My Kid Could Paint That

Duccio, The Betrayal of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, 1308

By HANA AWAD 

Though I don’t know if I believe the story or not, I do see the similarities between the two religions, in that both religions encourage peace. People do not realize that Islam also preaches peace, understanding, and tolerance. “The true servants of the Gracious One are those who walk upon the earth with humility and when they are addressed by the ignorant ones, their response is, Peace” (Quran 25:63). So I didn’t find the answer to what happened to Jesus, but in reading Catholic stories and comparing them to my own faith, I perhaps found something more meaningful.

 

Arkwright's Mill, owned by Richard Arkwright, was a textile mill in Derbyshire on the River Derwent. It had a water frame that made longer cotton warp threads for a textile loom. This mill was used to build house working spinning machines because it spins four spindles of cotton of threads at a time. This new mill created jobs that helped employ people, which created a new economy. 

The sky reflects on the river next to the mill on the upper half of the painting. The darker colors used on the painting give it a gloomy feeling. It seems like the feeling of having to work long, lonely hours is beaming from the dark border around the mill. In the middle of the dark background, the mill sits in a valley. The mill is brighter than the rest of the painting to show the financial hope it brings to the economy. 

This Impressionist piece contains three workers on their knees working tediously to scrape the floors of a bourgeois apartment. The three shirtless men seem to represent a form of masculinity and strength as they are the workforce behind creating such an extravagant setting, but their hunched poses could be hinting at vulnerability and exhaustion instead. The 19th century was filled with wealthy people attempting to impress their snobby friends with baller houses and fancy clothes, which is cool until you realize that their are other guys doing labor jobs for some terrible pay.

The renovation occurring in the apartment also references the modernization of Paris with new technological developments. The city is getting filled with railroad stations, crowded streets, and luxury apartment buildings.

The costs for all these improvements are the hardships of manual labor. The floor scrapings are curled just like the curled men. The aren't in a comfortable position, and the rich would never understand how complex and difficult it is to create what they desire. That's probably why this painting was first rejected, as people did not enjoy how the bodies were portrayed.

Absinthe became popular in late 19th Century Paris, especially in bohemian artist circles. Colloquially called the "Green Fairy," absinthe became a symbol of social defiance and gained opposition from politicians and social conservatives. The alleged hallucinatory substance was eventually banned in many countries.

The sheer scale of Manet's The Absinthe Drinker forces viewers to see a mundane subject in a heroic pose at a size often reserved for portraits of royalty. The man, who is supposedly modeled after a man named Collardet, wears a dark cloak and top hat. Framed by an empty liquor bottle and a half-filled glass of absinthe, he seems to retreat into the shadows. The crumbling wall and dimly lit scene seems to hint at disorder, immorality, chaos, all of which lie in stark contrast to the period's fascination with order. This painting, with its muted and dusty colors, is the epitome of realism. It offers a glimpse of the disorder that balanced out the suffocating regulation and rote nature of factory life.

Richard R. Brettell, author of Modern Art 1851-1929, depicts Pissarro as a dedicated painter of traditional rural life. However, the author also explains how the artist, an anarchist, differentiates himself in the category of rural depiction because of his use of urban art techniques. Brettell explains the artist as seemingly a perfectionist and possibly insecure because Pissarro painted this three times before finally selling it. I believe that Pissarro excluded the sky from this work to remove the subjects from the natural setting and more so resemble a factory as they hunch over in the heat exhaustedly. 

In Friedrich Engels The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, he discusses the problems that arise in a growing industrial world. People sacrifice so much of their identity in order to create an ideal. They have to let go of their true selves to fit into this urban world. This loss of uniqueness for conformity distances people from one another.

Engles says that "this isolation of the individual - this narrow-minded egotism - is everywhere the fundamental principle of modern society" (124). The more separate and same you are, the better chance you have of succeeding. The reality is that people have created "the war of all against all" (124). No more are your neighbors your friends, but they are your competition. Those who may still share commonalities have become strangers. This is the way the world works. The city only makes this selfishness worse.

Cruikshank's etching shows commoners at a gathering area, all looking similar and participating in a bland activity. Not only does this show progressing industrialization, but supports Engles observation of sameness as the answer. It shows the wealthier side, the people who have followed the same path. This is the result of how the strong has trampled the weak, a result Engles wrote about. As the world industrializes, the separateness between the rich and poor continues to grow.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere is considered Manet's last major work. This painting represents one of the most prominent music halls in Paris at the time. We see through the mirror behind the barmaid that the guests (aka the wealthy white people) are enjoying their time, but the expression of the barmaid tells another story. The painting used the mirror to draw a separation between the bourgeoises with the working class, creating an unsettling composition. As prosperous as the place might seem, the music halls were a common place for elites to pick up prostitutes which spark the question of the barmaid's true occupation. She does not have much expression. In fact, she looks very much dead inside to me. Is she worrying what the rest of the night will be like? If you look closely at her reflection in the mirror, you can see that she is talking to a man. What is he there for? Is he there for some unspeakable business trade with this poor barmaid? Or is he only an innocent guest here a drink and a good time?

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere speaks to me as a frustration of separations between social classes and social injustices.  The mirror is almost like a line between reality and a dream. The barmaid is in a hellhole of reality while the others living beyond the mirror are in fancy attire.

