Monthly Archives: May 2019

Joan Miro was a Spanish artist born on April 20th, 1893 in Barcelona. He specialized in painting, sculpting, and ceramics. Miro lived for 100 years, and in those years, he produced many fine pieces of art like “The Farm”, “The Harlequin’s Carnival”, and so on. Many of these pieces are surrealist. The piece of art I chose is called “Portrait of Enric Cristofol Ricart”. The reason I chose this was simply the unique design. Although considered modernist, it contained Japanese style art in the background, merging two different cultures. I thought it would be intriguing to understand it by digging a little deeper into it. This piece of art was completed sometime during the winter or early spring of 1917. Pictured in the painting, Enric Cristofol Ricart is the studio-mate, as well as friend. Essentially, this piece embodies Miro’s visual language. Miro’s visual language has been classified as surrealist and this piece brings out many aspects of it. Some of the highlighting traits of surrealist art are the abstraction of the items and characters, bright colors and brush stroke style. The painting context includes Miro introducing his own touches like the painter’s palette, and the waves of colorful lines that intwined into his black hair. The gallery consisted mostly of pieces that were difficult to make out at first glance. However, this piece was very straight forward. But upon closer analysis, it seems that there is more than meets the eye. I also noticed the clothing he was wearing. To me, it looked like a prisoner’s attire. I thought about whether or not that had something to do with Enric’s mentality about art. Although I doubt it was true, I couldn’t help but come to such a hypothesis. The way Enric’s face was portrayed using a wide spectrum of colors to shade it really caught my attention as well. His sharp features are highlighted with almost a brassy rainbow like range of colors. Despite all that in the foreground, the background is just as eye catching. Behind Enric in the top right corner, there’s a large Japanese style piece of art. I think it’s really cool that the two different cultures crossover in this painting. It’s something I don’t come across often. Some questions I have about this painting is what is the reasoning for the the attire Enric is wearing. I’m also curious as to why they included the Japanese part.

I visited the Museum of Modern Art, also known as the MoMA, for the first time ever on April 24th.  It happened to be particularly crowded this day and I had already arrived later than planned so I aimed my focus for my visit towards the fifth floor which consists of works from the 1880s-1950s.  I thoroughly enjoyed my short visit and fully intend on going back to see the rest of the Museum of Modern Art.

The work of art I chose is called “The Piano Lesson”  This work was created by the French artist, Henri Matisse, in the year 1916.  Matisse is considered one of the most important French artists of the 20th century.  An incredible title for someone who only became interested in art at the age of 21.

During the 1910s Europe was a central location for innovation, especially within the world of art.  Throughout Europe, there were new styles such as cubism, which were futuristic and daunting to some.  As a response to this futuristic style of art, many artists turned to exploring the possibilities of color.  Matisse was one of these artists.  The Fauve movement came as a result of Matisse’s new style of work.  The Fauve movement is a result of artists using bright color to express movement within their works, rather than a traditional three-dimensional setting.  This new style evoked mixed reviews but nonetheless, exemplifies true modernism.

I happened to come across this piece as a result of being in the Matisse section of the gallery.  Growing up my grandfather, an artist himself, was a big fan of Matisse and had an actual Matisse work in his apartment. I think what drew me to this work in particular was the flatness and the bright colors on the gray backdrop.  The colors give depth to the room even though it is two-dimensional.  Upon reading the description to the side of the piece I found out more interesting information.  Matisse had originally started this work in the “naturalism” style.  The naturalism style is the realistic depiction of objects in a natural setting.  Taking that into consideration it is interesting to see the progressive changes throughout his work.  You can see the boy’s face had begun as a natural style but as Matisse changed his style he added the triangle to his face.  Again by breaking the traditional style, Matisse created a piece of modern work.

I only have a few questions that I would ask for this piece.  Why did Matisse decide to change his work halfway through?  Were the effects of World War I, and its technological advances, a big influence on his styles of art?  Why did time play such an important role throughout Matisse’s works?

The museum of modern art also known as the MoMa is hands down one of my favorite museums to attend in NYC . Upon my visit to the MoMa I took a closer look at the fifth floor which carried pieces of work from the late 19th to early 20th century. There in sight I took notice and analyzed Georges Braque, Man with a Guitar. Braque was a renowned 20th century french painter who played a major role in the development of cubism. He and colleague Pablo Picasso were heavily associated with each other, even though the fame of Picasso was far superior than Braque.

