For my Critical Studies I have chosen to look at the work of Lucian Freud and Walter Sickert. I decided upon the pieces Benefits Supervisor Sleeping by Freud and La Hollandaise by Sickert. Freud is a British artist, born in Berlin in 1922 and died in 2011, and was regarded by many as the best figurative painter of the late twentieth century early twenty-first century. The Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was painted in 1995. The 1980s and early 1990s were marked by increasingly ambitious compositions in terms of both scale and complexity for Freud and the Benefits Supervisor Sleeping is a prime example of Freud’s revolutionary style. Sickert was born in Munich, Germany, in 1860 and died in England in 1942. Sickert was a painter and printmaker who …show more content…
For example, Sickert has used oil on canvas which allows him to create bold thick marks on the canvas to excentuate the light and dark areas of his painting. Oil is good because it allows a lot of editing time on the piece due to the fact that the paint dries slowly. However, oil is limited because often you can not create a very small dainty marks on the canvas. Sickert has also used subtle lines on his painting, instead he has seemed to create blocks of colour that illuminate the figure of the model. this helps give the audience a feeling of dark and light in the room where the picture was painted by only showing the very prominently light shapes in contrast to the background. The woman’s face has shadows casted over it so that it is almost unrecognisable, thus creating a confusion about who the model actually was. This was common in sickerts work as he was prone to showing women in a way that is inferior to men. to paint the face in a identifiable way would be to give the woman an identity thus making her more than an object. the space in this painting make the audience feel like it was painted in a small room with little light. there is a chest of drawers right next to the bed and the model seems to be in a position that pushes her closer to the other objects in the room, suggesting inclosure and containment. this could then support the …show more content…
when you first examine the painting you feel as though it is a prostitute waiting for her next client. this is then supported by the name, la hollandaise, which translated means the dutch women. after researching further i found that this could be making a reference to the legal prostitution in Amsterdam. some may feel that sickest was trying to convey a feeling of disgust for the legal prostitution, due to the colours of the background and enclosed setting. However, when comparing the piece to his previous paintings one could interpret that sickert was intact fascinated by the prostitution world. so his purpose would not necessarily be to insult prostitution but more admire it and the simplicity for men to take advantage of women. before the benefits supervisor sleeping was painted by Freud his mother, Lucie Freud, died. Lucie died in 1989 whilst the benefits supervisor sleeping was painted in 1995. This could imply that Freud was recreating a maternal figure with his paintings of big sue. she has very prominent female features that could remind freaud of motherly duties and thus of his own mother. Freud was a large misogynist so may have had thoughts that women were for few purposes, baring children and caring for people, like the role of a
The face of the portrait is detailed, and more naturally painted than the rest of the composition. However, the left iris exceeds her eye and extends past the normal outline. The viewer can see every single brush stroke resulting in a unique approach to the capturing human emotion. The streaky texture combines with the smoothness flow of the artist’s hand creating contrast between the hair and the face. The woman’s hair is painted with thick and chunky globs of paint. The viewer can physically see the paint rising from the canvas and flowing into the movement of the waves of hair. Throughout the hair as well as the rest of the portrait Neel abandons basic painting studies and doesn’t clean her brush before applying the next color. Because of the deliberate choice to entangle the colors on the brush it creates a new muddy palate skewed throughout the canvas. Moving from the thick waves of hair, Neel abandons the thick painting style of the physical portrait and moves to a looser more abstract technique to paint the background. Despite the lack of linear perspective, Neel uses a dry brush technique for the colorful streaks in the background creating a messy illusion of a wall and a sense of space. The painting is not clean, precise, or complete; there are intentional empty spaces, allowing the canvas to pear through wide places in the portrait. Again, Neel abandons
If one came close to the figure’s stomach where there’s the seafoam green, one can see the strong mark makings of the paint brushes and knife strokes, making the paint come out of the canvas. Similarly, Brown also uses big paint strokes of different colors to direct viewer’s eyes around the artwork. For instance, on the left side of the figure, there is a big vertical downward motion of a brush stroke in maroon, that connects to a green streak that goes up and encompasses the figure’s head and then downward to the body of the figure, which outlines and pushes the figure to stand out. And to make our eyes go back to the figure, Brown paints a blue triangle on the chest, making it a focal point due to it’s dark color that stands out of the light colors. And if someone stood facing the side of the painting, one can see the thick globs of paint that would make the viewer take a double glance to see if it was either a painting or a sculpture, which reinforces the idea that the painting is coming alive and making one feel
The painting depicts a mother and her four children, who are all leaning on her as she looks down solemnly, her tired, despondent expression suggests she felt trapped in her roles as being a mother and a wife. The woman and her children are clearly the focal point of the artwork as the bright colours used to paint them stand out impeccably against the dull, lifeless colours of the background. This painting appears to be centred around the ideology that women are home-keepers, whose main role is to satisfy and assist her husband while simultaneously minding the children and keeping the home tidy and ready for his return. The social consequences of this artwork could have been that the woman could have been berated for not taking pleasure out of being a mother and raising her children, as a woman should. She could have been made redundant as her husband may have felt as though she is no longer useful if she couldn’t adequately adhere to her roles as a mother and a
The piece shows Marie posing with her three children, the reason for this painting was to create a public message depicting her as more than just elegance and put her on the same level as the general public. Because the painting was meant for the eyes of the general public the painting is rather bland and lacks detail. Instead of Marie looking down on the population showing off her lavish and extravagant items she has just her children attempting to depict herself as a regular mother just like every other female raising children. There is very little details in the paint except for the empty baby carriage which was most likely only included to honor the death of one of her children at a young
The composition of this painting forces the eye to the woman, and specifically to her face. Although the white wedding dress is large and takes up most of the woman’s figure, the white contrasts with her face and dark hair, forcing the viewer to look more closely into the woman’s face. She smokes a cigarette and rests her chin on her hands. She does not appear to be a very young woman and her eyes are cast down and seem sad. In general, her face appears to show a sense of disillusionment with life and specifically with her own life. Although this is apparently her wedding day, she does not seem to be happy.
