The above painting, “The Starry Night,” was painted by prominent painter, Vincent van Gough, when he was in Saint Rémy seeking treatment in a mental asylum, in 1889. Gough is one of the “well-know post-impressionist artist, and was born in Groot Zundert, Holland on March 30, 1853” (http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/biography.html). Gough thought to himself that his calling was to preach to gospel and took him many years to discover his true calling was an artist. He was not a very self-confidence man and often struggled with self identity and direction. Gough tried to learn to imitate the impressionist painters after meeting his brother and fellow impressionists in Paris. Although he failed to imitate the impressionist style, he managed to develop his own style that is unique and more emotional. During his career, he did not produce and sell many printing but “The Starry Night” is said to be his best work. The painting is well known for his unique style, which is different from other post-impressionists. This painting particularly gains attention of art community because it is drawn from his memory of the night sky.
When I first encounter the painting, the first thing that I notice is the blue night sky filled with almost fireballs-like yellow stars that takes up most of the background. At the bottom right corner of the painting, there is a town that blends really well with the forest, without light, and encompasses little houses, giving the impression of silence and that everyone seems to be asleep. The cypress bush in the foreground with it dark green color stands out from the blue sky. The flowing lines appear to be in in motion due to the fluid brushstrokes that gives the impression of the movement. Many critics have said the painting reflects the emotions, loneliness and distorted perception of Gough at that moment as he reproduced it from his mental image. The thick brushstrokes certainly give the illusion that the painting is in constant motion. Moreover, in the middle of the painting, the heavy white brushstrokes seem to portray the flowing of the wind. In the top right corner of the painting, the biggest of the stars appear to be the moon as the shape of the moon is surrounded by the yellow light. Overall, the painting almost magically presents the blue night sky that filled with stars and moon that shines brightly upon the mountains and the quiet small town.
The post-impressionists believe that art doesn’t always necessarily have to resemblance the actual object in the real world. Therefore, in contrast to impressionism, which tries to imitate the actual object, they tend to rely on heavy brushstrokes to paint portraits that are imaginative and somewhat surreal. Moreover, the painting has been said to be the best work of his artist career and gained popularity in artist communities and general audience.

After walking around practically all of the 5th floor of MoMA, I came across this painting among a series of three paintings by Umberto Boccioni named States of Mind. This was the second in series, called whose who go. This painting caught my attention because it was dark in real life, and the faces initially were not very visible until I looked a but harder.

I feel like this painting reflects so much of people’s lives, especially “those who go” and leave your life. When someone leaves someone else’s life, no matter how happy you may feel like you may be, I feel like there is still that sense of unhappiness and void in you. I left so many people, and so many have left my life, and honestly when i think about it those times seem dark to me and those are often times I don’t like to remember. (Its a different story if two people just slowly drifted apart over time, I’m referring to when you get into a fight or you are so fed up with someone that they abruptly leave your life.)

This painting is very mystical. Along with it being in the dark, it portrays heavy rainfall. Usually in heavy rainfall, it becomes very difficult to see where things are doing and you are often steered to an alternate angle, even if you are trying to just walk in a straight path. The faces in this painting seem hazy, blurred by the rain, and also they express glum emotions. From the looks of it, above the portraits near the center of the board, it seems as though a mosaic ship was painted on, with white/gray clouds above it. If that’s the case, the painting could be of heavy rain on a oceanic journey, with high wild tides, with passengers (who’s faces are portrayed). These passengers could have left and escaped from something, untold, and now because of the high rides and rough sea, the passengers have officially left… earth.”Those who go”.

In the Paint and Sculpture I section, wall after wall, there were many lovely works of art. But the work of art that has captured my eye is called Bather by Pablo Picasso. The reason this oil painting caught my eye is not only because of the visual of how the female body is portrayed but also the description that came with it. In the description, the words that jumped out at me were ‘challenging pictorial conventions of beauty’ which made me revisit the painting. While analyzing the female body, I could not help but point out what is considered “flaws” in this society or specifically in the media, such as the way her limbs are not in proportion or the way she slouches and doesn’t watch her figure. This made me wonder if this is the response that Picasso was hoping for regarding challenging pictorial conventions of beauty. I personally think this painting of a nude female is definitely different, but also vaguely intriguing. I say vaguely intriguing because I am not sure what it is of the painting that encapsulates me. People may either agree or disagree with my opinion but I believe, in the end, it is hard to judge this painting and whether Picasso’s painting did a good job or bad job challenging conventional beauty because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Today, I went to the Museum of Modern Arts and made my way up to the fifth floor to see the exhibition called “Paintings and Sculptures 1”. As I made my way across the exhibition, the painting that most caught me was this one called “Fishing Boat, Collioure” by Andre Derain. It was painted in 1905 by using Oil on canvas. It was part of the Philip L. Goodwin Collection from 1958.

The thing that struck me the most about this painting was the use of colors. It’s a very colorful picture. You can make out the boats to be of a blue color with red interior which is peculiar since boats in real life aren’t for the most part blue with a red interior. The faces of people on this painting has red and yellow faces. For these reasons, the painting feels very abstract. It feels as if Andre Derain was painting a scene but in an entirely colorful universal compared to the dull colors of such a scene if viewed in the colors of our world. The picture isn’t very detailed and is mostly filled with polygons of circles and lines. You can make out the basic shapes of everything to tell it’s a bunch of boats in a water environment and the artist is sitting on a dock painting the scene or remembering a scene he had on his mind but he can’t tell the exact details. Overall, this painting is very abstract for its features. From the varieties of colors to the simplistic designs, the artist painted a wonderful scene.

MOMA Assignment- Van Gogh’s, Starry Night

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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.