Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is considered the first painting in the modern style because the painting isn't like traditional painting of the era. women were painted to be feminine, and yet these women don't have that attribute. i believe the reason for that is because they aren't defined by curves and smooth lines, instead they share rough edges and simple forms just like everything else in the painting. each of the five women share nothing in common, even each breast is shaped differently.

this painting challenged what was the standard for painting. It got people to take a new look on what was on the canvas, more then an object but simplistic shapes. Picasso probably didn't intend for his painting to challenge the world, but it did. the use of multiple cultures embedded into one painting helped this effect. by containing the culture and such simplistic forms is was like defying god.

in my opinion, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is considered to be the first painting in the modern style is because the effect it had one the world. the use of masks in the painting could be said to be a reference to African masks, but yet Picasso stated this wasn't true. he visited Africa a couple of months before painting it, and its stated that a lot of planning went into this painting. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon became the icon to be different, and that's what makes it the first modern painting. one could say Picasso painted the an experiment that changed the world.

The Seated Women

Bruno Barata

Dr. Donald Wellmen

Art of the Modern Period HU 308 A

3 March 2012

The Seated Woman: The Story Behind the Paint

            World War II in 1941, the German’s had really started to pick up their offensive power. At this point in the war, Germany had started their final attack against Russia. People were fleeing left and right, trying to get away from the tight grip of the Nazi’s, yet a brave man stayed to paint. The man’s name was Pablo Picasso, and the painting that captivates my eye is The Seated Woman (1941). This painting also goes by the name Femme assise dans un fauteuil. This painting displays a lot of color opposites, different perspectives, some parallel lines, and much, much more. What makes this painting so appealing to the eye is not the painting its self, but the emotion you get from seeing it. The painting, “The Seated Woman”, painted in 1941 by Pablo Picasso conveys powerful emotions simply due to the way it is painted.

            As stated, The Seated Woman was painted during WWII. He continued to paint regardless of the Nazi’s view on his work. “Picasso’s artistic style did not fit the Nazi ideal of art, so he did not exhibit during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to paint (Wikipedia.org)”. if you look at the painting, there is something off about the window. When the window is placed in relation to the walls and the chair, the window looks like its staring right at you where the orientation of the painting looks like he is looking at her from a higher angle. Now notice in the window the colors, yellow and red, almost as if he is showing fiery scene, which could be used to describe what was going on during the war.

            In this painting, there are a couple things that stand out right at you, let us start with the women’s face. First off, it is separated as if half of her face is hanging off the side of her head. She also has one eye facing a white wall while the other is staring at you. The white circles on her shirt are not flat, they are globs of paint made into a circle. Speaking of flat, the chair she is sitting on seems to be flat as well, it does not seem to support her at all. An interesting thing about the chair that I noticed is the shape of the chair. The chair is almost guitar shaped, this painting was painted after all the guitar paintings so there is a possibility that he could have done this on purpose. Especially since the colors of the guitar are similar to wood.

            His use of color is what catches your eye. The wall with the window is a bloody red, which is interesting because the opposite wall is a white. I believe he uses this to show the contrast between his studio and the outside world. To him, his studio was his world, a place where he could be himself and did not have to deal with the horrors on the outside. This is similar to the window wall and the green wall, these two colors are opposites on the color wheel. Another major color comparison would be between the greenish yellow floor and the women’s outline. They share the same color, to me, when I hear or talk about the floor I think about the earth. I think he is doing the same effect as the red to white wall; this is his way of separating out her from the outside world.

            Funny thing about the ground is that you can see all the bottoms of chair, and yet the walls look almost angled.  I say that this is upward angle because the fact that the blue ceiling is bordered with a lighter blue and the fact that you can still see all the wheels. The blue used for both the ceiling and the ceiling border, is also used in the women’s dress and in parts of her hand.  These darker colors are shadows, this is obvious because of the position of the window. He uses the light generated by the window to display shadows on her and instead of using a black paint to display shadows he uses a dark blue. By using blue, it almost gives the impression that the light is not that intense, almost like it is coming from a fire. Picasso does the same effect in another one of his painting called “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”(moma.org). the last woman on the right is showing a dark shadow over her face , which could be seen as a shadow but he does not use black, but a mixture of darker colors.

            Hue and tone is heavily shown throughout the painting. I define tone as the depth of a color shown where as hue is color in its simplest form. I believe that this is what Picasso was doing with the colors in this painting. All the colors in the painting are pure color, nothing is dulled out, and everything is a vivid color, almost as if Picasso painted with the rainbow itself. Even the color black is a vivid black, it is not dull in the least bit. For example, the window is the only place that color is really mixing but it is very subtle, almost as if he painted the red over the yellow.