In the painting A Peasant Family at Lunch, the peasant family is living in a small dirty room having their simple meal. The family members all look at their food and have no eye contact with each other. They reflect the society Friedrich Engels described in his article The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. The family members "selfishly concentrated upon their private affairs." When eating together, the atmosphere in the room should be warm. However, the color tone of the small dirty room and people's facial expression makes the room depressing.

Because of Industrialization, some people can expand their population and reduce heavy labor. Making clothes is easier. As you see in the painting, their clothes look ragged, they have little furniture. They are peasants, and their room is dirty and tight, which is commonly seen in this time period. They are the working class Engels speaks of. 

In Richard R. Brettell’s Modern Art, Brettell argues that Georges Seurat created a direct location link and painted social class division between A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte and Bathers at Asnieres. A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte includes Seurat’s famous strokes of dots technique. Seurat possesed interest with the social class of the Third Republic of France. He includes bourgeois (middle class materialistic) men and women. This painting also includes people of diverse ages. In this painting, both men and women appear. The upper class men and women’s clothing is proper, and their position remain straight and upright. The background displays and relaxing park. However, this painting has always been controversial. The fisherwoman and the women with the pet monkey have been identified as prostitutes because of their attributes. The women reading the book receives relations with the surrounding men. This painting scandalousness deepens because the prostitutes appear on a holy day.

Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres displays different class, position, background, and activities than A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte. Rather than pastime, the males use the body of water for bathing. Therefore, all of the boys could be homeless or earn scarce income. In the painting, only men bathe. The gender and age of the subjects displays the working class of primarily adolescent boys. The position of the men appears laid back and casual. The setting shows urban details of factory smoke and railway tracks. This painting receives an everyday scene of poverty rather than a Sunday pastime. Brettell believes both paintings confront the difference of social class structure pastimes. 

Inspired by William Turner's paintings in London, Swedish writer August Strindberg used a mysterious approach to create an almost undecipherable painting. In Brettell's Modern Art, this work falls into the category of Anti-Iconography, a subject that's supposed to be without interpretation, for it would strip the painting of its purpose as a painting.

Without the need to try and verbally understand this work, "the visual gain greater autonomy from words." View art as it is. Don't spend time searching for a meaning, but rather let a meaning come to you...or not.

The subject is not what makes a painting art, it's the representation of that subject. The enforced meaninglessness of anti-iconography makes it difficult for people to understand why it's a subject in the first place. It serves as a reminder to people that not everything has to have an intention.

Strindberg took a literary-charged subject and stripped it of its narrative. Instead of its representation as a calm or peaceful symbol, The Wave VII is simply a painting. The artist can intensify a subject that he denies.

The flat, vibrant colors covering the canvas in On the Bank of the Seine at Bennecourt render it one of the first truly impressionistic landscapes. Monet's painting depicts a mundane scene on the Seine River, which became a popular subject of impressionist landscapes. In this painting, Monet makes the subject nearly irrelevant and indistinguishable. 

While Cézanne portrays the tumultuous relationship he had with his banker father. The artist illustrates this with thicker dark layers placed on the figure. One can interpret this rendering as an assertion of independence on the part of the artist from his overbearing father. Cézanne rejected his father's vision of his future as a successful banker or an attorney to study art. The painting in the background is of a still life Cézanne painted prior, symbolizing his success. The newspaper, L'Evénement refers to Emile Zola, a childhood friend of Cézanne and a renowned art critic, who encouraged Cézanne to study art in Paris. 

In addition to the meaning behind the subject and his execution of fetishism, The Artist's Father contains dark hues with a frequent use of shadows. The artist creates a modern painting while maintaining elements of classic portrait such as focusing the subject in the foreground. Although Cézanne intended to depict his father in a certain way, his work exemplifies Brettel's definition of fetishism through the use of the paint. 

BY CARLY HOFMANN

Kandinsky was truly an innovator in his time. His background as an economist and a lawer provided him with a unique perspective as he painted his experiences as a participant in the "Great Utopia." The "Great Utopia" was a revolutionary period of artistic transformation in Russia that foreshadowed the impeding political upheavals of the early twentieth century.

In this painting, Kandinsky evokes, rather than describes war, and elicits a more musical expression of his understanding of conflict. On this large canvas, Kandinsky compiled a catalogue of elements observed and invented by himself during his years in Russia. This piece would eventually become emblematic of his style. Though Kandinsky left for Berlin to escape political turmoil when he created this painting, art historians have classified it as a "uniquely Russian artwork."

Chapter Five of Richard R. Brettell's book of Modern Art talks about the theme of sexuality and the body within paintings. He suggests that paintings that consist of nude figures try to engage and challenge the viewers of thinking deeper about the representation of a human body and the behaviors behind it. Since "female" nudes were considered to be scandalous during the time period, critiques judged harshly and were considered "dirty," and  improper subject for viewing. However, as Brettell suggests, Manet treats the nude fairly flat and suppressed the illusionism within the painting above. Olympia, the most question raising painting that Manet have ever creted gained many attractions, and had popular view ratings by men. With the bold shameless pose and gaze, and the acceptance of her body grasped the attention of many has left the viewers feel vulnerable.

Manet's painting of Olympia was inspired by couple of artists such as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, and Titian's Venus of Urbino. With the composition of a frieze and diagonal line coming from the top of Olympia's head which leads down to Olympia's foot shows the delicateness of the figure. Using the toned down cool colors, the painting gives not only calm vibes, but also the feeling of stiffness. Porcelain-like skin of Olympia gives of the youth and the innocent feel in the painting.