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.

I visited the Museum of Modern Art on October 9^th. It was a very rainy day, but the museum was very crowded. I had never been to a museum of this type before; I have never been really interested in “art”. While at the museum I was amazed to see how intricate the works of art were, even though I didn’t always understand what the work was meant to be or meant to explain I admired the work put into them. After walking around confused trying to decide which piece I would like to analyze, I found Hope II by Gustav Klimt. While reading the excerpt next to this painting I was surprised to learn that paintings of pregnant women were considered to be rare. This painting caught my eye immediately and I knew I was going to write about it.

The Austrian painter Gustav Klimt painted Hope II in 1907-08. It is painted from oil, gold, and platinum on canvas. I chose this painting to analyze because it depicted a sad pregnant woman; this made me question why she was sad. As I got a closer look I saw that there seemed to be a skeleton head coming out of her dress. The woman’s breasts are also bare and visible, which I thought was strange, because the woman is not alone. There are three women bowing at the woman’s feet.

Klimt came from Vienna and his works coincided with the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Klimt’s painting had the ideas of sex and death, as depicted by the woman’s bade breast and the skeleton of a baby. Klimt’s title Hope II, helped me understand what this painting is about.

Although I am not certain that my analysis of this painting is correct, this is my take on what Klimt was trying to say. The woman in the painting is an expecting mother who is coming to the end of her pregnancy. I believe she is looking down at her stomach, which seems to have a skeleton baby head in it, hoping that everything goes well with her delivery. The women at her feet are in a kneeling position praying for the same thing. At first I thought this paining symbolized a stillborn baby, but with the title Hope II, I think it has more to do with an up and coming birth. Behind the pregnant woman is a yellowish white figure, which to me looks to be angel wings. To me this is symbolic of the fear that she can also die during childbirth, back then many mothers died during childbirth.

After visiting the museum and analyzing a painting I have a greater liking for art. This paining seemed very simple yet very deep, which is what I liked most. Before I went to the museum I thought of art as just abstract objects that only the painter understood. Now I know that there is not only one analysis of a painting, it’s what you get out of it. Like in Hope II, it could be the idea of a stillborn baby like I originally thought or it can be the idea of hope for a good outcome in childbirth. Works of art just like works of literature are up to the audience to interpret.

This assignment has been tough to do, because it concerns race, slavery, and their very real modern day after-effects. Philip published her poem around 2011.Douglass published his work in 1845. Their discourse and narrative pick at the limitations of the english language. Language and the tongue are fundamental to our human essence. yet english comes out stuttered and foreign in the poem. This is symbolic of the imposition of a foreign language on an enslaved people. There is languish and anguish in their experience, and because they can’t fully express this experience after being robbed of home and freedom, and taken to a foreign land to be slaves, there is languish and anguish in the language. Douglass echoes this many times in his narrative. He describes the men on the way to the Great House Farm. They were singing, but it wasn’t the words they sang that expressed the dehumanization of slavery, it was the emotion in the sound. In fact they didn’t know that they were expressing their degradation and deep emotion. These travelling men experienced a linguistic confusion. Their souls languished in anguish, yet they communicated better than any narrative or poem. I can apply something from my own experience to sort of understand this. A lady I know had just buried her husband of many years. All of a sudden, she uttered a moan or wail that I had never heard before or since. The sound struck me in my gut and I felt the love and loss let loose in that sound.
Philip describes a mother’s tongue being used to bring a child into relationship with its mother. At first the child protests, but the tongue blows in relationship/ancestry/security/connection. Douglass recounts how he did not speak much at all to his mother in the few times he saw her alive. Relationship is broken. Language is broken.
Douglass says, “I have no language to express the high excitement and deep anxiety which was felt among us. We had no voice…A single word from the white man was enough…to sunder forever the dearest friends, kindred and strongest ties known to human beings.” Slavery gave the white man the voice and thus the power. Broca et al continued the legacy.
Truth is suppressed. The tongue is suppressed. The tongue can tell its truth, but at great cost. “To all complaints no matter how unjust, the slave must never answer a word” (page 10 quote). We are told of the slave who was chained, handcuffed and carted away from friends and family for truthfully answering questions about his master’s treatment. Douglass quotes the maxim “a still tongue makes a wise head.” This also ties in with the poem where it says, in the intuitive sense, that the tongue is dumb. This is really a contradiction. Even Philip’s use of multiple choice points to the dichotomy of language. Did she describe a tongue or a penis? Is it all of the above or none of the above? Interestingly, both tongues and penises were cut off during slavery.

The autobiography of Fredrick Douglas and the poem “The Discourse of the logic of language” by M. NourbeSe Philip emphasized on the destruction of human connection through language during slavery. Slave master used language as a tool for oppression. In the poem, Philip talked about how a slave has no mother tongue, no tongue to mother, and therefore became tongue dumb. Slaves were not allow to speak one common language because their masters thought this will breed rebellion. As a result, slaves were mixed with others from different region that could not understand their mother tongue. And also, As mention in Douglas autobiography that slaves were not allow to keep their children before they breathe their tongue into their children. “It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age.”( Douglas,1). These were strategies used by slave master to hinder the human connection between a child and the mother.

