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“Sheena Wagstaff, Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum , added: “This extraordinary gift greatly enriches the Museum’s narrative of 20th-century American art. It is a work of immense scale and significance, and represents a uniquely American brand of modernism that condenses the spirit of the Jazz Age, anticipates Regionalism, and holds a fascinating and deeply ambivalent relationship to avant-garde European movements as well as to the Mexican mural movement. In addition to presaging subsequent Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, its full blown presentation of American culture includes remarkable allusions to industrialization, race relations, and social values.”
The comment above applies to a huge mural that filled the four walls of a New York boardroom, painted by American artist Thomas Hart Benton. A mural is a large work of art made to occupy an entire wall or ceiling. Started in 1930, it was completed in 1931. Notably, this was the period of the Great Depression (1928 to 1932), and Prohibition (1920 to 1933). He received no cash for this commissioned piece, but received as many eggs as needed to mix his paint colors. The quote at the beginning indicates that the mural was being donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I looked at the panel called “City Activities With Dancehall”.

This piece challenges me and tells me a story about America in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Sorry if it’s not part of the collection you wanted me to view, but it was near closing so I selected the first piece that caught my attention. The color is vibrant with a dusky blue background. There is red, white, and blues with black and brown woven in. It is like a collection of snapshots. For me this picture could answer the question “It’s Friday, what am I going to today?” The options presented are mostly gay and full of life. The most dour image was that of the stockbroker looking at the ticker tape with two intent, maybe anxious onlookers. It was after all, a time of the Great Depression. Things to do include go to the circus and fly high above all your cares with the trapeze artist, go take in Shakespearian classics of the performing arts, enjoy the bold and brassy big band sound popular at the time, tear up the rug with a sexy young girl in a slinky red dress, or on the more sedate side you could watch a widely popular ‘talkie’ movie at the cinema, or spend time at home with the family. Please don’t be fooled, take a closer look with me.

There is a bit of social commentary going on here on a few different levels. Yes it is a rather large painting, but it has words relating to voting and to smoking hanging above the heads of two ‘snapshots ‘ containing women. In the lower foreground is Benton’s wife and son with the reformist educator, Caroline Pratt. Women had got the vote due to suffragette activity in 1920. The fact ‘snapshot’ in the mid ground shows women at the bar? The sign above says “Your health demands it SMOKE. Women, highly featured in this work, were coming into their own. For many years smoking among women was frowned upon. Times had changed, women were targeted by cigarette companies to smoke so they could keep their weight down. This was a highly successful strategy and smoking among women took off. At the cinema the ‘snapshot’shows only women as the paying patrons. I think I could say that Benton again wanted to show that times had changed to have liberated women. In the dancehall we see the bald headed patron finding support on the dancers’ breast. We know in the late 1920’s you would pay a “John” 10 cents to take a whirl with his girls. She would add your name to her dance card till her card was full.

This was the time of Prohibition. Drinking alcohol was illegal. Yet alcohol is featured in four of the ‘snapshots’. Benton painted himself in the bottom forefront celebrating glass in hand, with the gentleman who had commissioned the mural. I see Benton as wanting to add his opinion that Prohibition was failed social policy.

I have been living in New York for a while now, I have never thought that MoMA is one of the place that I have to visit because I am not the kind of person who likes art and I never was into it. When I visited it, surprisingly there were a lot people there. I went around to see a painting that I would like to analyze, there were a lot of paintings, I truly had no idea which one to choose because all of them looked interesting. I made up my mind and I picked a painting called “Still Life with Apples” (1898) by Paul Cézanne.

When I see the painting the first thing that came to my mind was how the picture looked so natural but yet abstract. The painting looks fascinating and captivating. The way he painted it as if he sees it differently, by coloring the tablecloth in 3 different colors and it looked blurry in the edge of the table makes me wonder why he did what he did. The apples in the painting look messy, unorganized however he called it “still life” because the apples look perfectly still on its place. The apples surrounded by neutral and dark color; there is some parts where the color looks unfinished and blurry. The only things that looks bright and lively are the apples. It makes me think that he’s trying to tell us about life, how there are things that makes life even, there is the dark side and the bright side of life, there is also sadness and happiness.

As I made my way throughout the 5th floor of the Museum of Modern Art, this piece instantly caught my attention. There were a few people standing around it taking pictures, but for some reason as soon as I made my way to it more and more began to pile up behind me. Maybe it was the group mentality of a crowd, seeing others flock to something so that something automatically becomes interested. The Menaced Assassin by Rene Magritte tells a pretty interesting tale for a photo. A dead, naked woman lies on a bed. A man inspects a phonograph with the corpse just beside him. He seems very nonchalant so he must be trained at killing. Three men look into the room from the outside, while two men prepare to capture the assassin just beyond the room’s walls.

