This assignment will count as a weekly response. Write a short (page or two) review of whichever piece you chose to write about in the Art Institute. Feel free to compare/contrast two pieces if you’d like. For this short review, try to focus your attention primarily on the use of creative description and analysis. You can either post your review here or send to me via email as a word attachment . . . whichever you prefer.
Meanwhile, continue working on your first review (re: any issue-oriented piece that you have chosen), which is due next Thursday. Please email me with any questions.
Below are links to the readings for Tuesday. You do not have to do a blog response for these readings, but please be prepared to discuss them in class. If you want (or need) extra credit, however, I will grade any blog responses to either or both of these readings.
- Cohen, Ted. “High and Low Art, and High and Low Audiences” (click on link, then enter your oasis number and password to access article).
- Cotter, Holland. “Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?”
9 responses so far ↓
rachel Galicia // June 16, 2008 at 8:36 pm |
The pieces I chose to review at the Art Institute were from the Roman 1st century A.D. These two pieces were made from stucco with pigment. They were made with multiple layers of slow drying stucco that was applied to rough stone walls. They used a blue pigment to color the stucco while leaving some stucco white for contrast. The first was of a nude woman with sheer fabric draped over her thighs while she extended a ribbon or some type of cloth towards a griffon with its wings spread. The other picture depicted another woman with wings on a tendril with two deer surrounding her. Both pictures were obviously from the same artist and both had plain blue backgrounds contrasting with the white of the two woman, deer, and griffon.
The meaning that I was able to interpret was that there was some kind of bond or peace between human and animals or nature. The picture also portrayed fantasy along with serenity. The wings on the lady and the griffon are fantastical things, dreamlike in a sense. The way she is standing in the picture next to the deer is not with her shoulders back, which would indicate power and triumph, but they are soft and relaxed. She has a connection or bond with the animals surrounding her. Having wings also shows that not only does she have a bond with the animals but that she is one with them and she herself is almost animal-like with bird/angel wings. The wings in general are meant to portray peace, love and patience. They are wings of angels and what else do we think of when we hear the word angel. The second picture with the griffon and the naked woman also make me think of fantasy, happiness, a time of relaxation and serenity. Griffons are mystical creatures, powerful, protective and maybe even wild. But this griffon seems to be tamed and calm in the presence of the half naked woman. She offers him a ribbon maybe a gift.
Although with his wings upright, he could be protecting her from others or evil. Maybe the griffon is like a guard dog and the woman is its master, but with any master and dog, they are best friends and they have a trust between them, another unbreakable bond.
I rather like the pictures, in my hectic world they stopped the clock for a moment and put me in a fantasy. I love animals and growing up my life-long friends, we would day dream and make stories about talking with animals, or living with unicorns, griffons, and dragons as our friends. When I was seven, my friend Katie started a book that was filled with fantasy. The book was about us and our adventures, but skewed into a book that lead us to other planets where fairies, griffon-like creatures, and danger surrounded us. Ioften felt that the book was real at times. It was almost like an escape for me. I had powers, I had long adventures, saved lives and I did tame an Esephisea (a creature that we made up for the book). These two pictures brought me back and I didn’t even know it. I was attracted to them but I wasn’t sure why. I guessed that I just liked the colors, but now I get it.
Saraphina // June 17, 2008 at 8:12 am |
I am always taken back with the Art Institute. I have always tried to become enveloped with the surroundings and let myself get taken back with the artwork that surounds me. I was never against classical paintings as I enjoy them just as any other artist would, appreciating the colors, contrast shadowing and the realistic implications that are sometimes surrounded by it. I enjoy Camille Pissaro french paintings of houses that are vibrant with life, I enjoy Joaquin Sorolla and his famous painting Two Sisters Valencia, that are so life like it seems they are moving with the wind. However, nothing grabs my attention like the reality of a photograph, of something that was, that was captured for the viewer to question the motives and the overall depiction of what the photographer was trying to grasp at. Garry Winogrand, an artist I had once seen at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York city started having his art on display at the museum in 1963 after graduation from Columbia University. He is a street photographer, capturing the everyday events of those surrounding him, whom he may never see again of meet. Most of his pictures take place, in the hustle and bustle of New York City: i.e.: Center of the Universe. Winogrand had a photograph on display at the Institute that is still popping as I am writing this called “New York, New York,1968”.
