The Women Picking Olives is by Vincent van Gogh. The date is between 1889 and 1890.The Material is Oil on canvas and its sizes are 75 cm x 113 cm. The Harvesters painting is by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and it was created in about 1565. The Material is Oil on canvas. The sizes are about 116.5 x 159.5 cm. The basic picture on the Women picking olives painting is three women who are helping each other pick a weird object of a tree. From the title of the painting I would say the object is olives but the object doies not look like olivesThe object looks like a pumpkin but pumpkins don’t grow on trees! Perhaps they are putting the object on the tree instead on taking it out? Whenever I look at this painting I get a breezy cold felling around me. This feeling could be explained by the leaves of the trees which look like they are being moved by the wind. The direction in which the wind is moving is a little confusing because while the majority of the leaves on the tree are moving towards the left, some leaves on the trees are moving towards the right. The trees themselves look quite peculiar because the stems of them are stretched in quite weird ways. Most of the stems are zig zagging left and right. The ground of the painting looks quite bare and stone- like. It is a dark mud color and doesn’t look like it contains any nutrients. This makes me question, how the bare unhealthy ground is able to support the trees and perhaps that is why the trees are so deformed. The sky of the painting looks white with overlapping red parts all over it .It lacks the natural color of blue a sky often has to I believe the plot of the painting is in the late afternoon when the sun sets. The women of the painting are dressed in a very old fashion way and... ... middle of paper ... ...eatly affect the mood of the paintings. The Women Picking Olives painting is quite simple but it has ominous details such as the highest women on the ladder is looking to her right, the trees and the leaves all going in different directions making it hard to tell where the breeze is going. These details make me believe that the painting is much more complicated then it seems and creates a sense of cryptic from the painting. The Harvesters looks complex but it’s clear that the painting is about a relaxed group of people getting ready for harvest time. I prefer the Women Picking Olives painting because it doesn’t give to much detail about its interpretation and lets the observer think of what is happening himself. I interpret the Women Picking Olives as women who were abused and are forced to strictly follow rules and do endeavors or else they would be punished.
The view of the painting brings to mind the all the senses. Smell is the first to come to mind as the smoke from the candle billows up, the burning smell reaches the noise as well as the burning cigar. The fruity smell overshadows that of the smell of chicken and peas. The noise of a dropped tray and the breaking of glass as it hits the floor makes everyone turn to the right. People talking over each other to be heard. All of the senses are realized as the painting is viewed.
Again, I had difficulty selecting which piece to use for my second piece. Ultimately I selected Temptation, 1880 William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The dimensions are 39x52 inches and is oil on canvas.
Looking at different pieces of art work at the art museum and one-piece in particular impressed me. It’s called “View of Molo”, painted by Giovanni Antonio Canal. Giovanni Canal was born in Venice, Italy in 1697. This particular piece was painted circa 1730-1735. The piece hangs at the El Paso Museum of Art in El Paso, Texas. The painting is part of the permanent collection donated by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1961. The art work was done on canvas using oil. The painting can be found in the Baroque and Rococo Period Gallery.
The painting’s canvas has been exploited perfectly. All the space on the canvas had been used. However, space was not used to create depth, and there was no layering or recession present. The painting does not feel that it has motion, apart from what it looks like the creatures eating from the tree of life. The eating motion was depicted by the posture of the creatures, with arms extending towards the plants – in the case of creatures – or beaks being wide open – in the case of birds. All these factors 'accord' the painting with a unique
Imagine for a moment it is your big sister's 17th birthday. She is out with her friends celebrating, and your parents are at the mall with your little brother doing some last minute birthday shopping, leaving you home alone. You then hear a knock on the front door. When you getthere, nobody is there, just an anonymous note taped to the door that says Happy Birthday, along with a hundred dollar bill. You've been dying to get that new video game, and your sister will never know. You are faced with a tough decision, but not a very uncommon one. In both Fences, by August Wilson, and A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansbury, tough decisions have to be made about getting money from someone else's misfortune. But money's that important right?
The texture of the canvas works very well with the subject matter portrayed in the painting. The grassy hill side and the leaves of the trees are especially complimented by the canvas. It makes the leaves feel like they are slightly moving, this combined with the lack of detail itself the leaves. This is contrasted nicely with the very detailed renderings of the trunks and branches of the trees, the conscious decision to put so much effort into the tree itself and then to use obvious brushwork in the leaves makes the trees much more firm and immovable in the landscape. The brushstrokes are very clean and precise on the trees in the background.