Braque’s earliest work were far more expressional and followed the Fauve movement with other brilliant painters such Henri Matisse and Andre Derain. His interest and work led to what is known as cubism through his curiosity in geometry and unorthodox view on perspective. Cubism was very experimental and in the early 20th century revolutionized paintings and sculptures by using monochromatic colors and abstract patterns.

In Man with a Guitar you can’t help but look and view it slowly as you concentrate on every detail in the painting. There are lines and shading used very unconventionally creating a sense of structure and texture through fragmentation, through this style it made his work seem both flat yet three dimensional. He wanted to create a new representation in terms of paintings and its not necessarily meant to be abstract but construct a new approach to on how to create and view them.

By pin pointing recognizable details you can make out the profile of a man in the painting as well as a sound hole of the instrument if you look carefully. Cubism was breaking barriers within paintings as we were starting to view them from a new direction like that of a sculpture. Now with this technique and movement in the arts it very much coincides with that of modernism. It shows that art is not just seen or interpreted by our eyes but our minds as well, it ruptures ways to make sense of a picture

Majority of his work in cubism resemble one another based on the choice of monochromatic grays and fragmentation of shape. I find it fascinating how one can look at an image but have no idea what we’re exactly looking at until we read the caption of so called work. Pieces and work like these capture my eye as you end up in a gaze trying to capture every detail and in ways solve this elaborate take on art. Picasso who also used cubism had a larger sense of color in his work so to see the difference yet commonality between both in cubism is very interesting. To believe at first glance this came across as an abstract painting is actually much vast to a greater way of thinking and approach to painting in itself.

During my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was particularly drawn to Claude Monet’s, Ile Aux Orties Near Vernon. Claude Monet is a famous French painter of the 19^th and early 20^th century. He is credited with being one of the founders of the Impressionism movement which is concerned with the visual impression of a moment, focusing on light and color. He is famously known for his series of artworks such as Nympheas, Sunrise, and Rouen Cathedral.

This painting depicts the scenery of the Ile aux Orties (Island of Nettles) situated close to Monet’s home in Giverny. Monet painted four versions of the misty atmosphere in 1897. This piece consists of many brush strokes in shades of blue, purple, gray, yellow and green. Monet seems to be depicting a cloud or fog just above the river. Monet’s focus on light and color can be seen in the shape of the cloud as well as its reflection. He uses dark blue, green, and purple, and some gray to depict the shape of the cloud, and uses light green, yellow, blue, and purple to portray the cloud’s reflection in river.

Monet’s, Ile Aux Orties Near Vernon, definitely focuses on the aesthetic element of Modernism. When you think of a foggy atmosphere you usually associate dark colors and a gloomy tone. However, Monet depicts a much more peaceful image by using bright colors and creates a more appealing impression of fog. Furthermore, Monet’s artistic style does not apply definite shapes or forms to objects, so his pieces can sometimes be left to interpretation.

I viewed this piece of Monet’s work in the European Paintings department at the MET. In this section there were a lot of pieces of Monet’s work such as his famous Water Lillies, and other works of impressionist artist. A lot of pieces featured in this section were composed of detailed brush strokes as well as bright colors.

I was particularly drawn to Monet’s Ile Aux Orties Near Vernon, because of its bright colors and simplicity. I have always favored modern pieces of art that depict simple images and focus on color schemes. At first glance, I was so drawn by its bright colors that I was not able to make out the object in the painting. After further analyzation, I was able to see the cloud and its reflection in the water. Also, I was able to draw some conclusions due to my recognition of the French word, ile, which means island.

I wonder if Monet purposely used bright colors to create a more attractive piece or if this was a scenery he encountered. Furthermore, I would like to know why Monet created his work with an element of vagueness. Did he want viewers of his work to develop their own interpretation, or does his indefinite objects have an underlying meaning?

“This way to the gas, Ladies and Gentleman” is unlike most other World War 2 pieces written about the tragedy that was concentration camps. The narrator’s indifferent attitude towards the people getting off the train that he knew were going to their death was rather depressing in a way. At one point the narrator even says “better them than me.” Honestly, you can’t blame him, though. Everybody in the camp knew that they were gonna die, some of them just wanted to hold out for the longest possible time. The situations they were put in were truly dehumanizing and left so many people. Perhaps this dehumanization shows the desperation of people when they are close to death. While this work is fiction is isn’t to absurd to think there were actually camp laborers who didn’t bat an eye to the horrors they witnessed, or mothers who would abandon their children to attempt to stay alive for a bit longer. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a bad thing. It’s just nature to have some sort of survival instinct. It’s the fact that these people were thrown into such horrific scenarios that they had to resort to such “barbaric” actions. The story also makes a lot dehumanizing remarks about all the prisoners in the camps. The narrator really just has a very depressing view of the whole scenario, but can you really blame him? After all, even the sad woman who was heading to the gas took pity on him. Perhaps for losing his humanity and becoming a slave to the people who imprisoned him.