Two women standing looking fretful and stretching for a Taxi, while one stood by holding her voluptuous belly full of child. Then off to the right, were two young girls, hypothesis, five or six. Contrasting the anxious adults the little girls stand playing pad-i-cake, relaxed and joyous. I feel that Winogrand used this photograph to demonstrate aging in women, and the natural circle of life. Not presuming of course that every girl is going to wake up one day and become the beckoning breeder of her generation, but rather the intensity of what it is to be a women. The look the women had was tired and rushed, the photo made one want to yell at them to slow down and acknowledge the enticing game of pad-i-cake with the little girls behind them. That in this day in age perhaps women are expected to grow up fast. Winogrand also depicted the speeding by of the city, the cars were at lighting speed just as these women were thrown into adulthood and pregnancy. The two little girls seem to slow down time, they have gleeful faces with cherry cheeks that you can see through the black and white photograph. I am constantly impressed by photography and its capabilities to grab the viewer to almost figure out the puzzle, the story or what the photographer was really trying to capture. Winogrand especially being in of the most influential photographers of the America’s, included in of course with certain people such as, Kenneth Joesph, Joel Sternfeld and Angus McBean, all of whom were on display at the Institute, needless to say, he stands out as attempting to capture the real essence of emotion that is being displayed within that second that the camera clicks. Winogrand has several publications demonstrating his skills not only with people but with animals as well. The photograph “New York, New York.” is a perfect representation of exactly what New York City is, forever growing in populous,stressful, busy and then the perfect opposite of playful with its children that are incredibly naive of what the future holds for them. As other photographers capture also the essence of emotion, Gary Winogrand makes the viewer be apart of the event on a more literal level, almost lunging into the photograph to figure out the true intentions behind the subjects. I took in as much of the painting as I could, understanding ahead of time who the artist was and his important influence on modern photography, before the museum attendant shooed me away for lingering too long. I think she thought I was going to steal the photograph. I wanted nothing more then to be apart of it.
Torreyanna // June 17, 2008 at 12:31 pm |
John Henry Twachtman
Icebound, 1889
I don’t want to look, I don’t want the cold anymore. My brain has said that this is snow, that it must be cold. I do not feel cold yet, but I don’t want to keep looking, to get lost in the spaces left between detail and feeling. I want to wear a dress the colors of this painting, I want to be immersed in cream. I can taste the sweetness of the sugar that we are meant to think is snow. Snow indeed. Candy! Lace, grace and softness, none of which speak to me of the cold. If I were to touch this pond it would stick to my skin like the wet part of the cotton candy covered in saliva. Ice cream maybe. Edible.
Maybe I can’t see it yet. This is the sky and the earth, clouds and snow, dirt, but clean dirt. How long did the painter sit in the cold painting a candy landscape?
The ice is coming through. From a darkness in the foreground, where the water must be deep, perhaps not frozen yet. The bright orange of my dead grandma’s hair growing from twigs was barely a notion and now is radiating out. Dead leaves clinging. Jelly beans.
I’m floating from the ground to the clouds. The clouds become the snow, becomes the water. The trees are like accessories to a sky-painted kimono. There is no border to the water becoming ice, becoming snow, becoming sky. How do I know this is an earthly scene? It is a collection of blotches, smudges and a pile of whipped cream.
This painting is crowded by others, far too close. Over there, a girl in the summertime, over there, horses in spring. How could there be snow in this golden frame, in this sterile, dead room?
I want to see this painting on the wall of my uncles cabin, with the orange and red and brown leaves outside, the frame of snow on the wooden railing, the birds grabbing stale bread crums. There it would make sense. There the warmth of the coldness of it all would make sense.
Ashley // June 17, 2008 at 12:37 pm |
When I learned that we would be going to the Art Institute I immediately new that I would head to the photography section. Not because I particularly love photography but because old European and American paintings have been beating me over the head for years. I have taken so many art history classes which seem to all be focused on paintings of old rich white kings and queens, the thought of seeing one more makes me want to jump off a cliff while holding a gun to my head just in case the fall doesn’t kill me the gun will.
