Portrait of Chess Players

Portrait of Chess Players

Marcel Duchamp (American, Born in France)

1911.

First Impressions:

At first glance this painting looks very confusing with many shapes all crowded together. After studying it for a little while, I started to see outlines of familiar shapes and figures. These were "subtle" in a way because they are not obviously shown. This reminds me of cubism. In this painting, I believe that there are a few optical illusions. The head of the guy on the left seems to be either facing his opponent (the other person), but it can alo appears to be facing the viewer (you). It is also very cool that the further you move back, the painting changes in a way. In the background, there seems to be various chess pieces. I can perceive the figures of a pawn, a bishop and a kind. To me the darker pieces appear to be playing out the role of a chess game. (zoom feature). There seems to be hidden objects in this painting and shapes that make up many figures. This painting is very interesting because of the way that it is made. Every time that I look at this painting, I can perceive a new, hidden object.

What I Have Learned (About the Author):

Chess was a great passion of Marcel Duchamp. He incorporated it into many of his works of art. He even said: "I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."1  In this painting, "each head is made up of many overlapping successive planes, with chess pieces floating in the indefinite spaces that surround them. This painting is in fact influenced by Duchamp's interest in cubism. Marcel Duchamp was born in 1887 in Northwest France.  He was a painter and a mixed media artist.2 He was associated and influenced with Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.3 "Duchamp's work is characterized by its humor, the variety and unconventionality of its media, and its incessant probing of the boundaries of art."4 All of the four oldest brothers in his family became artists. A short synopsis of The Chess Players is given to us by www.understandingduchamp.com. "In The Chess Players Duchamp explored the possibilities of Cubism. It shows two chess players at a table, in multiple views. In the center of the painting are a few shapes like chess pieces.

The players are shown in different positions, suggesting the passage of time. Duchamp gave Cubism an idiosyncratic twist by introducing duration.

The players are weighing their options. One potential outcome results in the capture, by the player on the left, of an opposing piece, held in his hand near the bottom of the painting. A picture of minds engaged in the calculus of chess, this is an early exercise in another continuing interest in Duchamp’s art: depicting the intangible."www.understandingduchamp.com

In the 1968, Marcel Duchamp unfortunately died. Understandingduchamp.com did an excelent "summarization" of Marcel Duchamps' life. 

Marcel Duchamp showed the way to a new kind of art. Compared with the varieties of visual expression that came before, this new art seeks to to engage the imagination and the intellect instead of just the eyes, embraces humor as a valid aesthetic component, and strives to portray invisible worlds instead of just visible ones.

Some of the most fruitful influences in modern art, from Surrealism to Abstraction to Pop to pure Conceptualism, have a common forefather in Marcel Duchamp.

---

Duchamp died peacefully in 1968. His ashes were interred with other family members in the Cimetière Monumental in Rouen. He wrote his own epitaph:

D’ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent

Anyway, it’s always the other guy who dies.

Sources: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51446.html

Quotes: 1. http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51446.html

2-4. http://www.understandingduchamp.com/text.html

Zoom Painting: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51446.html

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

John Singer Sargent (American)

1892-1893

First Impressions:

To me, this girl looks like she is from a prominent family. The cloths that she is wearing are very fashionable and expensive. Her facial expressions are happy and jovial. She seems to be a happy person and a delicate girl. She looks  focused and maybe in her twenties, she is definitely young. Her skin is smooth meaning that she takes care of herself. The painting is done in great detail and very carefully done, symbolizing that the family paid a lot of money for the painting.

What I Have Learned:

Lady Agnew is a vert prominent lady and "The painting was done in a "high key" and carefully finished. "It is a careful portrait, free of any fine frenzy, sedately handled, and rather lacking in the force and fire  of his daring technique" ((Charteris, P136),http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Lady_Agnew.htm) It was considered a masterpiece by everyone. The times said "A masterpiece... not only a triumph of technique but the finest example of portraiture in the literal sense of the word, that has been seen here in a long while. (The Times, 1893). "Carter Ratcliff described it this way in his book on Sargent: 

Lady Agnew's personality engages in endless elusive play against her social type. Sargent has made her face almost schematic, yet within the regularity there is slight departures, nuances whose faintness blends nicely with the sitters languid pose. Lady Agnew's face seems all possibility, and consciously so. The moment of the right side of her lips look slightly drawn back, as if in doubt or weariness, the left side seems almost to smile. And, as if to insist on her control of this ambivalence, her eyes are oddly calm."
(Ratcliff)

This Portrait gives the viewer a clear look at Lady Agnew.

