto Boccioni portrays the creation of a new city, with developments and technology. What first drew me to this piece was how much movement and blur was captured in the painting. On a quick glance I was unable to see the details as it looked almost chaotic and like scribbles but with further inspection, I was able to make out the movement of the workers and see the horses. The buildings in the back are in progress and stand larger behind them.

The painting I choose is the persistence of memory , which is painted by Salvador dali in 1931.

To begin with, Dalí was a famous Spanish painter (1904-1989).  He is known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work, just like we see in the persistence of memory. Dalí’’s  interest also lies in film, sculpture, and photography. Also, he has contributed a lot to surrealism.

The persistence of memory, also known as “the soft watches”, is probably the most famous Surrealism painting among his work. If we take a look at this painting, we can easily find a lot of bizarre images in it. The orange clock at the left-side of painting is covered in ants and there are three soft watches on the trees, tables and the monster.

His painting is kind of like dream, since in reality, all of the watches are hard , while in this painting, the watches , or “the time” are soft. In other words, they are bent and they can even hang on a tree, which will never happen in reality. More interestingly, the orange clock seems to be fully attractive to these ants, since it is covered by these ants . However, in real word, I never see a single ant is attracted to some mental clock ever. What represents in this painting is totally different with our common sense. Although nothing is real in this painting, Dalí works on the detail of this painting so that the viewers can tell how realistic this painting is . I guess that is what surrealism means: the theme are always absurd, but the details are so real.Thus, to some extent, it reminds of me the Metamorphosis.

Actually, when I arrive the museum, I am just wandering aimlessly. I don’t know which work I will choose to explain modernism until I see the persistence of memory. When I first glanced at this piece of work, I know I am going to work on it.  Though I don’t know a lot in art, I do know that is a great work on modernism. And since it is so great and so well-known, this work itself must have some specific modernism for me to work on. That’s why I choose this work.

I do still have some questions about his work.  Though people always talk about how great and how famous this , I still don’t know what the painter want to express through all this bizarre images : bent watches , ants , orange clock and the little monster lied on the ground. What does Dalí try to say to us?

On May 2nd, I had the opportunity to visit the Museum of Modern Art for a brief and enjoyable visit. Upon arriving, I came with a friend to browse around art work between the 1890’s to the early 1920’s. I had found a lot of unique and fascinating art work that grasped my attention the moment I walked in. But the painting I acquired to be the most enticing was the “Catalan Landscape”. The “Catalan Landscape” was an oil on canvas created by Joan Miró in the time period between 1923-1924. Joan Miró was a Spanish painter, sculptor, print maker and decorative artist. Despite not understanding the whole painting at first, I connected the description displaced with the landscape.

I encountered this artwork while glancing work upon the 1920’s modernist paintings in the gallery. This piece in particular stood out to me because of the unusual placement of figures across the landscape. Not only did this fascinate me but I was curious to decipher what it stood for and what it meant. At first this artwork looked like a range of body parts and objects across the painting. But after I discovered it’s real meaning I was enticed to write about this individual piece. Some questions that arose to me was his intentions to portray the hunter in the landscape.

Miró’s style had a relationship between art and nature which lies behind all his work and account in good measure. Throughout his career, he developed a Surrealist language of colors and symbols that is widely regarded as one of the main influences for Abstract Expressionism. Surrealism basically defies the dreams and visions envisioned displayed on artwork. This type of style was established to go against traditional art work and what it stood for. “Catalan Landscape” is an excellent example of Joan Miró’s personal surrealist style.

Joan Miró’s The Hunter (Catalan Landscape) may seem abstract, but a closer look reveals a landscape populated with a assortment of human and animal figures and natural forms that together comprise an iconography of the artist’s life. The two different colors on the background are displayed as the sky and the earth. On the left side of the painting there’s a figure of the hunter, with a Catalonian beret and a pipe. Even though, it’s difficult to decipher where the images are in the painting, the description leads us to imagine and correlate the painting to it’s meaning. “Catalan Landscape” was of great importance in Miró’s career, having a great influence on his series of “imaginary landscapes”.

