Non-western

 

Self Portrait, 1926

Frida Kahlo

Oil on canvas, 31×23 inches

Private Collection, Mexico City

This is Frida Kahlo’s first self portrait. It was painted as a gift for her student boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, who had left her. Frida began this self portrait in the summer of 1926 and sent it to Alejandro in late September. On the back of the painting she inscribed a dedication. In March of 1927, Alejandro’s parents send him on a tour of Europe with his uncle, mainly to seperate him from Frida, of whom they did not approve. Before leaving, he returned the painting to Frida for safe keeping.

The self portrait was one of four paintings that Frida took to show Diego Rivera, a muralist and ask his opinion of her work. After viewing the paintings, Rivera remarked that he was most interested in this self portrait, because it was the most original.

I thought this piece was interesting because of the story it shares. Frida made the self portrait for her boyfriend and it was the picture her future husband enjoyed the mos because of its originality. Frida married Diego Rivera:)

 

Sources: www.flickr.com

classes.uaf.edu

 

Non-Western

The Jungle, 1943

Wifredo Lam

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Lam painted The Jungle, his masterpiece, two years after returning to his native Cuba from Europe, where he had been a member of the Surrealist movement, along with Pablo Picasso. The work, “Intended to communiate a psychic state.” Lam said, depicts a group of figures with crescentshapped faces that recall African of Pacific Islander masks, against a background of vertical, striated poles suggesting sugarcane fields.

I chose this piece because it’s very interesting to see his first piece after living in Europe and personally knowing Pablo Picasso. It ended up being his masterpiece!

 

Sources: www.wikipedia.org

www.moma.org

 

Contemporary virtual exhibit

Pop art developed in the mid 1950’s in England but realized it’s fullest potential in New York in the 1960’s. The media and advertising were favorite subjects for Pop Art’s often witty celebrations of consumer society. To me this was the era that American people got obsessed with food. Most of the pop art works are of food which was also around the time that fast food drive thru’s were becoming widespread in the United States. So this is what I chose for my exhibit….FOOD:)

Hamburger

Andy Warhol

Acrylic on Canvas

1985-1986

Campbell’s Soup Can

Andy Warhol

Silkscreen on Canvas

1964

7 feet tall glass coca cola bottle painting

Andy Warhol

1962 

 

 

Andy Warhol was an American painter, print maker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement knows as pop art. Warhol was a hypochondriac, he developed a fear of hospitals and doctors. Which is ironic because he died at the age of 58, the doctors were later sued by Warhol’s family for wrongful death.

Spoonbridge and cherry

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen

1985-1988

Giant BLT

Claes Oldenburg

1963

Blueberry Pies

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen

1999

Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1929. He attended Yale University from 1946-1950 and became an American Citizen in 1953. He began working with Coosje Van Bruggen later in his career and they were married in 1977.

Coosje Van Bruggen was born in groningen, the Netherlands in 1942. From 1971 to 1976 she taught fine arts and arts history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Enschede, the Netherlands. Ms. Van Bruggen passed away in Los Angeles, California in January 2009.

Sources:

Classes.uaf.edu

www.google.com

www.wikipedia.org.

 

Early Modern Era

 

Migrant Mother, 1936

Dorothea Lange

Photograph taken in Nipomo, California

Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895-October 11, 1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photo journalist, best known for her Depression era work for the Farm Security Administation. Lange’s photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression.

In 1936 Dorothea Lange took the photograph, Migrant Woman. The woman in the photograph is 32 years old and her name is Florence Owens Thompson. The photo was taken in Nipomo, California. It is a picture of a direct impact of the Great Depression, two years following the Great Depression. Florence was the mother of seven children and had been living on frozen vegetables from surrounding fields and birds that the children killed.

What caught my attention is the fact that we still have many families that are still living in poverty today. This picture was taken almost 80 years ago and the American people are still suffering for influences of the Early Modern Era.

Sources: www.wikipedia.org

Impressionism

I am stuck somewhere in between loving and hating impressionism art.  Some of the paintings in my opinion appear to be hotel room paintings.

What got me caught in the middle is my own personal dramatic opinion. I don’t particularly care for Pierre-Augute Renoir’s paintings, ‘On the terrace’  or ‘Girl with a hoop.’ They seem like cartoon drawings.