            What is really important from this painting is the style of the painting, she was painted during “the period of Neoclassicist & Surrealist”(wikipaintings.org). this is an interesting fact because this painting is very basic. At first I wanted to say that this painting was similar to cubism, but the more I studied different styles present around during that period I believe this painting’s style to be that of Primitivism. Primitivism is a taking shapes into their simplest forms, which can be seen in this painting. Her arm that in partly covered in shadow, is simply a rectangle, and her opening of the dress above her breasts have the simple form of a triangle. Her fingers are small ribbon like objects, objects being the key word. These ribbons are meant to represent fingers and yet they look nothing like fingers, to be honest we assume they are fingers because they are on the end of an arm, but who’s to say that rectangle is an arm. What Primitivism lacks in sophistication and multiple strokes of the brush it makes up for in simplicity.

            The Seated Woman is truly a marvelous work of art. From the vivid color of paint, that transcends the simplicity of the shapes in the woman, to the contrast that visibly battles the tone and hue in the colors. The Seated Woman gives off nothing but powerful emotions that when mixed with knowledge of the history of the painting brings together a close to a majestic work of art. This painting helps to show where cubism ended up and that simplistic form cannot be obtained, but can done in such way to make even a cluster of triangles, beautiful.

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 Works Cited

"Basic Color Theory." Color Matters Welcomes You to the World of Color: Symbolism, Design, Vision, Science, Marketing and More! Color Welcome. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory>.

"Les Demoiselles D'Avignon." MoMA.org. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79766>.

"Pablo Picasso." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso>.

"Pi Woman Seated." Faculty Home Pages. Daniel Webster College. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/Pi_Woman_Seated.htm>.

Picasso, Pablo. Woman in Striped Armchair. 1941. Currier Museum, Manchester, NH. Www.wikipaintings.org. Currier Museum. Web. 5 Mar. 2012. <http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/pablo-picasso/woman-in-striped-armchair-1941>.

"World War 2 Timeline." Timeline of Events in 1941 during the Second World War. Historic UK. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/World-War-2-Timeline-1941/>.

an eye for and eye, a life for a choice

What started out as a normal day escalated,

The piles grew larger than life, or so in a sense.

My life had become these piles.

Saying that would be telling a lie,

These pile consumed my life.

There was not a crumb left for me to look back to.

This had started out a simple task,

Once a day, to twice a day,

Soon the environment I was placed in became home,

Letting myself feel comfortable was my downfall.

Soon enough I was not alone, I had friends and places to go,

Every night seemed like a blessing, this happiness I was feeling bought forth by people other than me.

And there, in the place I called home the pile waited,

The pile was rejected and they were vengeful.

Anticipating my movements, it hid. Making me struggle

When I thought I had found it, it was gone.

Sounds echoing from wall to wall

What had happened here?

Was the pile trying to consume me as well?

The shadow from my bottomed feet, stripped from my sole

I didn’t know what was going on,

How did I let it get let to this level?

I bellowed with every nerve rattling in my body “what do you want from me!”

The breath completely lifted out of me.

Fear had filled in the courage that was rapidly exiting my body

My skin pale, as if all the pigments in my skin decided to die together

A suicide of my organ, the organ that had always protected me.

I had brought this upon myself

Procrastination with I hint of laziness

The words that I couldn’t bring out of my mouth, as simple as I’m sorry.

Poem on an image i saw one day on my travels, this is a free write no constraints on lines or styles

One way bound

A calm wind that won’t  move blades of grass,

Sun sparking down as if trying to join in with,

The wind that is caring the words of the people as it travels from east to west.

The distance is far but you feel so close

The details present, the emotions high.

The loud speaker bellows commands

The wind, the sun, and even the people muted to the muffled sound created only inches away

10,

And people follow like mindless drones, but not me

5,

Their shouts growing with every increased number

2,

At one,

 Everyone goes silent.

A cloud of dust flies toward everything like a meteor had hit the earth

The heat is warmth unlike anything I’ve felt before

Heart racing and my temples rise to look at the sky now filled with something brighter than the sun

This hope that contains my dreams and passions

It screams at me

“Come along with me! I’ll take you there!”

And within seconds my friend is gone, and the wind and people leave.

I sit and ask the sun what it’s like to have the view from up there

but it never responds back and I can’t help but draw a smile to my lips.

Analyzed Fishermen at Sea, Turner(1796)

http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/j_m_w_turner_08/jmwt_mma_01.htm

Fishermen at Sea, by  Joseph Mallord William Turner (1796)

After analyzing this painting i noticed that half of the things i wrote down were false, or so they appear that way now after staring at it for an hour. There are three main things i looked at when trying to look at this painting, Background, Foreground, and Middle Ground. Theses three extremes are often used to analyze a picture.