In addition, the repetitions in Philip poem suggest that she is trying to use logic to understand the conflict of language during slavery “a mother tongue is not a foreign lan lan, lang, language, anguish, anguish, a foreign anguish.” Similarity, Douglas was trying to understand why a slave was not allowed to learned English the foreign language of his mother tongue. These were the conflict of language they both were trying to understand.

However, these two exceptional writers have broadened our mind of how language was used to break the chain of human connection in the era of slavery.

Having read the autobiography of Fredrick Douglas and being able to reflect on the poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” I made connections throughout the length of the poem. One of the easiest connected trains of though between both the autobiography and the poem in the use of language. Throughout Douglas’ life he had a burning desire to learn more and become more fluent in the English language. In the poem we see how different the English language can be from different perspectives, in this case the perspective of a slave. M. NourbeSe Phillip speaks of father tongues and mother tongues and how languages are learned differently depending on the environment in which you grow up in. In the case of Douglas, he was raised on the plantation and he goes on to explain how certain phrases and sayings held different meanings based upon where you were raised. His example of this is when the select few were asked to run errands to the Big House Plantation they would sing songs that were almost gibberish to those outside the slaves who worked on the plantation. The poem then goes on to explain how the so called “mother tongue” is your native tongue and your “father tongue” is a foreign language to you. The connection I made to Fredrick Douglas’ life narrative was that both his mother tongue and father tongue were English, and that to many at that time the English language was both a native and foreign tongue. Much in the way the slave’s children were separated at birth with the intention to restrict human connection to a minimum. Another possible reason that was done was to prevent the children from ever learning the English language to a point where they could communicate and rebel. Douglas however contradicts this pattern as he does everything in his power to continuously learn more and further his knowledge of the language, overcoming the barriers of not having a diluted base-level understanding of the English language. Just as explained in the poem the issue that Douglas had initially is that his native language was unfortunately also a foreign language because there was no one that he lived with that knew the language well enough to teach him, or those that knew enough to teach were not allowed to by separation or just because they were white and did not have the desire to teach. Luckily for Douglas his mistress in Baltimore was willing to teach him English and did until his master forbid it eventually. The poem puts into words the difficulties explained by Douglas in learning the English language in how it was his native language and was raised speaking a lesser diction of it than most, but at the same time a foreign language because of the difficulties he had to overcome in order to gain the knowledge he used to write his own story.

In both “Discourse on the Logic of Language” by M. NourbeSe Phillip and “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass a common theme is language, words, and the hardship they caused for the African American Community. Although it affected both in different ways, their lives were changed by language and by the oppression that the African American community has faced.

Both authors showed the significance of words and how powerful they can be. In the poem, Phillip goes from one word to another by contorting the word a little to make the original word a completely new one. This dramatically emphasizes the power of not only the last word but the first word also. On example is when she turns the word land into language, and then from language into anguish. Just looking at these words they don’t appear to have any real connection, but she creates one with her poetry. In Douglass’ narrative he also puts an emphasis on words by explaining what a threat an educated black man was to the white slave owners. Slaves were not allowed to learn because if they had any sort of knowledge they would be more likely to escape. To prevent this, slave owners refused to even teach their slaves the alphabet. But, since Douglass was educated, a little by Mrs. Auld, and a little by the children from the town, he had the power to do what the slave owners feared.

Although Douglass eventually was able to free himself from the oppression of slavery, he was not always this fortunate. For the beginning years of his life he had no knowledge of language at all. He also had no one to teach him. He was not certain of who his father was, and he barely had any connection with his mother. In this way he is similar to Phillip because she too was without a mother. She speaks of being “tongue dumb” since she has no mother, or no “mother to tongue.” Her and Douglass were both missing this connection, but it affected them both in different ways. Her lack of a mother figure made her feel inferior, and “tongue dumb,” where as Douglass’ connection with his mom barely effected him. When the news that he lost his mother reached him, he felt no more than what he would have over the loss of a stranger.

Another connection I found, was the connection both stories made with a bigger picture. In Douglass’ narrative, although it was a biography, he continuously talks about the whole of the slave population and what the hardships they faced. In the poem, she talks about herself and her mother and father tongue, and then connects this with the anatomy of the tongue itself. It was interesting in both accounts how they connected their own stories to something greater than themselves.

Douglass’ narrative of his life through slavery, and Phillip’s poem on the impact of language both were extremely eye opening. Douglass’ account, being a first hand experience of the impact slavery, showed what the slaves had to endure it. Phillip’s poem left me wondering how extreme of an impact language has on everyones lives. Both similar in the emphasis they put on language, and how it changed their lives.