Van Gogh and Braque - Research Paper Example

Vincent van Gogh is a post-impressionism artist who first practiced the impressionist styles of using bright colors as reflected in nature. Like any other post impressionist, he wanted to explore other forms of expressing himself in his artworks by going beyond what is generally seen and experiment on changing the colors or combining them to come out with the desired combinations or contrasts. His painting entitled The Church at Auvers 1890 which is a subject in this paper is said to have been drawn during the late years of the artist when he was struggling with his mental health.

Georges Braque on the other hand is a cubist who started the era with Pablo Picasso who in the early years of the twentieth century was experimenting on his artwork with the same idea as that of Braque. They were greatly influenced by Paul Cezanne who advised them that artist should approach their works with spheres, cylinders and cones. Comparing the The Church at Auvers with Braque’s Woman with a Guitar, it is observed that the colors are not as bright as other artists use in contrast to the impressionists as mentioned earlier as well as the romantic artists who believed in depicting nature as they are visually observed with its natural colors unchanged.

The primary colors and the combination of which were used in both works of art inclining the hues to be of the darker shade. Unlike the bright colored paintings, the two may not be those which easily attract audiences with untrained eyes for arts rather would most probably be noticed by those who have some knowledge of the beauty and differences in artworks. The lines used in the aforementioned works are short, The Church at Auvers shows one of the passions and reasons why the post impressionists moved from their contemporaries, which is the use of short broken lines, not really following the normal lines which are seen in the natural things.

Woman with a Guitar on the other hand uses short lines but not in the way used by the impressionists which still gives a nearly photographic appearance but are used in order to have the appearance of a picture with cubes cut from it. The objective of the cubists in ‘cubing’ their paintings is not only for them to analyze artworks but to engage their audiences in the analysis. It could be said that they have been successful in this through their arts because indeed, one has to look more intently at the paintings in order to decipher what the image is all about.

Lines in both paintings have been very essential in the expression of the artists’ thoughts because an audience who looks closer can see deeper to the thoughts of the painter. For instance, the cubes, spheres, straight and curved lines used by Braque show his interest in the mathematical aspect of his passion while van Vogh’s lines show mental state when he was working on his piece. Although the two artists used oil in canvass for their paintings, Braque also used charcoal which defined the darker shades of color in his art.

First glances of the two artworks already show their differences. Drawn by artists who were of different eras, the paintings tell the story of their existence. Von Vagh used soft contours in his painting and though did not follow the romantic style with the photographic effect of his paintings it still clearly shows what the picture is all about. The bird’s eye view shows at once the subject of the painting which in this paper is also the title of the painting, the church at Auvers. The details however give a different story like the lines used, the colors and the subject itself as related to the painter.

The size of the objects in the artwork is normal where the church looks bigger than the woman going towards it, reflecting the influence of impressionism as compared to the size of objects in the works of Dadaists who make their subjects have extreme sizes. Although the painting is two-dimensional, it reflects a picture that is almost