So when I went to the Art Institute I was pretty disappointed to see that the photography exhibit was for the most part under construction leaving only a few photographs to choose to write about and none of them I found appealing. So I went in search of something more interesting but made sure to stay clear of any old paintings, I looked at sculptures, some modern art, some jewelry and still nothing appealed to me. So I took the dreaded walk up to the second floor towards those damn old paintings. I looked around unenthusiastically full of judgment and annoyance, but then I passed by a room that grabbed my eye. In the room where larger then life paintings of religious stories, Jesus being crucified, Mary with child, it was not the subject matter that pulled me in but the size of the paintings. I had seen this religious paintings a thousand times they held no interests to me, as I was exiting the room once again annoyed a painting on the wall suddenly sucked me in. It was a large painting with deep colors and dramatic lighting. In the painting was what appeared to be an angle lying on the ground, naked and blindfolded. Above the angle was an angry man with his arm high in the air in his hand was a whip he is ready to strike down on the helpless angle. But fighting the man is a woman she is on her knees beside the angle her arm pushing the man back yet you can tell she is no match for him. The painting moved me and I had to know the story behind it so I read the little plaque beside it. The plaque told me the painting is called Cupid Chastised (Disdain) by Bartolomeo Manfredi made in 1613 and it was not an angle that I saw but Cupid. And the man in the painting was the god of war Mars and the woman the goddess of love (Cupid’s mother) Venus. Mars had just walked in on Cupid and Venus having sex, disgusted by their actions he attacks Cupid. I had heard this story before as a child, when I was a kid I was fascinated by Roman and Greek mythology, I always found the Greek and Roman gods to be more powerful and interesting then the stories I heard of God and Jesus and they always had a certain sexual appeal to them. They always appeared half nude and strong and they all seemed to be pretty sexually adventurous. It was all of these things that attracted me to their stories and all of these details could be found in this painting.
The violence towards Cupid makes Mars appear powerful and vengeful as he was, but at the same time it makes him appear very sexual. The violence is alluring, pleasure full Cupid looks as though he is in more pleasure then in pain. Here Mars is flagellating a naked god, an act which some use as foreplay an act, which some people find arousing and sensual. Cupid is also blind folded while he does this its almost as though you are peeking into a S& M show between two gods, and if one can imagine the power behind that it is very intense, or at least it felt intense to me. Then there is Venus who is basically a sex goddess, her she is between these two men, her breast hanging from her dress, which one can imagine was just being messaged or kissed by cupid, before Mars caught them. That’s another alluring characteristic of this painting, it tells a story when looking at it I can see what happened before I can see what is happening at the present time and I can see what is going to come. There is great tension in the painting not only because of the violence between Mars and Cupid but also the intense sexual tension, there has already been a sex act stopped but that is not all the creates this sexual tension it also the position of the subjects they are all touching each other in some way. Cupid’s leg rest above Mars’ leg and settles itself near Venus’s vagina while Venus’s hand leys on Mars’s arm.
I sat their looking at the painting for 30 minutes in awe of it, I don’t know if it was my connection with the story of the gods that made me so infatuated by it or the erotic allure that it has but whatever it was it left me feeling energized and charged. I left the painting in search for a replica so I could have this wonderful work of art as my own, but to my disappointment the Art Institute gift shop had nothing. But I went home hopeful with a different view of all those old paintings. I will no longer go into a museum with a closed mind or pre-made judgments, I’m going to give it a chance who knows I might find another erotic sexy as hell piece of art.
Nancy // June 17, 2008 at 3:24 pm |
I’m not commenting on piece from the Art Institute… unfortunately, I missed class, but I do have comments on the readings.
Ted Cohen asks a lot of good questions in his essay and the one that really stuck with me was, “What do YOU think of this enterprise in general – making something you do not yourself care for because you think someone else will like it?” That just smacks of the phrase “selling out,” doesn’t it?
I have a problem with this because I think that whatever a person decides to do with their life should, at least in some way, feed their spirit. I know it’s sounds very Oprah-ish, but she is the big proponent of “finding your bliss,” right? We’ve heard this same idea throughout the years, I think – find something you truly enjoy doing and you’ll be successful. You’ll have the money, security, sense of self and fulfillment that you need, blah, blah, blah. You get my meaning.
Anyway, if a person is creative enough and talented enough to bring forth from within themselves Art, then I find it disappointing and disheartening when, and if, they find they must produce something that doesn’t mean anything to them. It doesn’t really bother me to think that someone created something for the masses, or even so much for the money (I cringe as I write that), as long as it was meaningful to them. A piece would lose it’s impact, and sadden me, I think, if I found that the artist that created it hated the process and final outcome.