I can’t unveil any more of the plot without destroying the reading pleasure, but there is one thing you should carry back in your mind as you read the book; the painting is the main element which most of the story circles around. Style and technique etc (dot four) “There is something inhuman about the way he looks as he comes toward her with his head lowered and his hands hanging at his sides and the long muscles in his thighs flexing“. As an affectionate King fan I can assure you this is a typical Stephen King line. After all, he is the master of horror. Most recently I finished reading the King novel “The Eyes of the Dragon“, which I have chosen to refer to in this case.
Even the faces of the men in the foreground appear to be wax like and flat. One of the least successful faces in the piece is that of the practitioner who is in the lower right corner of the piece, closest to the bottom edge. His face only contains three distinct values of skin tone, which makes his face appear one dimensional and lifeless. Furthermore, his left hand seems to be awkwardly placed and disproportionate in its length in comparison to the dimensions of his face. While his left hand flows somewhat with his body and reflects the style of the rest of the piece, his right hand, which is much lighter in color as if it somehow managed to catch all the light from an unknown light source, shows no consistency with the artist’s technique. It is bulky and out of place. The way it grasps the surgical instrument seems very unnatural. In fact, the only purpose the hand serves in this piece is to connect this man to the scene itself as an extension of this triangular composition. In this sense this figure is important, for his disproportionate body catches the viewers eye at the very edge of the painting, just as his or her attention is about to waive, and shoots it back into the main composition.
The background of the painting is dark with hues of browns and reds. Light enters the painting from the left and can be seen on the tiled floor. The lighting helps to create the diagonal composition as it moves across the lower half of the painting. The contrast of light also creates space between the man and the woman fainting; symbolizing a disconnect between the two figures. The use of space is also interesting, Ahsauerus is alone and is enclosed in a corner, while Esther is being held by two other woman who are physically very close to her, not allowing any space between their clothes, suggesting a nurturing characteristic that is often stereotyped among
The colors that the artist uses can be quite different as each color conveys a separate impression. The light brown that he used on the face can convey sadness. The painting is created with mainly curves and lines which can mean that the man had strong physical features or that his different emotions were felt passionately as lines are usually seen as strong technical elements. The only curves that are being used are for his features. The eyes look quite down or depressive. This is because the man is sad, which goes back to the main mood which is maybe suffering.
In an empty room at the Timken Museum of Art hangs one of the most iconic paintings of Johannes Vermeer, the astonishing painting, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. In the painting a pale woman’s stands patiently while reading a letter. The woman appears to be wearing a blue jacket and a long gray skirt, and only gazing at the letter, ignoring all of her surroundings. The top right of the painting seems to be a map of the Netherlands, which attracts the viewer because it explains the setting of where the painting took place. The blue jacket around the woman’s torso appears to exaggerate the woman’s stomach, giving the impression that she might be pregnant. The blue chairs resemble a sign of absence as if she lives alone. The light on the top left shines on her face which enhances the viewer’s view of the woman’s facial expression. Johannes Vermeer’s interpretation of complex colors, the light, and her body language inflicts a persuasion on the viewer that the women is traumatized by the news in the letter.
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
Historically, theories about human nature and personality development did not reflect women’s visions, needs and opinions (Wellesley Centers for Women, 2011: Westkott 1989). However, Karen Horney, a psychoanalyst in the first half of the twentieth century began to question the concept of human nature being only associated with man and not woman (Eckardt, 2005). Through this questioning, Horney began to reinterpret Freud’s psychoanalytic theory on feminine psychology development, accumulating in fourteen papers written between 1922 and 1937 on feminine psychology (Smith, 2007). Published posthumously as Feminine Psychology (1967) these papers had a significant impact on feminist theory and have been cited as the ‘political and theoretical origins’
Many will argue that Freud’s ideas have exerted a profound influence on twentieth –century thought and culture, though his work has come under scrutiny, it has shape the fundamentals of society view on civilization and discontents, dreams, psychoanalysis and the unconscious. For this paper, I will be discussing Freud’s fundamentals of dreams, what dreams represents, how dreams are constructed and its significance while paying close attention to the following areas of dreams, manifest and latent content, condensation and displacement, and censorship and repression.
Despite his initial wishes to escape his dreaded destiny, his actions continuously lead him to the very life that so many consider taboo and immoral. “Dreams for Freud are the fulfillments of wishes that have been repressed and disguised” (MLS 8). Freud believed that symbols appeared in our dreams that portrayed our hidden thoughts, emotions and sexuality. “Freud’s discovery of the significance of dream-symbols led him and his followers to analyze the similarity between dreams and myths… Myth therefore reflect people’s waking efforts to systematize the incoherent visions and impulses of their sleep world” (MLS
The poetry of Sylvia Plath can be interpreted psychoanalytically. Sigmund Freud believed that the majority of all art was a controlled expression of the unconscious. However, this does not mean that the creation of art is effortless; on the contrary it requires a high degree of sophistication. Works of art like dreams have both a manifest content (what is on the surface) and latent content (the true meaning). Both dreams and art use symbolism and metaphor and thus need to be interpreted to understand the latent content. It is important to maintain that analyzing Plaths poetry is not the same as analyzing Plath; her works stand by themselves and create their own fictional world. In the poems Lady Lazarus, Daddy and Electra on Azalea Path the psychoanalytic motifs of sadomasochism, regression and oral fixation, reperesnet the desire to return to the incestuous love object.