Formal Analysis
Ryan Herald
ARH 2850
25 November 2014
A brief formal analysis of Jean Cocteau by the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani… Finished in 1917, this painting was created in Paris, France, and is currently on display at the High Museum of Modern Art here in Atlanta. The medium is oil on canvas, and it is a portrait. It is likely that other key painters influenced Modigliani’s techniques at the time, “The color tonalities, drawing style, and overall composition reflect influence of Cézanne” (The Pearlman Foundation).
Shown in the painting is a well-dressed man. The man pictured was a French writer. Jean Cocteau, has an elongated head, neck, and nose, and simple features. His face almost seems mask-like. The elongated nose and sharp chin emphasize these features, making them seem the most prominent and
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In this case, people of this nature tend to have eyes that reflect that mindset. However, Modigliani chose to portray him with shallow, mindless eyes. While his eyes do not show much depth, his offset gaze creates a sense of motion within the painting. The depth of the painting seems to be relatively shallow. The shadow that the chair casts on the wall is a very small one, leading me to believe that either a) the chair was close to the wall, or b) the light source was right at eye level, creating a shadow that cast almost directly behind the chair.
While he painted dozens of portraits throughout his career, Modigliani seemed to have a common theme run throughout all of them. While he did work to make his paintings resemble the person modeling, it almost seems as though he had a set of trademark characteristics that appeared in each of them, creating what could have been some sort of brand for himself. While viewers would hopefully be able to recognize each person being painted, it is likely that they would first recognize that the work was one of
Question 1: What question did Thoreau ask that Cronon is dealing with? In his journal, Thoreau muses upon twenty years of changes in New England’s land and beasts. He lists the differences in plants and animals, comparing them to past accounts and descriptions. He questions if the growing human presence has resulted in “a maimed and imperfect nature.” Cronon believes that this is an important question to consider.
Children fool around every day with parental supervision always there to catch the youth when they are at risk of vulnerability. Without parental supervision, they need to be self-conscious of their own well-being. Once a child becomes an adult, they learn to take their own path through life with no safety net and to take responsibility for their own actions, unlike Chris McCandless. The novel, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, exposes a cocky and arrogant, Chris McCandless, who is to blame for his own death, because he lives a life of taking risks, and depends on those that care for him to save him from the edge of disaster.
In the Enseigne, art is also shown to serve a function that it has always fulfilled in every society founded on class differences. As a luxury commodity it is an index of social status. It marks the distinction between those who have the leisure and wealth to know about art and posses it, and those who do not. In Gersaint’s signboard, art is presented in a context where its social function is openly and self-consciously declared. In summary, Watteau reveals art to be a product of society, nevertheless he refashions past artistic traditions. Other than other contemporary painters however, his relationship to the past is not presented as a revolt, but rather like the appreciative, attentive commentary of a conversational partner.
The man’s eyes are closed and his mouth is slightly open. The colours of the painting shades of blue, and there is a flatness to the painting. The only break in color is the brown guitar. Like other paintings at this time, the mas is assumed to be poor. There is an overall sense of depression and tragedy.
When it comes to civil rights, there are two pieces of literature commonly discussed. One of these pieces is Henry David Thoreau’s persuasive lecture On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. In this work, Thoreau discusses how one must combat the government with disobedience of unjust laws and positive friction to create change. The second piece is the commonly known article Letter From a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. This letter covers the ways in which peaceful protest and standing up against injustice can lead to positive results. Both pieces conveyed a similar message of standing up for what is right. The strongest rhetorical methods which Thoreau uses are allusions, logos, ethos and rhetorical questions. However, King’s use of
When thinking about the transcendental period and/or about individuals reaching out and submerging themselves in nature, Henry David Thoreau and his book, Walden, are the first things that come to mind. Unknown to many, there are plenty of people who have braved the environment and called it their home during the past twenty years, for example: Chris McCandless and Richard Proenneke. Before diving into who the “modern Thoreaus” are, one must venture back and explore the footprint created by Henry Thoreau.
