Van Gogh: Sunflowers Describe: Flowers in a vase. Different shades of yellow. Some flowers standing upright others drooping. The background is simple with one shade of yellow on top of a horizontal line a darker shade on the other. Vincent is painted on the vase. Analyze: The main focal point is the sunflower bouquet and vase. Your eye rotates around each of the flowers with small ones on the left rotating to full bloom sunflowers toward the middle and then the dropping flowers toward the right. All colors are different shades of yellow, whether it is yellow green stems or the saturated yellows of the flowers, yellow has influenced each color painted. Interpret: The paintings meaning is about happiness being represented in the yellow color throughout the painting. Also the lifecycle is symbolic through the stages of how each of the flowers are painted. Starting with a small budding sunflower toward the left, full bloom sunflowers toward the center and rotating around to the right the dying sunflower. This is one of a series of paintings of sunflowers Van Gogh painted. Judge/Decide: Do you like it? Why or why not? |
Banksy: “There is Always Hope”
Describe: Red Heart shape, girl silhouette in just black, Words on the side of the wall. Painting, graffiti/street art. Analyze: Shape of girl’s dress looks like it’s moving, red heart shape with black line attached to it moves toward the girl as her arm reaches out. The focal point is the red balloon because it is the only color then your eye moves down the black line attached to the balloon to the girls outstretched arm to the girl. Interpret: The work depicts a young girl, whose hair and dress are blowing in the wind, reaching for, or releasing, a red, heart-shaped balloon that has slipped from her grasp, flying out of reach. The red balloon is a symbol many of us connect with, as the only spot of color in the work, more than a child’s toy, the red balloon evokes fragility of what it stands for: innocence, dreams, hope and love. Whether you see the girl as losing the balloon, or about to catch it, the meaning can be interpreted as a loss of innocence, or the arrival of hope and love. Judge/Decide: Do you like it? Why or why not? |
Mc Escher: Ascending and Descending Describe: Lithograph of a structure with people looping around the top story. Staircases going up into the structure. A few people by themselves on other stories of the structure. It’s a black and white lithograph. Use of texture and value gives the allusion that this is a realistic building. Analyze: Main focal point is the group of people ascending and descending a set of endless stairs. Your eye follows the people going around this endless loop. Than your eye wonders through the structure to the two people by themselves. One on the staircase toward the bottom of the structure and one sitting on the balcony. Each person is identical with no features that make anyone look any different than anyone else. Interpret: The work depicts this sense of being “stuck”. It is about conformity. Escher used the Penrose stairs as an inspiration to create an endless staircase in which a group of people keep climbing but never get any higher. The stairs are also called the impossible staircase. The structure in Ascending and Descending embeds human activity, revealing an “unknown” ritual. Their clothing makes it easy to observe that all of them are ascending without getting higher. Two other characters can be noticed on the inferior levels of the building that do not participate in the ritual. Escher calls these two characters as free people that do not like conformity. The ones that climb the impossible staircase represent a group of people that follow an inescapable destiny in a bizarre environment. Judge/Decide: Do you like it? Why or why not? |
Chuck Close: Self Portrait
Describe: A portrait of a person, painted in a semi-abstraction. Painting looks fragmented with almost pixelated edges. Multiple colors are used in each of the squares. Person is not expressing too much emotion just gazing straight forward. Analyze: The person is the focal point of the artwork. Your eye travels throughout each of the squares of the portrait. Close up each square looks like a layering of different colors as you view the picture from further away all the colors make a realistic shade of the person’s skin tones and facial features by your eye blending them together. Face is proportionally realistic making this a semi-abstract painting. Interpret: The work depicts a self-portrait of Chuck Close. Chuck close mainly painted himself for convenience sake. He used the gridding technique to make his paintings as realistic as possible. Chuck became a quadriplegic becoming paralyzed and had to create paintings that were less hyperrealistic like his older works and more abstract like this painting. Judge/Decide: Do you like it? Why or why not? |