Planting Chrysanthemums - Lu Zhi

This is a piece called Planting Chrysanthemums by Lu Zhi (1496–1576). Lu Zhi was a painter mainly known for his landscape pieces and for his poetry during the Ming Dynasty which took place from 1388 to 1644.  Lu Zhi was the pupil of Wen Zhengming, who was a prominent Ming Dynasty painter and a scholar. He supported his family by selling his paintings and in 1557 retired to a reclusive place in the mountains to breed rare flowers, write poetry, and paint.

Planting Chrysanthemums is a painting as well as a poem done on a 42 by 10 inch scroll. The poem translated says:

“I hear you have opened up a “Dao path” near the ocean, (end of line 1)
Where clouds of leaves and frost-covered flowers vie in wondrous splendor.  (end of line 2)
I too have built a new residence at Zhixing Mountain, (end of line 3)
May I share some of your autumn colors on my eastern hedge. (end of line 4)”

This scroll was part of a trade with Lu Zhi’s friend, Tao Qian in exchange for chrysanthemum clippings. The Dao path refers to a concept found in Chinese philosophy to signify the true nature of the world, but it translates to path, route, or principle. The first two lines of Planting Chrysanthemum’s refers to Tao Qian’s poem, Peach Blossom Spring, in this poem a fisherman finds a hidden utopia. The last two lines refer to himself finding his own utopia like the fisherman did, in Lu Zhi’s utopia however, he wants to be growing chrysanthemums.

Looking at this particular piece it reminds me of some of Wen Zhengming pieces of art. Lu Zhi’s pieces remind me of Wen Zhengming’s pieces because their subject matter was similar, which was usually landscapes, and their pieces where usually on scrolls in just black and white. The thing  I found interesting was how Lu Zhi did a great landscape piece as well as an interesting poem in the same piece of art. The other reason I picked this piece was it reminds me of some of the pieces of art my grandmother used to hang throughout her house.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ming/ho_1986.266.3.htm

http://arts.cultural-china.com/en/63Arts4334.html

This is an Untitled piece created in 1990 by Gedewon Makonnen, who was famous for the talismans he drew, this being an example. Makonnen originally was a cleric for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, where he was trained and part of the training was drawing these talisman, which are amulets that are considered to have supernatural powers. His drawings of talisman is what made him famous. The spidery lines and how he pencils over surfaces creates an interesting web of designs.

I picked this particular artist because of what made him so famous. I was drawn in to the design he created, there is a certain sense of symmetry, with the white lines, then the strange designs throughout the piece.

The theme I see throughout Gedewon Makonnen’s pieces are those white lines, for some reason made this piece as well as others stick out to me.

These first two pieces where created by Kurt Wenner. He was born in Ann Arbor Michigan, and most well known for his anamorphosis pieces. Wenner also went to school at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Art Center College of Design, giving him a very good background in art.

This first piece called Perseus was created in 2007, this is also considered to be one of Kurt Wenner’s pieces of Sacred Art. This piece is of Perseus, which was one of the Greek Gods, killing Medusa, which is one of the things he is known for in mythology. I enjoyed this piece because of how much it reminds me of some of the Renaissance pieces we looked at, as well as the incredible amount of detail.

This second piece is also by Kurt Wenner, and this one is called Gluttony.Gluttony is Wenner’s representation of Gluttony, one of the 7 deadly sins in Christianity. I like this piece for its incredible amount of detail, along with how well I think it represents some of the forms of gluttony. This piece was created in July 28, 2008 and is in Mantula, Italy.

Worldcard - Julian Beever

The next artist is named Julian Beever was born in the United Kingdom in 1959 and like Wenner he is well known for his anamorphosis pieces. He attended Leeds University and studied fine art, giving Beever his interesting background.

The first piece I have by Beever is called Worldcard and is in Istanbul. This one of his many pieces with a specific meaning. Like much of street art I enjoyed this particular piece because of how interesting the artist made it.

Make Poverty History by Julian Beever

This second piece is called Make Poverty History created in Edinburgh to support the pressure campaign for the G8 in 2005. This piece had it specific purpose, but other than that I think it also has an interesting meaning behind it, with something like Make Poverty History written on it would make anyone take a second look and try to figure out what it meant.

Change - Banksy

The final artist is named Banksy, this is an anonymous graffiti artist, and no one knows his real name, but it is believed to be Robert Banks. It is believed that he was a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire and he was born in 1974. It is hard to give a good biography of him because of how little is actually known about him.

The first piece I have is Change, created in Claremont, California in 2007. This piece was interesting to me because of the message on it, “Keep your coins, I want change,” the message seems pretty strait forward, he wants the world to change more than money.