I don’t have too much to say about Cotter’s piece on multiculturalism… I do agree that minority artists used to run the risk of being the “flavor of the month.” I’m, honestly, not sure if it’s that way, anymore. It would be nice to think of the day when a person’s color didn’t matter, and I hope to see more and more of that happen. The fact is, the way a person is raised, their community, environment, region of the country, whatever—all of that plays a part in the make-up of people, period. People tend to write, or create, in ways that are familiar and comfortable. I think it comes down to that “familiarity” more than just the color of skin, because, believe me, observations, writings, sketches… from an Hispanic like me (a “coconut”- brown on the outside, white on the inside), are going to be vastly different than those written by a woman from El Paso that may have had a quinceñera at 15 and speaks Spanish at home everyday…
Samantha H. // June 17, 2008 at 4:28 pm |
I have never been incredibly attracted to sculptures—not to say that I’ve had any animosity toward them either. Let’s put it this way, I’ve never walked into the contemporary wing of the museum hall and have been taken aback by the sight of a sculpture mounted in an obscure corner. However, George Segal’s Couple on the Bed (1965) had did just that. Segal’s piece, which sits low to the ground in the Art Institute of Chicago, may seem quite simple on a first look. Many art gazers briskly walk by; some may try to get closer look, only to quickly jump back, as a shrill beeping alarm alerts the viewer to the sculptures invisible boundaries. Few actually stop to spend time with this seemingly bland sculpture—as if what is embodied in the sculpture is too subtle to recognize or, perhaps too painful to explore. The sculpture portrays a glimpse into a couple’s bedroom—a naked woman lies on a bed gently gazing at her male lover, dressed and sitting expressionless against her. From a distance, the piece almost appears to be cliché: a tense scene of a couple growing apart; a demonstration of distance between lovers who the viewer senses once were intertwined. However, Segal’s sculpture, if examined, is far from simplistic. The couple and bed are made of plaster and gauze—as if it were a cast. When we look closer we see that the male figure is not part of the same sculpture—he has been designed and built separately and placed on the bed. The female figure, in contrast, is the one and the same with the bed. Her head sinks into the pillow as if she is engulfed in quicksand; we can no longer distinguish where her long flowing limbs begin and the mattress ends. Staring at her sculpted confinement aroused a strong feeling of suffocation like drowning or a dream where a monster in chasing you and you can’t move your feet. Her face, so simple and still, yields torture: the silence, the confined breathing—an inescapable prison. As two teenage boys, gesturing toward the sculpture and yelling, “Hey, look! Tits!” from afar I realized that Segal has attempted to capture what it means to be woman in this society: isolated, trapped, and immersed in narcissistic fantasy. The bed grips her and the man has no feeling, but she looks to him and dreams up a life that cannot measure up to reality. And I realized, that in a world where woman still means mattress, she will still die slowly in silence, as people walk briskly by, stopping long enough only to admire her round breasts.
Danny A // June 17, 2008 at 5:09 pm |
I had never been to the Art Institute until last Thursday. I’ve only ever had a small interest in art, so I never felt compelled to go in the past. However, after getting to see so many works of art in person, I am now looking forward to going back to see everything I missed, and eventually seeing everything that wasn’t on display because of the construction.
I was very surprised to find myself being drawn to Grant Wood’s American Gothic. I’ve seen the image countless times on television and in print, but seeing the real thing up close was incredible. I must have stood in front of it for twenty or so minutes examining the details and taking in the feelings it gave me.
American Gothic was painted in 1930 with oil on beaverboard. The picture depicts what appear to be a farmer and his wife with a Carpenter Gothic style house in the background. According to the information plate next to the painting, Wood’s sister was the model for the wife, and the man was his dentist. He was inspired by an actual Carpenter Gothic home he say in Iowa.
What first struck me when I started examining the picture was the extraordinary detail on the smallest scale. The wife’s dress has very tiny dots and circles in the pattern that looked perfectly placed and drawn. When looking at her dress, I found my eyes pulled to the curtain in the window on the second floor of the house. The colors matched very close, while the pattern both complimented and contrasted with the dress. While the placements of the shapes were the same, instead of dots and circles, he used a diamond-outline shape. I didn’t know why just then, but I found it very interesting.
Then I decided to take a closer look at the man, maybe hoping to find more correlations. In contrast to the woman, whose outfit contains many circles and curves, the man’s outfit mostly shows sharp, straight vertical lines. I found them in his shirt, overalls, jacket, and even his pitchfork is really just three sharp vertical lines. The only circles on him are two buttons and his glasses, and the woman doesn’t even have one true vertical line. I thought I discovered something, but I couldn’t figure out what this contrast was meant to represent, if anything.
Feeling a little drained and frustrated, I took a step back to look at the painting as a whole again. Maybe it’s because I’m an analytical thinker, but I started to see it as a puzzle more than a picture. I saw clues that alluded to a deeper significance and I spent several more minutes trying to solve it. Eventually I discovered something that I felt brought my scrambled ideas together.