A variety of questions entered my mind as my eyes gazed upon the canvas. Were the woman and the assassin lovers, seeing as how she is naked in bed and he has his coat off? Did the three peering men hire the assassin, or simply hear the commotion of the act? How did the two men in bowler hats know that this assassination would be taking place? As the title mentions, does the assassin feel any regret towards his actions here and his career in general? The picture is relatively simple in its makeup, with detailed attention being payed to shadows and the walls and floorboards. The facial characteristics of all seven individuals are also very detailed. The painting tells a story the same way a thrilling detective novel would, but here using just one still image. Magritte’s power to not just enthrall the eyes but the mind as well is a true gift.

Art is the inner quality of expressing feelings. This is a kind of working that not only shows something but also tells the story. Today I get a chance to visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It is a great experience and a great pleasure to see all the works in there. I see a lot of works which astonish me. Some of them have great stories, some of them make you think, some of them have great color, moreover, it is really surprising for me to see that how broad minded the artist were during that time. However, within all these great works two paintings really unite me with them. One of these is “Washerwomen” (1888) by Paul Gauguin, and the other one is “I and the Village” (1911) by Marc Chagall. The reason of choosing both of these painting is both of these have same concept. On both of the paintings the painters show how much the urban life is really dependent on farming and woman during that time. Both of them focus on the fact that how the men play a big role to construct the life outside the home and how women play a big role to maintain their household chores.

Both of the paintings personally attach me with them. Since I belong from a society where the structure is, man earns the money, feeds his family and woman stays at home, does all the works at home and take care of his family. When I see these painting I see my culture in front of me.

The painting that stood out to me the most from Painting and Sculpture I. The first thing that caught my attention was that it was a two-piece painting titled Fulang-Chang and I (1937- mirror with painted frame after 1939). The first one was of Frida with a monkey and the second piece was a mirror. The mirror element caught me off guard in a pleasant way. To me the mirror served as an interactive piece of artwork. Seeing myself reflected back next to the painting of Frida herself – it made me feel important and part of her artwork. It was as if she had made the painting specifically for me. Interestingly enough the summary of this painting was that Frida gave this two-piece to a close friend after it was exhibited so that “the two friends could be together.”

I also liked this painting because of what Frida decided to paint: herself with a monkey. At first glance I thought she must have decided to paint the monkey with her because the animal was a dear pet and meant something to her. However, upon reading the summary, it said that many interpreted the monkey as a surrogate for children since she could not conceive. The painting meant much more to me after that. Infertility frightens me and the fact that she had a pet monkey as a child replacement saddened me. The reason I find her, in a way, inspirational is because of how tough she was beside all her obstacles and how much she stood her ground. Frida overall is an inspirational, and driven woman. Seeing myself in the mirror next to her made me feel the same.

The painting and sculpture section displayed numerous painting with great history attached to them but one of the painting that caught my attention was The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh.  van Gogh was a post-impressionism painter in the French art movement that was developed between 1886 and 1905. The Starry Night which is oil on canvas was painted in 1889 during the post-impressionism period.  The painting above emphasized on the nightly imagination of Vincent van Gogh. This imaginative painting focus our attention on brushstroke painting of a blue sky fill with illuminating stars and moon that shows almost everything in the painting is in circle. The composition and linear perspective allow us to pay close attention to the center of the sky and the center of the town. This period was a period of religion, as a result, in the middle of the town stood a church to show stability within the town. In the foreground, we see a green-thick smoke like tree rising to the blue sky to show the perseverance of religion in the Town. On the other hand, the rolling hills with the town beneath it matches the color of the sky to signify purity.

This painting reminds me of a poem that we read in class called  Discourse on the Logic of Language by M.N. Philip. The author of the poem was using her imaginative style of language to understand why slaves were not allow to speak their mother tongue. Likewise, van Gogh a painter in the post-impressionism period used painting to expressed his imagination of purity and the heaven.

In addition, the great work of Vincent van Gogh is a priceless gift to those who want to understand imaginative painting during the post-impressionism period.

As the industrial revolution spread around the world, people immediately started moving to the growing cities and in turn, changed their lives around. Eventually the new lifestyle even fused with old traditional ways. For example, farmers merged conventional farming techniques with new technologies. But out of this, the old ways started to die out. Futurism is defined as a progression into an advanced future through violently severing from the past. Umberto Boccoioni’s The City Rises, painted in 1910, shows the construction of a modern city on the foundation of a violent war. The painting depicts a battle between the past and the potential future. The upper left side shows a traditional port that existed in the 1800s and as you move towards the right, you can see the progression into modern factories and homes that run on gas. In reality, as more technology was introduced into daily life, cities were rebuilt to keep up with the change and the growing populations. Boccoioni painted a shaped in blue and red, which resembles a tornado, that is sucking in people who lived by the ways of the past and therefore cleansing the world for a more advanced future. The violent death of the past seems to be a rapid change. I agree with the painter that the past needs to be gone in order for the future to progress but it doesn’t have to be sudden and violent revolution. Revolutions can occur but they can last for generations and slowly allow things to change. The world has evolved rapidly in the last 100 years and will continue to evolve but there is no need for a drastic and violent change. In this slow and steady will win the race.