Girl with a hoop

Pierre-Augute Renoir

On the other hand I love Claude Monet’s, ‘ Woman with a parasol,’ it’s dreamy and beautiful. Another painting I enjoyed is Camille Pissarro’s, ‘Hay harvest at ‘Eragny,’ I like that it includes everyday life with a beautiful landscape in the back.

Woman with a parasol

Claude Monet

Hay harvest at ‘Eragny

Camille Pissarro

The impressionism art is so diferent from the baroque era art. The baroque era consisted of such a noisy abundance of details. The impressionism art is mainly perceptions of nature.

Sources: www.wikipedia.org

Symphony #5

Ludwig Van Beetoven

1804-1808

Made in Vienna

This symphony is one of the most popular and best known compositions in all of classical music, and one of the most often played symphonies.

Beetoven was in his mid-thirties during this time. His personal life was troubled by increasing deafness. He eventually went completely deaf and miraculously still composed music.

The Fifth Symphony was premierred on December 22, 1808 at a mammoth concert at the Theater An Der Wien in Vienna consisting entirely of Beetoven premieres and directed by Beetoven himself. The concert lasted for more than four hours.

In the classical era during Beetoven’s time there was a rise in the middle class. There was a very big rise in public concerts, mainly because composers found that they can make a living on their own and didn’t need to work and compose songs for wealthy people or families anymore.

What I like about this piece is mainly the interesting story of the composer, Beetoven. It’s amaing that he was such a successful composer when he was almost deaf, he started losing his hearing 15 years before he composed the Fifth Symphony. I also like this peice because the familiarity, I heard it while growing up from time to time.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

 

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer

Circa: 1665

Oil on Canvas

17.5 in. x 15 in.

Current Location: Mauritshuis, The Hague

 

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter in his life time. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings. Since that time Vermeer’s reputation has grown and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Johannes Vermeer’s (1632-1975) painting the Girl with a Pearl Earring is sometimes called the, ‘Mona Lisa of the North,’ or the ‘Dutch of the Mona Lisa.’ As the name suggests, the Pearl Earring is the focal point of the painting. The painting was painted in 1665 in Deift, where the artist was born and spent his entire life.

In the northern Dutch Baroque artistic era, commissions from the church were almost nonexistent. Prosperous merchants, bankers and factory owners purchased paintings through commercial galleries. They also commissioned painters directly, and begins the rise of the merchant class.  Although Vermeer’s magnificent paintings are very much appreciated today, they were hardly noticed during his lifetime.

What I appreciated about the painting was that no one is sure of the story behind the painting. No one is sure who the subject was, they think it was his oldest daughter Maria or his maid. I like that the painting is analyzed by speculation.

Sources:

www.wikipedia.org

www.essentialvermeer.com

 

The Merode Altarpiece

Merode Altarpiece

Robert Campin

Ther Merode Altarpiece is one of the greatest masterpieces of the Northern Renaissance Art. It was a piece painted during the Protestant Reformation, which was a religious movement that occured in Western Europe during the 16th Century, it resulted ina divide in Christianity between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The movement’s main focus was on the individual’s personal relationship with God, which is exactly what the Merode Altarpiece is about.

The Merode Altarpiece is a hinged three part panel. In the case it is four feed across and 2 feet high. The painting is a tempura and oil on panel. The left panel is a picture of the donors. The central panel shows an annunciation to Mary by the archangel Gabriel. He is coming to give her the message that she is going to give birth to Jesus. In the right panel is a picture of Saint Joseph at work as a carpenter. It is said that he is making mouse traps to ‘trap evil.’

Robert Campin painted the Merode Altarpiece around 1425-1428, during the Northern Renaissance. He painted the painted while in the Netherlands. Today this work is located at the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The work was owned by the artistocratic Belgian Arenberg and Merode families before reaching the art market.

What I find appealing in the work is the story behind it. Since it is a three panel painting it tells three different stories but is included in one piece. I like the center panel the most of the archangel Gabriel coming to tell Mary that she is going to have the baby Jesus. If you also look in the back right you see God coming through the window with a cross on his back, like he is bringing the package himself. Then in the right panel you have Joseph making mouse traps to trap evil. I just really enjoy the story behind the painting.