My Kid Could Paint That

Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of a Soccer Player,  1913

Planes, trains, and automobiles. These, and any other moving machines, became the general themes of the Futurist movement. Dynamism of a Soccer Player by Umberto Boccioni is the ultimate collaboration between man and machine.

The brilliant colors and blurred movement of Dynamism clearly mirror the Futurist fascination with the movement of mechanisms and technology. Making something not traditionally beautiful into art was right up their alley. This barely recognizable "soccer player" looks like any tussle between team rivals, but the work captures every movement of the athlete in action. An arm, possibly a leg, thrown about creates the constant shift of the player, similar to that of any mechanism.

The controlled chaos of the game morphs into that of a well-oiled machine. The fast paced drive within the painting conveys the Futurists' interest of the fast-paced advancement of technology. Old and slow was obsolete. New and fast took over.

Pascal Adolphe Bouveret, Gustave Courtois in His Studio, 1880

Adding versatility to the piece, Bouveret includes the reflection in the mirror. This reflection contains the opposite of the dark woman on the couch. A woman dressed in white sits, trapped in a frame, trapped in a mirror. She looks down at the other woman. The one in white has an open and inviting face, contrasting the completely veiled face of the lady in black.

To further create contrast, the cream-colored screen on the left opposes the dark brown wood on the right. The beams of light shining through the left-side window play off of the concealed window on the right. Who is this lady in black? Why does she act as a dark cloud overshadowing the rest of the painting? This woman is, in fact,  Gustave Courtois's mother. She was unwed and devoted her life to her son. She colored his life just how she colors this piece.

Jean-Francois Millet, Woman with a Rake, 1856-57

The demure figure of Woman with a Rake acts as a trademark of the working class, laboring to harvest their own crops. Jean-François Millet’s work portrays the everyday life of the lower class farmers. Painting the laborers in their natural state and setting, Millet captures the simple, yet hard, lifestyle of the masses.

Off in the background, other women perform similar laborious tasks. However, they appear much less serene and upright than the sole figure in the foreground. While she casually peers down at the rake in hand, the rest of the women strain their backs as they work painstakingly hard.

Towards the right in Woman with a Rake, there lies a structure in the distance. It appears to be possibly a bridge in ruins, broken with age. This signifies the position of these working women. They are trapped in a life of labor, with no escape. These figures are a part of the farming class and will forever be in the taxing and bleak world of Woman with a Rake.

Georges Seurat, Banks on the Seine at Suresnes, 1883

Geroges Seurat’s Banks on the Siene at Suresnes holds great contrast in the subject matters. His Impressionist painting is both peaceful and disturbed. The man sits calmly by the serene waters of the Seine River in the quiet suburbs of Paris. However, the apparent train crossing through in the distance interrupts the soothing serenity in the rest of the scene.

A study for the final work, Bathers at Asnières, Banks contains a level of solitude which the former does not. Bathers contains numerous men, shirtless and sunbathing. The man in Banks loses his shirt and his hat, eliminating the lonesome peace of the preparatory study.

The sole man in Banks also stands out because of the construction of his form. Compared to the indefinite and smudged setting, the man is clearly outlined along with his shadow. This study for the final painting achieves a calm seclusion, while the finished product crowds and busies the   composition.

Vincent van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, 1885

When Vincent van Gogh set out to create The Potato Eaters, his goal was not to generate beauty. By choosing rough figures and painting them in such an unattractive light, Van Gogh hoped to capture their hard work and labor. He wanted the viewer to see that the everyday worker earned their food by tilling it themselves and eventually getting to eat it. Unfortunately, The Potato Eaters did not receive the response Van Gogh had hoped. The public, as well as critics, hated the piece. They despised the hideous figures, even though Van Gogh had intended for them to be ugly. The viewers disagreed with the dark colors after becoming accustomed to Van Gogh's typically colorful palette. Potato Eaters was also the artist's largest piece. Standing 82 by 114 centimeters, the dull-colored work was quite substantial. After the unanimously negative response to Potato Eaters, Van Gogh vowed to never create such a large piece again. He returned to his usual repertoire of color when creating At Eternity's Gate five years later.

At Eternity's Gate, while containing a more sorrowful subject matter, received a more positive response because of it's bright colors. The man with his head in his hands is painted in rich cerulean and sits near a red-orange crackling fire.

It is clear that people continued to dislike The Potato Eaters years later. In 1991, the Vincent van Gogh Museum was robbed. Included in the stolen works was Potato Eaters. Roughly half an hour after the crime, the burglars ditched the priceless art and fled.

Eugene Delacroix, A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother, 1830

One of Eugène Delacroix's earlier paintings from 1830, A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother provides a perfect example of the artist's interest in animals and their human qualities. The enormous creatures aggressively interacting, are, in fact playing with each other. Influenced by his trips to the zoo, Delacroix was thought to have used his own pet cat in order to correctly form the felines' bodies.

Based on his thoughts that there is beauty within the intensity and violence of nature, Delacroix painted the tigers in intense colors with piercing gazes. Delacroix believed that pure colors were rare in nature. This is why he sought to capture the pureness and richness in Young Tiger Playing with its Mother.

The painting’s subject matter is nearly the same as his other piece, Tiger Hunt. Both works contain the same intensity in the color and movement, but Tiger Hunt is much more violent. Rather than the innocent play of the cats in Young Tiger, Tiger Hunt, is full of adrenaline and ferocity. Both paintings of tigers also display Delacroix’s interest in exotic cultures other than his own. Delacroix’s brilliant use of color and ability to capture the beauty within ferocity set the tone for many of his future works.

Thedore Gericault, Insane Woman, 1822

Théodore Géricault's Insane Woman greatly opposes Enlightenment ideology. Géricault bases his portrayal of the insane on his continuous study of the mentally ill. The subject's contorted face reveals what people of the 1800s considered insanity. The piece greatly contrasts Géricault's typical subject matter of extreme situations.

One of twelve commissioned pieces, all portraying the mentally unstable, Insane Woman depicts the artist's fascination with the brain and its condition.

People at the time thought that a person's facial structure and appearance revealed their mental state and character. After visiting numerous mental institutions and observing the patients, Géricault formed the face of Insane Woman. The woman's gaze, slightly crooked, contains harsh eyes along with an almost smirk. Her aged and speckled face with slack muscles would have been tell-tale signs of mental illness.

Many as well believed that an other true display of a person's character was at their moment of death. It was for this reason that Géricault also studied heads severed by the guillotine. The combination of bodiless heads and mentally ill patients created the perfect grounds for his portrayal of the Insane Woman.