Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte, Gauguin - Assignment Example

Visual and Film Studies Seurats Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte (1884-86) This piece of work is more of science than poetry or art. The artist’s major ambition or aim was to incorporate science in impressionism. The science’s incorporation into in this piece of work brought in ways of making the painting appear more laminated and brighter. There is a complex blend of colour and vision in the work. The skill of optical mixture, as used in the piece of work, brings about natural mix and match of colour. He tended to bring in and merge a sense of timelessness and classicism, and thoughtfulness and not doing something spontaneous, to the aspect of impression art. This was besides the artist confounding the future expectations of a typical viewer of his peace of work. One distinct scenario in the painting is that the images do not seem to talk or interact with one another. Thus, it conflicts with the expectations of both the viewers and the future generation (Lewis 201). Finally, the presentation also brings forth, an ancient technique of open brushwork and open contours, incorporating a sense of spontaneity by capturing the natural outdoor light. Toulouse-Lautrec & Jane Avril This presentation contained two forms of art; there is a photograph of a huge elephant and paintings of humans. The elephant had a hollow belly showing dance school where people danced. The paintings explain the activities that occurred within the school. They describe different characters in the dance school including the levels of interaction that took place between and among them. The artists, according to the paintings, mingled freely with the elites. For instance, Made Milton, an actor, interacted freely with the elites and could attend events together. The paintings describe the artists/performers’ including their levels of interaction, appearance and charm. The presentation also goes ahead to introduce other characters in the picture which are not included in the interaction but exist in the background. However, despite the fame and interesting activities and performances going on there in, the general public were outrightly suspicious of whatever could be happening from inside. Van Goghs Starry Night This artistic work employs the use three non-living characters to present Van Gogh’s piece of work – a church, the moon and a cypress tree. Gogh did the painting in a lunatic asylum after killing himself a year earlier with fantasy. He connects the strong passion for art with the pleasure of countryside stay. He developed his work in three distinct episodes (Thomson 15). In the first episode of the Starry Night, the pictorial story portrays a product of mere insanity. He got inspiration from handbooks containing the first pictorial photographs of the night sky. In the painting, he invented an imaginary landscape by adding cypress and a village steeple (Thomson 15). The pictures have pulsing movement that Gogh uses to create a formidable opposition between the tangible solidity of the earth and the wave-like dynamism with the cypress as a link. In the second episode of Night – danger and deliverance, describes the role of night in a person’s life. In contrasting the urban and the rural night, Gogh sees more nobility in the rural night engagements as compared to the urban (Thomson 15). Though portraying a sense of naivety and unexposure, the rural night sharing portrays a great deal of nobility. On the other hand, he portrays the city’s nightlife as full of hell. In the last episode of Night strike back, Gogh provides an artistic description of the supernatural associated with the sky (heavens) and earth. For instance, cypress is traditional cemetery tree, but it may symbolize closeness to the spirits. Gauguin Gauguin went through chronological stages in his life, executing masterpieces that touched on religious aspects and stories such as the vision of the sermon and the anti-Christ. His gallery has religion as the main subject matter perfectly blended with Haitian sacred life. He kept featuring himself in the paintings, portraying himself as different characters in the work. He even painted himself as Jesus Christ in the garden of olives. Projecting himself in different images and styles is Gauguin’s style of art. He also goes the extra mile in sculpturing his own self, as well as, a range of materials. The inscriptions in his paintings brought about a strong link of words and images. They suggest disappearing culture of writing and images. Moreover, he used inscriptions to emphasize on his idea of Paradise Lost. Gauguin also sees himself in the portrait of Jesus Christ due to his feeling for abandonment and isolation by friends and relatives amid his poverty-stricken life. He dedicated his life to pursuing what many did not expect. Les Nabis & Photography Here, the point in the discussion is the significance of studying photographs in painting. Key to the discussion is the contrast between photographs and paintings. This involved either the use of camera to produce study samples or use of composition commonality between paintings and photographs to study the two. Painting can mix up two or more different figures within different photographs and put into one with a familiar or one of the backgrounds. Photographs bring out true but opposite image of the person in the mirror while a reflection of the painting only complicates the issues further. However, a photograph of two people sitting side-by-side, it might appear as if they got something to do with each other yet not (Eidt 35). In certain instances, paintings could be more meaningful and visually appealing to the eye, encouraging attraction and interest. Especially when the photography was by a pinhole camera, painting could enhance the visual impression if the artist used a diverse range of color. Cézannes Still Life with Plaster Cupid (c. 1895) This case explores the art of painting that involves characters that are difficult to unify rather than in a theoretical perspective (Armstrong and Cézanne 14). The art uses plaster cast with a complex set of foreground and background. The putti appear to be standing on its own yet realistically, it seems as if a piece of canvas just behind it has supported it. The piece of work represents an artistic painting that represents objects and figures in motion. The fruits, the onions and the putty all seem to be in motion, probably to support the equilibrium that exists. It is a form of representation where all the objects in the painting seem to care less about the movement (Brodskai︠a︡ 7). Symbolism – Munch This exhibition involves Monk portraying powerlessness and isolation in his artwork. His pieces of work had a special emphasis on the human emotions and conditions. One of his first paintings portrayed the darkest side of the human condition. The artist got influence for his pieces of work from his social background during his early days of life surrounded by different miseries and agonies. His paintings remain those of emotional and horrified feelings of people. Painting can be pursued as an emotional relief tool as portrayed by Monk. Monk declined mental treatment for his mental condition citing likelihood of loss of passion for his painting (Platzman 85). Despite improvements in color tones of his paintings and advancement in the pursuit of his interest, Monk maintained his messages in the paintings. This added emphasis on the fact that a person’s social background determines his/her life direction; what he/she decides to pursue in life (Boime 1). The emotional and or spiritual message in his pieces of work brought about high degree of uniqueness and distinction from other artistic paintings. The melancholic moods that occupied a better part of the paintings could easily suggest to the audience the intention and possible the social background and environment of the artist. Work Cited Armstrong, Carol M, and Paul Cézanne. Cézanne in the Studio: Still Life in Watercolors. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004. Print. Boime, Albert. Revelation of Modernism: Responses to Cultural Crises in Fin-De-Siècle Painting. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. Internet resource. Brodskai︠a︡, N V. Post-impressionism. New York: Parkstone International, 2010. Print. Eidt, Laura M. S. Writing and Filming the Painting: Ekphrasis in Literature and Film. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. Print. Lewis, Mary T. Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: An Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Print. Platzman, Steven. Cezanne: The Self-Portraits : a Mirror for Discovery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Print. Thomson, Richard. Vincent Van Gogh: The Starry Night. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008. Print. Read More