An American Author, Transcendentalist and tax resister, Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord Massachusetts, and lived there most of his life. He was opposed to many of the things that went on in our society and debated many issues in his life. Two of these major issues are , the Mexican American War and the implement of Slavery in our society. This was the reason for many of his writings include “Slavery in Massachusetts” and “Civil Disobedience” where he wrote about his principles and views against the U.S government and their involvement in the Mexican American War and the evil of Slavery. Thoreau opposed to these because they promote unjust government practices which he was strongly against.
- Opening: expresses Thoreau's libertarian view that the best gov't has the least power and control over its citizens
With the statement, “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them,” Thoreau is saying that many people in the world, including the United States, are not able to enjoy life because they are too preoccupied with working and earning wealth to buy unnecessary goods. Thoreau believes that men only need four things to survive: fuel, food, shelter, and clothing. However, according to Thoreau, people still strive to obtain more and more unnecessary material goods. To obtain these goods, Thoreau writes, “He has no time to be any thing but a machine,” meaning that men are so busy working to make excessive money that work consumes their entire lives. Thoreau, on the other hand, ignores “factitious cares” such as excessive wealth, furniture, and a large home, in order to enjoy his life and not be forced to live his life as a machine.
What comes to mind at the mention of Henry David Thoreau? A lot of people would say his uniqueness, or how different he is from everyone else in the play. The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is a brilliant play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, which focuses on the true story of Henry David Thoreau. For many years, Thoreau was written off as some weirdo outcast, especially in his time, but now we see how truly significant his non-conformity is. The principle of non-conformity is an integrated part of Thoreau’s life, not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of what is right.
The main influences perceptible in this painting are those of Millet, Delacroix, and the Impressio...
In this essay, I shall try to examine how great a role colour played in the evolution of Impressionism. Impressionism in itself can be seen as a linkage in a long chain of procedures, which led the art to the point it is today. In order to do so, colour in Impressionism needs to be placed within an art-historical context for us to see more clearly the role it has played in the evolution of modern painting. In the late eighteenth century, for example, ancient Greek and Roman examples provided the classical sources in art. At the same time, there was a revolt against the formalism of Neo-Classicism. The accepted style was characterised by appeal to reason and intellect, with a demand for a well-disciplined order and restraint in the work. The decisive Romantic movement emphasized the individual’s right in self-expression, in which imagination and emotion were given free reign and stressed colour rather than line; colour can be seen as the expression for emotion, whereas line is the expression of rationality. Their style was painterly rather than linear; colour offered a freedom that line denied. Among the Romanticists who had a strong influence on Impressionism were Joseph Mallord William Turner and Eugéne Delacroix. In Turner’s works, colour took precedence over the realistic portrayal of form; Delacroix led the way for the Impressionists to use unmixed hues. The transition between Romanticism and Impressionism was provided by a small group of artists who lived and worked at the village of Barbizon. Their naturalistic style was based entirely on their observation and painting of nature in the open air. In their natural landscape subjects, they paid careful attention to the colourful expression of light and atmosphere. For them, colour was as important as composition, and this visual approach, with its appeal to emotion, gradually displaced the more studied and forma, with its appeal to reason.
Brown, Frederick. An impersonation of angels: A biography of Jean Cocteau. New York: Viking Press, 1968. Print.
Paul Gauguin was a leading French post impressionist artist whose focus was his imagination. He worked in a studio and experimented with color. His wo...
Using his legendary sfumato, he achieved the appearance of flesh in such delicacy, as Vasari said, that any artist would tremble and be amazed. Paul Barolsky, 15: Mona Lisa’s smile embodies the inner tranquility of her animal soul. In Leonardo’s mural, Jesus sits in the center, and John and Peter next to Him on the right hand side of the Lord, while John’s brother James has the first seat on the left side. (Paul Haupt, 179)