Christina’s World was painted in 1948 by American painter Andrew Wyeth. This tempera on panel depicts a woman crawling on the ground through the tawny grass and looking up at a gray house on the horizon with a barn and various other small buildings next to it. The woman is intended to embody the artist’s neighbor in Maine, Anna Christina Olson. Wyeth was friends with Olson and he often used her and her younger brother as the subjects of his paintings from 1940 to 1968. Olson suffered from Charcot-Marie Tooth (CMT) disease, which causes weakness in the feet and lower leg muscles. The artist’s inspiration for this painting was seeing her crawling across a field while he was watching from a window in the house. She was limited physically but not spiritually, and he wanted to capture her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless. In creating Christina’s World, Wyeth uses a style of painting known as magic realism to express everyday scenes imbued with poetic mystery. He also demonstrates in this piece uses of chiaroscuro and linear perspective to evoke strong senses of empathy and admiration towards Olson in the pretense that the viewer is in the position that Wyeth is when creating this scene.
Magic realism combines realistic narrative and naturalistic elements to create surreal elements of dream or fantasy. This style of
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painting is evident in Wyeth’s work with his vivid portrayal of his neighbor’s struggle and persistence to crawl towards home. Because Christina’s face is not shown, the viewer is forced to focus on the details of her body: grayed fingers, disheveled hair, a pink dress, and plain shoes. Accompanying these details, Wyeth uses very saturated and warm tones of color to exaggerate and bring forth strong feelings of empathy. In contrast to a bright and joyful world, these feelings further evoke a sense of mellowness and desire. This feeling of desire does not relate to the norm of desiring for a material or person. Rather, we feel the warm desire of going home. As shown in the painting, Christina has her left arm extended as if reaching towards home. Her disheveled appearance displays her continuous effort to get there. Upon observing this, the viewer then arouses strong feelings of admiration towards Christina. How extraordinary is it to be suffering so greatly as she is suffering with her unfortunate disease, yet continuing to endure life mentally? Wyeth’s illustration transforms a scene that is deemed to hopelessness into a greater image of optimism. In greater enforcement of creating a naturalistic scene, Wyeth utilizes several artistic elements. As mentioned earlier, Wyeth uses chiaroscuro which is the use of light to dark shades to create a 3-dimensional volume in painting or other forms of artwork. This is evident in many different areas of Christina’s World. Looking at the bottom feature of this painting, when focusing on the posture of the woman, you notice that the area underneath her butt is in a more grayer tone as opposed to the light pink in the entirety of her dress. The grayness represents the shadow of the calve region of her legs. This creates a 3-dimensional structure in the bent posture that she is in, revealing the fullness of the bottom portion of her body. Another evident illustration of this element is shown in the buildings located in the upper portion of this painting. As you view the portion in the middle, you can see that there is a shadow connecting to the left exterior of the house. This reveals the 3-dimensional structure of the building in the light blooming from the right side which then creates a shadow on the left side. These 3-dimensional structures accentuate a real-life scene whilst joining the viewer with the painting. Using linear perspective, Wyeth also creates a notion of the viewers existence in this scene. The meticulous details and the scale of the grass from natural to miniscule as it gets closer to the buildings creates a standpoint to the viewer as if he/she is right behind Christina and looking out at the buildings that are farther away as she is. Wyeth instills in us a painting that invites us by the window of the scene he is watching over every day.
The painting evokes a strong variety of emotions and feelings where one may be nostalgic of a hopeless scene and feel strong empathy which shortly morphs into a sense of admiration. Wyeth’s goal in compelling the viewer to view closer into the depth of this painting gives the viewer a more optimistic and bright mindfulness from a dull and mellow scene. From a life that is deemed to hopelessness, Wyeth gifts to us the opportunity to enter Christina’s World and experience her extraordinary conquest of
life. Overall, this is a well-written paper with a clear structure and detailed analysis of visual elements. I only have two suggestions/questions for you: 1) As I already noted above, re-consider the focus of your first paragraph. How does the painting convey the sense of “mystery” in realism? If you find enough details that support that idea, make sure the paragraph discusses that aspect as well. If not, you don’t have to feel compelled to make your essay fit into the existing analysis of the painting. 2) How are we to read “optimism,” or a “poetic” quality, or her “extraordinary conquest” being expressed in this painting? It seems to me that, between what you actually describe and the conclusion you draw, there is a significant gap. Yes, the artist said he wanted to “do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless,” and the MoMA website says the style of magic realism portrays “everyday scenes [that] are imbued with poetic mystery.” But other than the fact that the colors are warm, I don’t quite see enough details in this paper that support this idea. If you agree with these ideas, what are the elements that prevented you from thinking that this is just a gloomy scene of a deserted woman desperately trying to get back home?
Contextual Theory: This painting depicts a portrait of life during the late 1800’s. The women’s clothing and hair style represent that era. Gorgeous landscape and a leisurely moment are captured by the artist in this work of
I found The Raising of Lazarus and Annunciation to be interesting pieces on their own as well as to be compared. At face value, these paintings do not appear to contain many contrasting features. However, by examining these paintings closely, one can conclude that paintings with similar themes, mediums, and time periods can still differ in countless ways. Light, medium, subject, color, space, and viewpoint are just a few of the characteristics that can be considered when analyzing Wtewael and Caliari’s works. It is imperative that observers of art take a deeper look into the different features of artwork in attempt to uncover the intentions of the artist.