Banksy anarchist rat in Sloane Square.

The last piece in this is called Anarchist Rat, there are many of these pieces, this particular one was created in Sloane Square in London. This piece is suppose to have many meanings among them, it is considered to be a good thing for a graffiti artists to be compared to rats because there are many qualities that are similar between the two, such as cleverness, superhuman drive, among others. I enjoyed this particular piece because I have always thought of rats of a bad thing, but after reading a little about this piece I found some good qualities about them.

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

The Persistence of Memory is a Surrealist piece created by Salvador Dali, created in 1931. Since this is a surrealist piece it follows many of the characteristics of the style, which are the work having a sense of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions. The Persistence of Memory is also known as the Melting Clocks, in my mind the most interesting part about this piece is the fact that Dali was a philosopher as well as an artist, this makes me want to look harder for the meaning of the piece. According to http://www.authenticsociety.com/about/ThePersistenceOfMemory_Dali, “Dali’s artistic genius lies in his ability to create ideas that lie on the edge between being disturbing and arousing curiosity.”

There have been many views on what Dali was trying to convey when painting The Persistence of Memory. Things have been said along the lines that the piece is trying to say how time is irrelevant. It is also believed that Dali got the idea from a mixture of a dream and watching cheese melt throughout the day, it is hard to tell what he really wanted to say. There are a couple of details I find very interesting in this piece. First the ants on the watch on the bottom left of the piece, many experts believe that this is one of Salvador Dali’s symbol’s for death. Another really interesting part of this piece is the strange object in the center of the piece, it is something that is in many of Dali’s pieces, this is believed to represent himself. Finally there is the light in the piece, the majority of the piece is dark, but the mountains in the back right of the piece.

During the time of The Persistence of Memory creation the United States was in the Great Depression. This was a hard time for many American’s, causing millions of people to lose their jobs. In November of 1931 a new exhibit was opened at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art called “Newer Super-Realism.” The Persistence of Memory was one of the pieces in the exhibit, the reactions to the exhibit in general where interesting because it was in a very hard time for many people. The art director at Wadsworth Antheneum Museum of Art, A. Everett Austin Jr. said, “These pictures are chic. They are entertaining. They are of the moment. We do not have to take them too seriously. We need not demand necessarily that they be important. . . . We can laugh at them. Some of them are sinister and terrifying, but so are the tabloids. . . . Sensational, yes, but after all the painting of our day must compare with the movie thriller and the scandal sheet.” Which to me is an interesting reaction to the Surrealist pieces, I’m not drawn to the pieces because of the reasons Austin mentioned, but more because of how obscure they are. At the same time I think that sort of view of the pieces was important in order to change peoples

The Arnolfini Marriage

After doing all of this reading about Impressionism, I have come to appreciate it more. However, there are some pieces in which I have a difficult time trying to figure out what I’m suppose to be feeling when I look at them, such as Edgar Degas’s The Singer in Green and John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, I think they are very interesting to look at, but I’m never really sure what the painters trying to get across to me.  So although I have some problems trying to figure out what some of the Impressionist paintings are trying to say, overall I find Impressionist style nice to look at and usually drawn in because I can question the pieces.

I think it is also very interesting how great the pieces end up looking considering some of the restraints to the Impressionist style. Looking at one of the more famous pieces of the Impressionist style,Claude Monet’s Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878. Looking at it you can see the brush strokes, that are characteristic of the Impressionist style, the lack of color mixing, another characteristic of Impressionist style, and finally the subject matter is a festival, which is something that the middle or upper classes might enjoy yet another characteristic of Impressionism. There is also a lot of light and weather work and usually focusing on more pleasant moments. Also looking at the subject matter it was much different than many of the previous era’s subjects. Instead of religious pieces, pieces with famous people, or historic pieces, the Impressionist era’s subject matter is much more nontraditional.

Compared to the styles before Impressionism, I don’t think the painter asked the audience to truly look at their paintings. Looking at pieces such as Leonardo’s The Last Supper, comparing it to Monet’s, Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878, first off you know exactly what is going on in The Last Supper, while looking at Monet’s painting it is much more difficult to decipher what is going on. Lack of details in my mind is the best part of the Impressionist style. The lack of detail lets the audience come up with the faces or buildings for paintings like Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of June 30, 1878 in my mind making this particular era’s pieces some of the best, because the Impressionist paintings look different to everyone in the audience. Then pieces in the Northern Renaissance like Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage, focused specifically on details, which made incredible pieces. At the same time Eyck’s piece didn’t make me look as deep or as much as in Monet’s pieces.

Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor “Quasi una fantasia,” also commonly known as,  Moonlight Sonata, was a piece written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1801. This particular sonata is slightly different from the traditional sonatas, instead of the movements being fast-slow-fast-fast, Moonlight Sonata is a piece in which the three movements gradually become faster. The basic idea was to magnify the drama in the sonata. Also, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor got its more commonly known name, Moonlight Sonata, comes from a music critic named Ludwig Rellstab comparing the first movement to the moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne, in Switzerland.

Since this piece is a sonata it is broken up into several movements,  Moonlight Sonata is broken up into three movements called Adagio sostenuto, Allegretto, and Presto agitato. The first movement Adagio sostenuto, is the slowest of the movements, gives me an almost a sad and mesmerized feeling, because of the repeating triplet rhythm throughout the first movement. This particular movement is probably the most well known of this particular piece. The second movement Allegretto, is the transition movement for the first and third movements, it speeds up from the first movement, but as a whole its a pretty calm movement, written in D flat, which is the same as C sharp. The third movement Presto agitato, is also called the storm, it is the most fierce of the movements, it includes many arpeggios, which are playing the notes of a chord incredibly fast, and many accented notes, which is a note with emphasis, throughout the movement. It is also believe the third movement is influenced by a woman he was madly in love with at the time, named Giulietta.

As a whole my favorite part is the third movement, mainly because I like the way the sonata leads up to the third movement and I think it has the most interesting sound. This particular piece was written during the heart of the Classical era, 1750-1825, this change to music was because of the rise of the middle class and how popular orchestra’s had become. The change to the economic and social classes caused a more popularity to concerto and sonatas, because of their familiarity, and Moonlight Sonata, gave that familiar sound while being different. I think that Moonlight Sonata is incredibly interesting for this period because it had a different form than most sonatas, its form was normally fast-slow-fast-fast, while this particular sonata each movement gradually becomes faster.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is a painting about exactly what it sounds like, Dr. Nicolaes Tulp giving a lecture on muscles of an arm to many medical professionals, created in 1632 and today is in the Mauritshuis museum in the Netherlands. Dr. Tulp was an anatomist, which is an expert in anatomy, and was giving this particular lecture to the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons. He did these public dissections annually, in a theater with public being able to pay an entrance fee to watch. These dissections were done on only executed criminals, in The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp the man was Aris Kindt which was strangled that day for armed robbery.

I think this is a very interesting painting because of the level of detail that was put into it. Starting with the body, medical specialists have said that muscles and tendons are incredibly accurate. Then looking at the expressions at the many people in the painting, seeing how interested all of the people are in what Tulp’s doing. I also think the shadow over the face of the Kindt has some sort of meaning about death. The most interesting part of this painting to me is the fact this happened many times, allowing for many people to learn about the human body, or expand scientific knowledge about the complex human body to not only surgeons but to the general public.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch is a piece believed to be created in around 1504. It was first documented in the House of of Nassau in Brussels one year after the death of Bosch. The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych, a piece of artwork divided into three sections, and one of Bosch’s most well known and ambitious pieces.

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a piece depicting three different Biblical scenes. The left portion is believed to depict a scene from the Garden of Eden, when God presents Eve to Adam. In this section there is also a lot going on in the background there are many different types of animals, a dragon tree,  to the interesting fountain in the center of the section.

The center section of The Garden of Earthly Delights is a little harder to explain because there is significantly more going on than in the other sections. There doesn’t really seem to be any sort of order to this part, but it is believed that this section is a series of small motifs, where proportion is nonexistent.

Then the right section seems to be Bosch’s view of Hell, shown with the darkness in the horizon to the burning buildings. This section is a major contrast to the liveliness and warmth of the first two sections.

The Garden of Earthly Delights has many influences from humanism. The see the influences of humanism in the middle section because it depicts everyone the same, which seemed to one of the fundamental ideas of the humanism movement. I also see a major influence when you look at the piece as a whole, humanism believes that it is man’s privilege to choose their nature. The painting in a way shows the extremes of peoples nature on the right and left side and the center represents the median of the two.

I see The Garden of Earthly Delights as the center representing humans and the right and left sides representing heaven and hell. At the same time I also see a progression through the different sections. The left representing the complete innocence, the middle section representing  less innocence, then finally in the left section complete and utter chaos. Similar to how we age starting out completely innocent or a child, grow up a little and become less innocent like a teenager, then as we continue to grow up we lose the complete innocence we once had similar to adulthood.

I found this piece appealing mainly because this piece can be looked at as a whole or in its individual sections and the meanings change based on how you view it.

Well blogging is  a newer thing for me so hopefully I won’t embarrass myself to much throughout the course of this class.