Sources: http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Lady_Agnew.htm

Landscape in Southern France

Landscape in Southern France

André Derain (French)

C.A. 1917-1927

First Impressions:

This is a very beautiful painting by André Derain. There are many "earthy/neutral" and natural" and "cool" colors. For example, there are many "olive" greens, and light and dark browns. The sky is a very "cool," light blue. This painting is very serene and tranquille, and André does a magnificent job of using color tones to express the scene of his drawing. In the background, there seems to be a road (or a wall) that leads up to a building. This picture reminds me of a vineyard (for growing grapes and eventually for making the grapes into wine). The building is probably (may be) a wine cellar. This also could be a olive grove (for making olive oil). Fortunately, I have been to Southern France, and have seen the beautiful vineyards and groves, so I could relate to this drawing, and really feel like I am back in Southern France.   All of the earth tones really make this beautiful painting very realistic and brings the sense of nature, beauty, and to me, extravagance (wine or olive oil), because these two products are to me such precious and upscale products.

What I Have Learned:

This painting is oil on canvas and 50.5 cm by 60.6 cm. André did smartly choose the colors and their profiles to show and set the mood of exactly what he wanted to illustrate in this painting. 

There is an inscription of is name in the bottom left corner, "A derain" and currently it is at the MFA in Boston, Massachusetts. I have also learned and understood how much the type of color effects and shows the mood of the painting.

Sources: Museum of Fine Arts (Boston): http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=33264&coll_keywords=&coll_accession=&coll_name=&coll_artist=Derain&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=Paintings&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=1&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=0&coll_sort_order=0&coll_view=0&coll_package=0&coll_start=1

Story Collage

(Collage coming soon!)

Surfing Santa Teresa, Mal País, Costa Rica

Kris B

The Story that I am telling in this collage is me surfing for the first time in Costa Rica. I got up the first attempt, and I had a lot of fun riding the big waves. The view from the water, looking at the beach, and then "the land" was spectacular.

The most challenging aspect of this collage was getting everything how I imagined it to be in my head.

The most successful aspect of my collage is... not finished yet.

I See the Light Drawing

(Picture to be added soon)

Tennis With My Family With A Magical Evening Sky. (On Cape Cod)

Kris B

The story that I am trying to tell this drawing is me and my family playing tennis on Cape Cod. Playing tennis as a whole family is always memorable to me and this evening was especially special because of the beautiful sky and the vibrant and incredible colors in the sky.

I used value in this drawing to illustrate the many shades of the evening sky, to make the ocean look more realistic, to show the magnificent sun reflecting in the water, to show the incredible light from the descending sun, and to make depth and perspective.

The most challenging aspect of this drawing for me was showing the perspective and getting the right color. I am a "perfectionist" and it was hard to do everything exactly how I wanted it to be; in other words, I reached too high, and did not have all of the skill to really get the "exactness" that I wanted.

The most successful aspect of my drawing is that I was able to show perspective very well, and I was able to get and happy with the light aspect.

The Persistence of Memory (La persistencia de la memoria)

The Persistence of Memory (La persistencia de la memoria)

Salvador Dalí (Spanish)

1931

First Impressions

When I look at this drawing, I first notice three clocks drooping or in away, melting. As I look more closely, I notice that there are actually four pocket watches (one upside down). There may also be references to sundials or other forms of telling time, for example the tree's shadow. It is difficult to tell whether it is dawn/sunrise or the evening/sunset. In the background, there are mountains/cliffs, and a either a lake, a pond, or the ocean. There are two species of animals in this painting, one is ants, and the other is a fly. Ants in Dalí's life symbolize death, because when he was a child, he found a bat with a broken wing, and cared for it. Unfortunately, the bat was eaten by ants, and that is why the ants symbolize death. There seems to be an "odd" balance between life and death in the tree. Normally, a tree would symbolize life, but the tree is dead in this painting. On the ground in the foreground, there seems to be a weird animal or something. I also know that Dalí is a Surrealist, and many of his paintings are very "dream-like." Lastly, I know that he painted this painting while waiting for Gala, his wife and muse to come home. All in all, I think that this is a beautiful painting, and I really like how the light and shadows really give the viewer a great sense of perspective and time.