The work of art that I seemed most interested in is called “Fire in the Evening”1929 by Paul Klee. Paul Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879 and died in 1940. Klee came up with the idea for this painting during his winter Egypt trip in 1928-29;inspired by striated compositions, cliffs of the Nile Valley and long strips of tilled fields. Klee created this piece by oil colors on cardboard. A red rectangle which is on the middle right of the piece stands out most because of its bright color as opposed to the other colors and shapes of the other figures. The other colors are these band like figures which consist of colors between brown, green, violet, blues, grays etc. Klee says that these works “moved far from Nature. And found their way back to reality.”

Not only did this piece stand out to me because of its contrast in colors but because it reminds me of the average lifestyle of a busy New Yorker. Sometimes it’s good to just sit and really take in what surrounds you, specifically living in New York. People here are wrapped in and caught up in their own busy lives and they never observe and really reflect about whats around them. We live in such a busy fast paced environment that we don’t ever snap out of that idea of “reality” and just stare at our surroundings. The darker tiles in the art work that are moving horiztonatlly represent society, people moving quickly from place to place to try to get to their destination. The dark colors represent the seriousness, depression, and tiredness that I notice many people in New York tend to have. You barely ever see someone walking down the street with a natural smile on their face. People are usually walking and smoking a cigarette or have their headphones in, ignoring the world, or looking down and are speed walking across the street with a cup of coffee in their hands. That red rectangle in the middle of the piece represents that awakening that people should do, that “eye-opener”. I think everyone should sit down at a park in Manhattan and just watch the world go by for a little while and really observe the world. That red triangle could signify the observer sitting in that park. Similar to hat Klee said about his own piece, “moved far from nature”, New York nature is a busy productive life, so being that red rectangle sitting in the park could be your move away from nature, because eventually you will find your way back into the New York reality.

The painting from the MoMA that I decided to analyze is “Landscape” (Alternatively titled “La Rue des Bois”) due to the fact that it reminded me of our class discussion on the sublime. The painting itself features a dark, shaded building on the left side and an even darker forest on the right. This creates a sort of mystical environment filled with both curiosity and wonder. The fragmented segments of this piece create a boundary between the village building and forest.

After conducting further research, I was able to determine that in the summer of 1908, Picasso had taken a vacation to “La Rue des Bois”, a small village on the outskirts of Pairs, to escape the city and have time to decompress. While his original intent was to stay within the town itself, he soon discovered the forest and became immersed with its mystery. This is the culmination of what the sublime stands for as, in a sense, it takes the known and unknown and molds them into two.

Finally, there was an attached quote from Picasso that stated, “Landscapes must be painted with the eyes and not with the prejudices that are in our heads”. This stuck me as significant in many ways. Picasso often challenged the common belief of what art should be and created new and revolutionary pieces. His ideals on landscape art were no exception. Typically, when imagining a landscape painting, one pictures a perfect area where things are bright, spacious, and serene. However, Picasso’s painting defies this idea to a great extent. It combined dark and fragmented elements that create a sense of intrigue rather than calm. Just as the ideas of the sublime challenged the ideas of the previous periods, I feel that this piece followed suit and was both imaginative and innovative for its time.

After visiting the Museum of Modern Art, I decided to analyze The Still Life with Puppies (1888) by Paul Gauguin. This painting caught my eye because of the simplicity and adorability the puppies brought. This was an oil on wood painting. Paintings have deeper meanings and can take on whole different implications than what is portrayed. One person can see something but another person can see something completely distinctive.

Just taking a glance at the painting I see three puppies drinking from a pot of water situated on top of a table. In addition, there are three goblets and fruit on the table. The color blue seems to be used the most as shown from the goblets, the cloth holding the fruits, and the tablecloth. If I were to look at this painting with a religious view, I could relate it to things that I have learned in my private catholic high school. Paul Gauguin could have been using the number 3 symbolically. In the biblical sense the concept of trinity consists of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In addition, the three wise men had given Jesus three gifts when he was born.

When I first looked at the painting I saw that even though there were 3 goblets, one for each puppy, they were still sharing one pot of water to quench their thirst. This shows the compassion and connection they have towards one another. They are not attacking each other for drinking from the same pot. The puppies seem to be content with the pot even though they have the option of the fancy cups. There is also a sense of harmony and peacefulness to this painting.