             The art piece I chose, was an oil on canvas painting  created by the artist Franz von Stuck in the year 1908. Von Stuck was a German painter,sculptor,architect and engraver who was awarded the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown in 1906.  Stuck’s work was mainly focused around mythology and most of his paintings featured large forms which exuded his interest in sculptures. As for this particular piece I chose titled “Inferno”, it was created by Stuck in the year 1908 before the end of the Second World War and captures the artist ‘s own perception of hell or some kind of purgatory. In the painting, a snake,flames and demons are displayed with dark colors as they appear to torment the people around them. Three men in the painting are seen in a fetal position as they appear to be in some immense pain and anguish as one would imagine hell to be. Many critics saw Stuck’s work as visionary as he explored a darker and more sinister side of art without fear. It is also believed that the artist pulled his inspiration from August’s Radin’s “The Gates of Hell”.                                                                                Stuck’s Inferno really captured the ideals of 19th century modernism as it relates to finding new forms of expression as Modernism was concerned with experimental art forms and Stuck’s release of a more sinister topic was indeed innovative  and received many praises from critics for his subject matter. His depiction of Inferno’s expression of the atrocities of hell delved into the modernists appetite for surrealism and expressionism.

The context in which I came across the painting was simply through my online search for a painting that would give some reflection of the mind’s of artists during this chaotic period of war and oppression. I wanted to be more familiar with the painting before I actually visited in person and so upon searching for a piece that I believed captured the heart and mind of the people who are not afraid to express themselves (artists) I came across the Inferno piece and more interestingly, I noticed it was constructed by a German native. Which is mainly the reason I chose this particular piece. I was very interested in what Germans found captivating during this time as they played a major role in both World Wars and are indeed interesting citizens to study. I feel like Stuck’s painting being as sinister and mind boggling as it is really is a great representation of the minds and heart of many other Germans and like minded people from other nationalities and creeds during this time . This is what inspired me to further study this art piece. In closing, there are absolutely no outstanding questions that I had about this particular art work and why the artist chose to create this work. I feel like I understood greatly the context of this piece and why he chose to create it during such times of hardship. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about this artist and his work. Thank you.

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish artist who made many forms of art including painting, sculpting, poetry and playwriting. He spent most of his life in France and is regarded as a founder of the cubist movement and constructed sculpture.

The work I selected is called “Au Lapin Agile” which according to the MET is a painting of Picasso, a lover named Garmaine Pichot and Frede Gerard, who commissioned the painting, in a cabaret. The work was made in 1905 and stayed in Paris till 1912 when it was sold to a German collector. In the painting Picasso paints himself as a Harlequin.

The characters in the painting have a cartoon like quality to them. As supposed to drawing a portrait, where the people look as close to real life as possible. We see that certain features of the characters are very sharp such as their faces or when the clothes they wear. Others are muted and almost distorted such as their hands. As we spoke in class it’s like the artist the reminding us that this is a painting, an interpretation of that moment in time not a replacement for the real thing.

I encountered this painting around works that were more “life like”. Portraits of people and nature, a huge painting of a man with many horses really stood out as did another with a depicting a beautiful scene in nature. It was kind of odd to see this painting where it was and that is what partially drew me to it. I’m usually not a fan of modern art as I don’t really understand what the artist is trying to convey but I like this painting. The use of different colors for light in the room, the characters painted not life like gave me a sense of relief. Never have I felt that emotion looking at a painting before. I could imagine this being a scene in an animated movie or comic with its vibrant colors and almost expected the characters to start moving. Lastly, I can relate to the scene itself, a simple act of being with a friend or lover going to listen to music. It makes me think of how human beings from all times are connected through these simple circumstances of life.

I do have a few questions about the work. Why did Picasso paint himself as a Harlequin? Why are the hands of the characters distorted and why is the musician in the back glowing? Also, why did Picasso choose this as the setting?