Foreground

(Barrel)

The first thing i noticed and it might be surprising is the birds, i believe these to be seagulls. At first i thought all three were flying, then i noticed the last one on the right. I thought it had hit water and was trying to fly up again, then i zoomed in and saw that it was sitting on a barrel. How did that barrel get there? This leading into my next point, the waves. The waves are rocking back and forth, not small movements but not that extreme either, which leads me to believe that a storm is approaching or is calming down. This would explain why a barrel is doing out in the water. Now we take a look at the two fishing boats. I call then fishing boats because the one on the left has a fishing line coming out the side of the boat. Each boat contains at least four people. Who all look either hard at work or trying to hold on tightly. The last thing that really grabbed my eye was the sails. The sails are down and given the condition of the water, they did this to prevent forcing the boat to travel in those conditions. For example, take a closer look at this wave:

(Wave)

The wave is higher than the boat, and from the looks of it, its rocking if not already trying to capsize the boat. Any sailor could tell you when heavy winds and waves come, you put your sails away and ride the waves out  of the storm.

Background
The first thing i noticed was the moon, this meant that they were fishing at night. The moon looks about full, which if you know your oceanography, this means high tide and lower tide are a lot greater than usual, this could confirm my storm ideas. Surrounding the moon is heavy clouds, the colors he used are incredible. If you really look at them you can see more than 15 different shades of various colors. But its these colors that made me think about the waves. They kind of compliment each other, its almost like the colors in the water are reflecting back onto the clouds. On the ocean line, there  is a fog, thick enough so we cant make out any details as to what is in the background but we know something is there. when you take a closer look you see

(Land Form)

the following consistent line going across the background with a darker ( a more closer ) line form going across the horizon. I believe these to be land forms, possibly the land that these fishermen call home.

Middle Ground
This term in new to me, I've never really looked at the middle of a picture just the entire and the focus. I would say that the middle ground would be this part of the painting:

(Middle Ground)

this was the hardest part for me to see, i believe at this point it is a rock formation, that has been battered by waves and etc. to create what we see in the painting. This land mass is probably connected to the land mass in the distant. I said that this was the hardest for me to clearly see and that's because originally i saw this to be bigger boats that the two fishing boats were lowered out of.

(Sail Boats in Rocks)

Bad sketch yes i know but if you think about it you can see how someone who never looked at paintings this in depth could be confused. So now that we ruled out boats i believe that Turner painted these rocks as such to show how fierce these waters are.

Colors
the colors are centralized around the moon to the two fishing boats. the light shines heavy around the water under and around the boats as well. the shading of the boats seem to match the shading of the clouds. the biggest color scheme he seems to be using is the relation between the moonlight and the wave that's crashing against the boat. you can clearly see this there.

Lines
the following is my attempt on finding lines hidden within the painting. these lines that i found are mostly triangles with the exception of a scaled line i found hidden in the background, and what i think the main focus is, the perpendicular bisector.

(triangle between boats)

(perpendicular bisectors between moon, rocks and boats)

(scaled lines)

(triangle between seagulls)

Conclusion
Overall this paint is about fishermen and the struggle at sea. I can conclude this from my detailed analytical pieces of the painting i depicted. Turner is known for Romantic painting and i can see why, the colors he uses are brilliant and because of that, it clearly makes the colors pop and much more vivid then without the color blending he did.

Where I Am From

http://flickriver.com/photos/vitor107/sets/72057594114511711/

      I was born in a small village in Castelo Branco, Portugal. From what my mother tells me, we lived upstairs from nuns who raised chickens in the back yard. Every morning they would bring her two eggs, one for my mom and one for me. My mother had told me that these nuns had loved me with every fiber of their body. I know very little about this part of my life or where and who my father was because at the age of 2 years old my mother took me from him and we immigrated to Detroit, MI.

      Growing up in Detroit was a hard lifestyle. I was constantly getting into fights with every minority because I went around saying I was African. See my mother was born in Africa and since as far back as I can remember, she told me I was black just like her. I believed her throughout all the abuse I took from classmates I should have considered friends, but no one cared about the immigrant who was clearly confused with his ethnic background. I spoke the native tongue of my mother’s birthplace and with everyone that was part of my family.

       My mother choose to move to Detroit because her brother owned a extremely large manufacturing plant here, so her plan was to work there for him and this would give her a good jump start on her new life here with me. Time went on and by the age of 12, I had wanted to work with my uncle. Seeing his nice house, good clothing, and luxurious car made me want things I did not need. I worked in that plant for about 30 minutes before I realized that machines were a beautiful thing. I read about every manual and every machine to be able to run them all. By the age of 16, I ran everything, could fix anything, and eventually tore every machine from piece to piece to learn how and what way they worked. It was also in this year I learned that the way that machines worked was due in part to a trade called engineering. I knew from the second I learned this that this would be my life goal...to become an engineer. After I graduated college I packed up, said my last goodbyes to Detroit and left to go pursue this dream.

link to more pictures of Castelo Branco