What I have Learned

This painting"epitomizes Dalí's theory of 'softness' and 'hardness,' which was central to his thinking time." The figure in the center of this painting is indeed a human, and not only a human, it Dalí, represented as a strange "moster," "that Dalí used in several period pieces to represent himself." The ants in fact are a symbol for death. Like all of the elements in this painting, the tree has "the same function as the rest if the elements in the picture: to impress anxiety and , in a certain way, terror, although it is likely that it was conceived as a functional element on which to drape one of the watches." The "golden" cliffs in the background actually represent Catalonia, Dalí's homeland. These are "derived from the rocks and cliffs at Cape Creus, where the Pyrenees meet the sea" (moma.org). A very interesting observation noticed by The Museum of Modern Art, is that, "Hard objects become inexplicably limp in this bleak and infinite dreamscape, while metal attracts ants." Dalí used (and mastered) in this painting something that he called "the usual paralyzing trick fo the eye fooling, the most imperialist fury of precision, to systemize confusion and thus to help discredit the world completely" (Dalí). As said by The Museum of Modern Art, "Here time must loose all meaning." A great way to also put this is: "time bends" (MoMA). The story behind this painting is that the original idea came to Dalí on a hot, summer day. Gala was out shopping and Dalí had a great headache. After his meal, he noticed some half eaten Camembert cheese that had become runny and melted because of the heat of the sunny day. That night, while he was "searching his soul for something to paint" (Wikipedia, the Persistence of Memory), he had a dream of clocks melting on a landscape. So far, he had a plain landscape with rocky cliffs, and a tree on a platform. In a period of two to three hours, he added the melting pocket watches, "make this the iconic image it is today." (Same as before).

Materials: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 9 1/2 by 13'' (24.1 by 33 cm).

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory#External_links

(Also many of the quotes are from there)

      : http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79018 

Great Zoom Feature: http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79018 

Harvest Talk

Harvest Talk

By Charles Wilbert White. (American)

1954.

First Impressions

When I look at this drawing/charcoal drawing, I see two incredibly muscular African Americans working in the fields either holding or fixing a scythe. I notice that the land behind them is very hilly, but also "free." This might be a symbolism for the history of slavery in the United States. Here are two impressively strong African Americans strong from their past and free. It shows that they are hard working and happy and free. The sky is darkish, maybe stormy, to show the strength of the African Americans through their history, and also to make the two men stand out. The two men look fairly happy and they seem to be taking a break.

What I Have Learned

Charles White had a "deep respect for labor" because his father was a railroad and steel worker and his mother was a domestic worker. Harvest Talk is a charcoal and carbon pencil drawing, and it "exemplifies [White's] mature drawing style." In this painting, depicted are "strong, assured manner" figures with "heroic proportions." In addition there is a great emphasis on the large scythe, which "evokes that indomitability of his subjects in the face of hard work." A very interesting symbol and fact is that the presence of the scythe is symbolic, because it is an "emblem often associated with the Soviet union [and] the social realist sensibilities that prevail throughout White's oeuvre." This was probably influenced by White's travels to the U.S.S.R. This also implies that Harvest Talk was effected and inspired by socialist ideas. Light plays a role in this "mural" by emphasizing principle objects and by adding perspective.

The materials that were used to create this work of art are "Charcoal, Wholff's carbon drawing pencil and graphite, with stumping and erasing on ivory illustration board.

Information From: http://www.artic.edu/webspaces/museumstudies/ms242/portfolio17.shtml