The artist I selected was Franz von Stuck who was a german who was a painter, sculpter, engraver and architect.  Franz von Stuck was born in Tettenweis but later moved to Munich where he remained for the rest of his life. He began his artistic career in cartoons but later moved to painting where he received awards for his works.  His style mainly focused in mythology. Many of his works were very large including the piece i picked as well as had high focus in the frames they were kept in which were designed and built by Franz himself.

The work I decided to select just stood out to me not only in how great and large the painting was but also in name. The painting is titled “Inferno” and just as the name suggests refers to the literature written by Dante Alighieri titled Dantes Inferno.  The painting itself portrays symbols of the underworld such as dark colors, snakes, demons and a fiery pit.

The information described by the painting summary suggests that the poses are strikingly modern.  The painting seemed very progressive with the women on the right being of no clothing and very detailed.  The painting seemed to be non traditional and classical in nature and was painted during the modernist era.  It also was about the religion and perhaps trying to break traditional beliefs or ideas of the church by portraying demons and a fiery pit.

My encounter of this work was being walking aimlessly around the large museum trying to find the modernist section as well as taking in the sites of the other sections.  Eventually I came across the room which I believe to be the start of the modern art section although I am not entirely sure. The first painting that caught my eye was this one and the main thing that made me take a second look at it was the title of the paining “Inferno”. Which was highlighted by being underneath the paining and engraved in the beautiful gold hand crafted frame. I immediately thought maybe its based on Dante’s Inferno and after reading the description and taking another good look at the painting it was indeed true based on the same work of literature and I decided that this was going to be the piece I would write on.  The title of the painting was surprisingly the main thing that drew me to this piece and after that it was probably its grandeur as if it were a small piece i might have missed the title and painting completely.

My only question about the painting itself would be why the female on the right was portrayed with no clothing and how he thinks that it ties in with the piece itself.

On my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week, I encountered a lot of pieces/works that attracted me such as “The Furniture Factory” by Bumpei Usui, The Three O’Clock Sitting by Henri Matisse, etc. while searching for the one I was finally going to write about, “South of Scranton” (1931) by Peter Blume. “Peter Blume (1906-1992) was a famous painter and sculptor. His works contained elements of folk art and surrealism.” (MoMA) During the 1930’s and 1940’s, the popularity of Blume’s dreamlike paintings, filled with obsessive details, made him one of America’s best known artists.

“South of Scranton gathers various scenes that the artist encountered during an extended road trip  in spring 1930. Setting out from his residence in Pawling, New York, Blume drove through the coalfields of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and then headed south towards the steel mills of Bethlehem.  Blume then travelled further south to Charleston, South Carolina, where he witnessed several sailors performing acrobatic exercises aboard the deck of a German cruiser ship in the harbour. In an account of the painting’s origin, the artist stated, “As I tried to weld my impressions into the picture, they lost all their logical connections. I moved Scranton into Charleston, and Bethlehem into Scranton, as people do in a dream.” (MoMA) 

The moment I read about this piece, it clicked to me that very second that, “this is the one!” I found it funny, as it appeared to me and relatable at the same time as I literally had a dream one time a couple of months ago that I still remember in which I mixed the rooms of my house, such as the bathroom was in the place of basement, kitchen was where my parents’ bedroom used to be, etc. and when I woke up, it seemed so surreal as I realised that dream, it has been a in my memory since. Blume’s crisp technique also heightens the painting’s surreal appearance. Surrealism in art is basically the idea of producing imagery or effects by unnatural or irrational combinations and contrasts. 

As a matter of fact, ‘South of Scranton’ was included in the Thirty-second Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1934. Eight years later, in 1942, it was acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art after it won a prize in the major exhibition “Artists for Victory”.

I came across this work in the Art of Americas gallery within Modern and Contemporary Arts section which had other works associated with Modernism from the African and Greek regions too.