Delbaere-Garant, Jeannie. "Variations on Magical Realism". Magical Realism Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkison Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham" Duke U.P., 1995. 249-263.
The painting is an epic to the daily life of a church at the start of the Renaissance. The painting is done for a little girl who is in the foreground. The sole purpose of the painting is the eagerness and excitement of the future. The people are active in bright clothes. The colors used are bright showing hope for the future. The people in the painting add to the delightful optimism. The forms are delineated like the columns. Apparent details above the columns, retreating into the background. The masses have space and mass. Every stone is perfectly in place. There is a peculiar darkness across the painting that
Magical realism is a genre in which extraordinary events are incorporated into the ordinary world, usually referred to as realistic fiction. In Latin American culture many authors use this type of literature to describe phenomenal events that occur within our ordinary world. Magical realism can be analyzed through different novels, short stories and movies, for example, Bless me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya, “The Night Face Up,” by Julio Cortazar, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the movie Big Fish by Tim Burton. Magical realism is a style of writing used to link the abnormal with the ordinary.
Magic, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is a power that allows people to do impossible things by saying special words and performing special actions. When looking at the context of this definition, one can then define the term magical realism. Magical Realism is defined as a literary genre in which the author creates two conflicting positions, one rooted in logic and the other rooted in mysticism. In Kobo Abe’s short story, The Magic Chalk, Abe effectively creates a binary between the creator and the creation through the narrative style of magical realism and through the narrative techniques of characterization, irony, and symbolism where the protagonist alters the world to become his own creation.
Spending time looking at art is a way of trying to get into an artists’ mind and understand what he is trying to tell you through his work. The feeling is rewarding in two distinctive ways; one notices the differences in the style of painting and the common features that dominate the art world. When comparing the two paintings, The Kneeling Woman by Fernand Leger and Two Women on a Wharf by Willem de Kooning, one can see the similarities and differences in the subjects of the paintings, the use of colors, and the layout
In this work, the colors and shapes come together to form the depiction of a woman in a chair gazing out at the landscape beyond a window. This subject matter relates to Picasso’s infamous relationship with women and may serve as a depiction of one of the many women he was linked with. The painting depicts the woman with a dual omniscient and introspective vision. Picasso develops this dichotomy through the depiction of a wayward eye gazing out the window and a larger ubiquitous eye glaring directly at the viewers. In constructing such a contrast, the painter is able to convey the personality...
An essential difference, then, between realism and magical realism involves the intentionality implicit in the conventions of the two modes…realism intends its version of the world as a singular version, as an objective (hence ...
When first approaching this work, one feels immediately attracted to its sense of wonder and awe. The bright colors used in the sun draws a viewer in, but the astonishment, fascination, and emotion depicted in the expression on the young woman keeps them intrigued in the painting. It reaches out to those who have worked hard in their life and who look forward to a better future. Even a small event such as a song of a lark gives them hope that there will be a better tomorrow, a thought that can be seen though the countenance by this girl. Although just a collection of oils on a canvas, she is someone who reaches out to people and inspires them to appreciate the small things that, even if only for a short moment, can make the road ahead seem brighter.
In order to see how Magical Realism is found in this treatment, one must first consider at least one of the identifying marks of Magical Realism. Among the characteristics that identify Magical Realism is the feeling of transcendence that the reader has while reading a Magical Realist text (Simpkins 150). During transcendence, a reader senses something that is beyond the real world. At the same time, however, the reader still feels as if he or she were rooted in the world (Sandner 52). After the reader undergoes transcendence, then he or she should have a different outlook on life.
Magical Realism is the way in which a person views the world through a type of art. Magical realism deals with emotions, and it also discovers what is mysterious and meaningful in life. According to Franz Roh, in painting, is the way a person views the world through art (18, 20). Magical Realism has many characteristics that include many other ideas. Magical Realism can be observed in other subject areas, too, such as the logotherapy of Victor Frankl.
Obviously the most concise definition of magical realism is that it is the combination of magical and real elements. The magical elements that exist in works of magical realism are; superstitions, exaggerations, dreams that come true, universal humor and the coincidence of bizarre events. All of these Elements are present within Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Magical Realism is the writing where it mixes fantasy and real life together in one story. Some events are fanatical but the characters are believed to be true because they act and sound like a true life person today. Some stories include magical details and realistic details. Magical details are the details that would describe a fantasy world of people of those who are thought to be true. The realistic details are the events that seem every day and seem to be true. Both of these details include characters, conflict, plot/setting, and a resolution. The differences in these two short stories are “In the Family” it is written in 1st person, but in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” it is written in 3rd person...
The paintings history and subject matter really spoke to me, reflecting many of my own beliefs and experiences. My personal observations begins with these two girls, resting by the roadside as they go along on their journey, displaying sort of an organic scenery around them. The two are immediately apparent, being covered by a red shawl. The blind girl being the elder one, appears to prefer to keep her eyes shut, while tightly grasping her younger sister’s hand for comfort.