I realized that I was associating the wrong things. I looked back to the window on the house. It is almost exactly centered between the man and woman’s heads. The wood slats that make up the architecture of the second story of the home are made up of straight, vertical lines. Also, in the window there is a vertical wood slate that splits near the top into twin curves. When I put everything together, I no longer saw the artist trying to express a contrast between the husband and wife, but rather a unity. While on the outside they appear to have two separate roles, (the man a farmer and worker, and the woman a housewife) they come from the same heritage and share their lives with each other.
While I know that I may be wrong and am probably missing more to the picture, I still feel emotionally responsive to what I saw. I actually felt a sense of contentment in it that wasn’t there when I first looked at the picture.
Nate // June 17, 2008 at 5:15 pm |
I chose to review a photograph by Kenneth Josephson in the Mind at Play exhibit which was my first stop at the Art Institute Museum when we went for class last Thursday. The piece is entitled New York State, and yet nothing in the immediate picture signifies to us that the work has anything to do with the state of New York at all. The picture is very plain; it shows a man’s arm holding up a photograph of a boat in the water, just above the horizon of a large body of water in the actual picture (when I say “actual picture” I mean the photo hanging in the museum, not the picture in the picture.) There were other photos of Josephson’s hanging in the exhibit that had similar content, one was an over-the-shoulder shot of a baby reaching for someone taking a picture of her, the picture taken from the camera in Josephson’s is framed slightly tilted on the back of the child’s head. These “picture in picture” pieces, I think, play on the exhibit’s name, when someone looks at a photograph (say for example, if one were to look at family photos hanging in your friend’s house) questions are formulated. If Josephson had just taken a photo of the large body of water in New York State, one might have asked, “What’s here?” inevitably assuming that there is something about the body of water that they are not seeing. Josephson might have looked at the empty water and thought of what could be out there. The placement of the picture of the boat in Josephson’s piece is also an interesting choice, why wouldn’t Josephson line the picture up with the water so that it would look like the boat (in the picture) was on the water? Perhaps Josephson was looking past what he could see, past the horizon. If you were in New York and wanted to throw a ball to your friend in Portugal, you wouldn’t aim for the horizon, you would want to aim above it, since the world is round you would try and throw beyond what you can see so that the ball can travel around the planet. That’s a farfetched hypothesis, I know, but that’s why the exhibit is named what it is, that’s why Josephson’s piece is displayed in it.
Michael Miles // June 17, 2008 at 5:21 pm |
Grasping at those around us, holding the hands of others to feel connected across space and time; however, the loneliness and the pain is all that is there. To see Lorado Taft’s “the Solitude of Souls” is to experience the dichotomy of the world we live in a singular moment of pure expression. Carved from a piece of pure marble stone, it is a sculpture, without color, of four people. The four persons, two men and two women, stand in the nude, their bodies anchored in a circle around what is a column like solid middle. All the figures are grasping at each other, or otherwise touching. However, they still stand mostly independent of one another. Their expressions are of pain and sorrow. At the top, the middle column protrudes out on top of their shoulders and the weight is palpable on the figures.
This sculpture caught my eye and refused to let go. At first glance I immediately related the figure to one of Michelangelo’s famous captives. The captives are sculptures that Michelangelo began but never finished. Thus, it gives the figures this appearance of being held captive by the stone. Ready to burst out, but eternally held back by the stone around them. I would venture to guess, that Lorado Taft probably has seen those captives in his training in Italy, and made the choice to use that style to make a statement. So, here he has made one of the most beautiful and striking pieces of modern sculpture I have seen.
While on first glance it appears that these are four fully independent figures surrounding a middle column, on a closer look you can see that all four figures are actually part of that column. A quick walk around and you can see that one of the figures left side is absorbed into the middle stone and another’s back side, etc. Then, moving closer in, we can see the positioning of the figures and see that while they are all touching and reaching for each other. However, the connections are loose and fleeting. Then, upon even closer inspection you begin to notice the expressions and body language of the figures. The pain in their stance, agony in another, one even buries his face into his arm and the rock.
The sculpture is purely about connection. The way that none of these figures are singularly independent, however, how alone each one appears. I find it such a beautiful way to make this point. So often it would be easy to represent loneliness as just a figure in solitude. However, here Taft touches on this strange dichotomy that all of us have experienced and felt. How can we be so much a part of something so big, and yet, our burdens and experiences are our own. We are at once an island. However, like the figures in the sculpture, we are incapable of separating ourselves from the whole. We are but a branch and yet we are part of the tree. To be human is to understand this type of despair and this feeling seperation. When I look at these figures with the weight of the world on their shoulders (literally, the way the middle column of rock rests on them to hold it up), I feel that Taft has found the most beautiful simple non-verbal way of demonstrating the experience of being alive.