Realism In Mark Tansey's The Innocent Eye Test

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Every individual interprets a painting in his/ her own way and sometimes one could find more than one explanation for the same piece of art. As a non-professional my understanding of this painting indicates that it represents a medical experiment of a cow that in her turn is observing another painting of her own species. The cow is accompanied by a group of people who probably are scientists and doctors. Realism is well executed in the painting. To be more clear, on the right side one scientist is standing with pen and paper in his hand to take notes of the cow’s reactions to the painting. The doctors and the people standing by all wearing glasses, except that one person on the left who has a mop in his hand, possibly to clean after the cow …show more content…

The title reveals a lot about the painting and gives an expanded explanation of what’s going on in it and what is the main message that the painter wants to send through his painting. The “Innocent Eye” from the title represents the cow’s eyes that the scientists are relying on. Here the eyes of the cow are the main tools of how she is going to interpret the painting and react accordingly. The whole experiment is based on those innocent eyes that symbolize simplicity; they are a representation of the reactions of unprofessional viewers of arts that are reflected through their innocent eyes. In other words, the cow itself represents amateur viewers of the painting that explain art through their own vision, having difficulty with understanding the authenticity of the images represented in the painting. The painter wants to send a message through the title that the cleverness of a cow in explaining the painting can be compared to those inexperienced people who criticize art and how innocent eyes can be tricked by things that appear to be true and …show more content…

Titles give us a chance to analyze the meaning of it throughout the piece of art and that meaning is usually hard to comprehend. Titles are the main key for analyzing paintings. For example, at first when I didn’t know the real title of the painting and gave it my own name The Experiment, I analyzed the painting in completely other way and searched for details that concerned the experiment I was very focused on. After finding out the real title The Innocent Eye Test I looked at the painting from another perspective and wanted to understand what the painter wanted the audience to understand by naming his painting The Innocent Eye Test and this time focused more on the eyes of the cow and what might they be a presentation of. From this example I can say that titles do matter in terms of understanding paintings, especially when it comes to their main idea and the painters’ main messages. The idea that lies withing the title makes us see the painting in a whole new way and find details that we didn’t pay attention to when the title wasn’t known

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