"I am good but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love." -M. Monroe

she dreams in poetry but writes in prose // she lives in ballet flats but likes to feel the grass between her toes // she craves her Starbucks fix // she's pearls and she's politics // she makes her own sunshine on a rainy day // she gets her work done but she lives to play.


Friday, October 29, 2010

modern art

I'm taking Intro to Western Art, and it is quickly becoming my favorite class! Today, we looked at Cezanne, who is frequently thought to be the founder of modern art.
The painting on the left is a still life he painted in 1887, and the painting on the right is a self portrait. The Impressionists, who came before Cezanne, found his art deeply disturbing and it did not sit well with them.



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Here's a quick summary of what we learned in class today and why his art was so avant-garde.

The front of the table on the picture on the left does not line up - the angles are incorrect and the lines do not match up on each side of the table cloth. In addition, the front of the green vase looks like we see it from a side view, yet we can still see into the vase as if we are looking from above. This painting challenges the unity of space and time - we would have to be looking at it from different times and viewpoints for this painting to represent the actual objects.

In his self portrait, the line separating the blue and brown panels is not straight, but the moment it bends and we could tell the relationship in space between these two panels is obscured by his hair. In addition, the black line around his head does not exist in real life, but is there because above all, this is a painting. The lines on the wallpaper do not extend to his head, because that would look like he was in front of the wall; Cezanne purposely does not indicate that one object is in front of the other. In addition, his popped collar makes a diamond shape that mirrors the pattern of the wallpaper, the form of the diamond his head is obscuring appears in his ear. I could go on.

Our class lecture and discussion about this artist and modern art as a whole really got me thinking. My professor described how Cezanne's art is only disturbing and troubling because we apply the Renaissance perspectives of representation of time and space. Asking the old questions about art merely yields confusion. The effects of what I have described above are to create a two dimension space and emphasize that this is a painting of paint on canvas. It is two-dimensional. There are no contradictory perspectives on a flat surface. Even though Renaissance art tried to look like photograph, Cezanne is telling the real truth; the flat surface of the canvas has always been flat, and images have always been paint. He shifts us from looking back in space to looking at a flat space. Some people love modern art and some hate it; some are disturbed and others are liberated.

Try to be liberated by these images, and have that flexible and critical perspective carry over to other areas of your life. This perspective is the ability to see truth, rather than the mere illusion of what is real. Be free to know things as they are and be free be okay with them.

ab imo pectore,

Hannah




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