... study for the overall concept they appear rather as abstract patterns. The shadows of the figures were very carefully modeled. The light- dark contrasts of the shadows make them seem actually real. The spatial quality is only established through the relations between the sizes of the objects. The painting is not based on a geometrical, box like space. The perspective centre is on the right, despite the fact that the composition is laid in rows parallel to the picture frame. At the same time a paradoxical foreshortening from right to left is evident. The girl fishing with the orange dress and her mother are on the same level, that is, actually at equal distance. In its spatial contruction, the painting is also a successful construction, the groups of people sitting in the shade, and who should really be seen from above, are all shown directly from the side. The ideal eye level would actually be on different horizontal lines; first at head height of the standing figures, then of those seated. Seurats methods of combing observations which he collected over two years, corresponds, in its self invented techniques, to a modern lifelike painting rather than an academic history painting.
There is, however, a slight opposition to this intense realism. It can be seen in Wood’s representation of foliage. The trees that appear in the upper left corner look like large green lollipops peeking over the roof of the house. The viewer knows that trees do not naturally look like that. Wood has depicted them as stylized and modern, similar to the trees seen is Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grand Jatte. After viewing other works by Wood, it is clear that he has adopted this representation for the trees in many of his paintings.
In the stories “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, talk about how two women are experiencing the same emotional situations they have to endure. Both of these stories express the emotional and physical trials the characters have to endure on an everyday basis. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” it shows a woman who is oppressed and is suffering from depression and loneliness. In “A Rose for Emily” it is showing the struggle of maintaining a tradition and struggling with depression. Both of the stories resemble uncontrollable changes and the struggles of acceptance the characters face during those changes.
The second painting was by George W. Bellows and named Shoghead. This painting brought a sense of ease and relaxation. I can picture myself on the top of the mountain listening to the waves crash on the sides. The open countryside topped by the clouds give the painting a sense of realism. The extremely bright blue water stands out the most, though the focal point is not clear. There is not an excessive use of paint. It is as if Bellows caked it on his brush and made quick short strokes. The use of such dark colors on the hill is a mystery. The terrain has a roughness that makes the painting come to life. The artist did a great job of showing the depth. If I had to guess, he was influenced by Picasso’s work because of the extensive use of thick point.
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening were two works written during the Age of Expression. The entire country was going through an era of Reconstruction; politically, socially, culturally and econmically . The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening are feminist works aimed at the psychological, social, and cultural injustices during the era. According to Mizruchi, “ Cosmopolitanism aroused dis-ease: depression and disaection were prevalent in a society whose pace and variety seemed relentless. Yet the same circumstances also instilled hope. For it was widely recognized that the burgeoning heterogeneity of a newly global America would be a source of enduring vitality.”(Mizruchi, 2008) The wives portrayed in these works defeated the attitudes of their husbands during this patriarchal culture.
The painting Olive Trees, which is at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, is one of one of the paintings of olive orchards, which Van Gogh painted in 1889 while he was living at the asylum of Saint-Remy. The painting is a landscape painted in bright, beautiful colors, with Van Gogh’s lively brushwork. The image is divided into thirds, the trees being in the middle and highly capricious. The brushstrokes kind of depict the way the land is laid, the motion of the wind in the trees, and the gleam of the sun. In the painting the sun is misrepresented in size, and is also highlighted by an orange outline. The sun dominates the painting and more emphasis is put into it to show its importance. The curved trees all lean, even quiver further away from the center of the painting. The bottom of the trees are painted with red lines that ambiguously show where the sun would hit if it was directly above. The sun and mountains seems to be stable while the ground and the trees have some wave appearance.
Olive trees reflects the artist’s Dutch heritage by its origination and in his passion for bright colors, which comes from a Dutchman’s reaction and love for colors. The main influences perceptible in this painting are those of Millet, Romanticism, and the Impressionists.
To me the painting is a way of showing you what everyone else is seeing. That the painter had the men looking right at each other so they can see themselves running away. In turn I got to see myself doing the same thing and was able to change because of it. When other people look at the painting they probably see something else. That is why I choose to do the painting, it gives you the choice too interpret it any way you see fit. Or it can just be a beautiful painting to look at, but the painting was so much more to me. It painted a thousand words for me.