The piece of art I chose when visiting the Museum of Modern Art was “The Persistence of Memory” which was painted by artist Salvador Dali in 1931. Salvador Dali was born in May of 1904. He was known for his strange images and surrealist work. His painting skills were heavily influenced by the Renaissance. In his youth he supported anarchism and communism which he received backlash for. After the Spanish Civil War began, he fled as he did not want to take a side in the war and ended up doing the same during World War II and received criticism for it. At times his own actions and beliefs made his name more well known then his own work.

At a glance when looking at this art, we are shown four clocks in what seems to be a desert. When we look deeper into the painting, we can see the clocks are oddly “melting”. We can also see that one of the clocks is melting over a corpse of something or someone. There are a group of ants on the orange clock. One of the clocks is melting over a dead tree branch. In this image there seems to be no humans that we know of that are alive. Dali’s inspiration for this work came from Albert Einstein and exactly from his theory of relativity of space and time. Dali came up with the idea of the “melting clocks” after watching a piece of cheese melt on a summer day.

The lifelessness and melting clocks play hand in hand in this painting. We are shown decay through the corpse on the ground and the ants over the orange clock. Time is infinite but humans are not. Dali lived through the Spanish Civil War and World War II and watched as lives were taken in a blink of an eye.

Before Going to see this piece of art at the Museum of Modern Art I have encountered myself with The Persistence of Memory. As a kid the most memorable time was in the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action. There was an entire scene that was animated in that painting and it always stuck with me.  The painting is very intriguing as we question everything that is happening in the painting. It is interesting and draws viewers into trying to decipher all the abnormalities in it such as the melting clocks, corpse and the desert.

I would have a few questions for Dali on this painting. One would be, what is exactly under the blanket or cover? Is it dead or alive? Another question is if the idea of death is preeminent here, how come the two clocks on the left and tree on top of something that seems to be man-made? It seems to be some type of furniture, so it opens the question to, is this on earth or a different realm?

— What did you learn from this story that you did not previously know about life in Nazi concentration camps?

–This story can be described as a kind of “initiation story” for the narrator. How is he changed or transformed by the events of the narrative?

–A tall, grey-haired woman who has just arrived on the “transport” whispers, “My poor boy,” to our narrator. What does she mean?

–“Are we good people?” asks our narrator. What is this exchange about? What do you think?

–Explain the significance of the story’s title, “This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.” What seems strange about it?

Tadeusz Borowski’s “This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” is unlike any other World War II narrative I have ever read.  The story is told from the point of view of a prisoner, as he explains the horrors seen throughout the Extermination camp, Birkenau.  Throughout the narrative the teller, Tadeusz, has an almost nonchalant approach to the travesties surrounding him.  This attitude was what stuck with me the most from this reading.  The narrator’s composure during one of the most horrific events in history is stunning.  He speaks so calmly about carrying the corpses of children; his “matter-of-fact” attitude that the newly arrived prisoners were going to die; his collected attitude towards this is shocking.

Another attribute of Tadeusz that surprised me was his “lone survivor” mentality.  Usually when faced with great adversity or travesty, there is a story of people coming together to survive.  In my reading of Elie Wiesel’s “Night” there is constant occurrences of people sticking together to get through it.  Wiesel speaks of prisoners realizing they are all facing the same struggle and that they depend on one another.  Burowski, however, tells a different story; he points out the differences amongst people.  Whether it be their race or religion, Burowski focuses on the point that they are different than him.  His “better them than me” attitude is what separates this narrative from other Holocaust narratives I have read.

Going through something so horrific definitely changes somebody.  It hardens them in a way that many cannot even imagine.  This is why although Tadeusz’s actions and attitude come off as surprising, compared to other World War II narratives, I can somewhat identify with them.  Although I would like to think I would have an attitude of “let’s stick together” I don’t think I actually would.  Sad to say, but I believe I would react the same way as Borowski.  During something as traumatic as what he describes, I would most likely have the survivor mentality.  Especially realizing I am the same age as he was during these experiences, I could definitely see myself behaving in the same manner as he did.  It is not great to admit but I believe most people would do what they had to do to survive in the same situation as Borowski.