I remember learning about pop art in elementary school and looking at Marilyn Diptych (1962). At that age, teachers did not explain the real significance and meaning behind the piece so I didn’t think there was much meaning at all. I was very intrigued to find out this week that it is, in fact, filled with meaning. Andy Warhol was a major player in the Pop Art movement, which consisted of topics of consumerism, celebrity, simple ideas, and bright colors.

I used to look at this piece as a typical representation of Marilyn, and I only noticed recently that it is actually distorted and somewhat gruesome in appearance. Marilyn is slathered in brightly colored makeup, placed ever-so-slightly off. To me, this represents the faces the media made Marilyn wore. As a celebrity, she was under immense pressure to change herself and perhaps mask herself. Each panel is slightly different, and some are more distorted that others. One in particular that captures my attention is the panel in the left-most column, in the row second from the bottom. Her lips appear to droop, and her eyeshadow is placed lower than the others, which make her eyes appear more closed. This one really encapsulates the idea that the media sucked the life out of her and made her unrecognizable to the person she once was. The fact that her face is repeated so many times is possibly meant to represent the media’s oversaturation of her. As she was such a big star, her face was found everywhere.

The other side of the panel focuses more on her death. I see it as a sort of timeline. The first column represents Marilyn before she was famous. The second column represents when she got famous, as her face is now darker, covered with a murky layer of black, and in some panels not visible at all. This was the point in her life where she was no longer happy and herself. In each subsequent column, the exposure increases (perhaps symbolizing her literal overexposure in the media), and her face is less and less visible until it vanishes, fading to white. This represents her gradual destruction and eventual death.

I like this piece because it feels as though Andy Warhol really saw her for the unhappy and trapped woman she was. Using a photograph in which the real Marilyn is masked, he sheds light on the woman underneath.

Before taking this class, I never would have thought that the piece that resonated with me the most would be a urinal turned on its side, but here we are. Fountain by Duchamp raised several interesting questions this week and I really enjoyed our class’s discussion/debate about it. At first glance, the piece is just a urinal. But Duchamp expressed that his works are not completed until they are viewed by spectators. So while we, the audience, see the piece as a urinal flipped over, Duchamp saw the piece as this urinal on display with spectators gathered around it. In a way, this is performance art, and we are not just audience members but participants/ the performers themselves.

It is difficult to approach an analysis of the composition of the work, seeing as Duchamp did not actually build or sculpt the object. He took a ready-made urinal, turned it over so that it no longer served its sole intended function, and named it “Fountain” as it now resembled a sort of fountain. Still, our class remarked on the glossy finish, the nice sloping curves, and the symmetry of the piece. We found it beautiful, but at the end of the day the object in real life is sort of gross. I think this goes to show that humans can assign beauty to anything if they look at it for long enough or see it in a new perspective.

The real “meaning” of the piece is the conversation it sparks about whether or not it has meaning at all. It hurts my head to think about it for too long. The fact that the specific piece we looked at was actually a replica of Duchamp’s Fountain added yet another layer to our discussion. Can this piece still be called a “Duchamp”? On one hand, Duchamp’s idea to turn over the urinal, sign it, and put it in a gallery was what made it a piece of art at all, seeing as he did not physically make the urinal. Since the replica used his concept, I think it can still be called a “Duchamp.” The concept is the art.

In the Surrealism room at Tate Modern, I had trouble getting anything out of the pieces. The majority of the displayed artworks comprised of floating shapes, seemingly in a void. This was not out of place, seeing as surrealist pieces are often inspired by dreams and the unconscious mind. However, I did not feel I had enough context to assign meaning to the pieces. That is, until I got to Salvador Dali’s Autumnal Cannibalism. Like the others, this piece is comprised of amorphous figures and is not based in reality. However, what set it apart was the fact that there was a tangible sense of depth. While some of the other works were on a flat plane, there is a definite foreground and background in this painting, with mountains in the background and the two blob-like figures in the foreground. The shapes are also drawn in a three-dimensional style and given shadows to add to the depth. This provided me with enough concept to make some semblance of sense out of this piece. Of course, as this is still surrealism, the items in the foreground and background do not all make sense and are not all in perspective. According to the mountains and sky, this scene would appear to take place outside in nature, but the drawer in the bottom right corner suggests that the figures we see are on top of a dresser of some sort.

I was captivated by the central figures who appear to be eating each other with metal utensils. Although this act is vulgar and violent, the way it is depicted here makes it appear sensual and almost loving. The figures have their hands draped around one another as if they are embracing. Their faces are engulfing each other which suggests eating, but also perhaps kissing. The chest area of the figure on the left appears to be melting/oozing into a bowl and is made of a white milk-like substance. The figure on the right enters a spoon into this area and clutches-or squeezes-it with his other hand. This suggests a sexual nature to the image. This piece is consistent with Dali’s showcasing of somewhat disturbing ideas in his paintings, as he felt lonely and anxious growing up. Perhaps Dali was drawing a comparison between love and destruction. I interpret it as two people in a relationship who only want to love each other but end up consuming and destroying each other. It is really amazing to me how, although the figures barely resemble humans and do not even have faces, I still completely get a sense of their moods through Dali’s depiction of their body language.

Egon Schiele is my favorite artist that we’ve learned about so far. I think this is because I am drawn to anything in the scary/creepy genre, and there is something disturbing about Schiele’s figures. They appear skeletal and sickly.  

His paintings of nude figures-of which there are many-are wildly ahead of their time. Leading up to this time period, naked women in paintings were depicted as shy and modest. They were often attempting to cover themselves and looking away from the viewer. Schiele’s pieces are groundbreaking because the nude women do not look shy or apologetic in the slightest. Oftentimes, they are staring intensely at the viewer with their legs spread apart. Also up until this time, women were often painted in a soft style. The subjects of the paintings have stockier bodies, which reflected the perceived ideal of the time period, and they were painted with softer lines. Schiele painted his figures with sharp angular lines that add so much intensity.

The women in this piece has no arms or legs. Her torso and face fill the canvas and her body is surrounded by a thick white line. The angle forces the viewer’s eye towards her genitals, and her hair and breasts are highlighted in red. Every aspect of the painting forces the viewer to see this woman as a sexual creature, and he provides no escape/other elements to focus on. Although the image is extremely sexual, Schiele has not stripped the woman of her autonomy. She looks right back at the viewer intensely, and her open, confident pose and facial expression suggests she owns her sexuality instead of falling victim to it. Therefore, Schiele has avoided exploiting the figure.

I was shocked to find out that his paintings are from the early 1900s. His paintings seem so modern, fashionable, and edgy. While several of the artists we have covered so far were deemed controversial or groundbreaking at the time, they didn’t really resonate with me because they were controversial for outdated reasons. The Pre-Raphaelites painted biblical scenes realistically, and Turner incorporated new technology into his pieces. While I understand why they captured attention back in the day, these concepts don’t peak my interest. Schiele’s work, on the other hand, still feels controversial and shocking to this day. I think that’s why they interest me so much.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of artists in the Victorian Era who strived to depict subjects as realistically as possible. They often explored biblical, nature, and literary scenes, and instead of glorifying people, settings, and time periods, they strived to convey them with the rawness of a photograph A photograph is completely honest, as it is an unbiased snapshot that captures everything, and leaves out nothing. Pre-Raphaelites strove to have this essence in their paintings.

Out of the many pieces created during the Pre-Raphaelite era, the one that caught my attention the most was “Christ in the House of His Parents” by Sir John Everett Millais. This is perhaps the first time I have seen a religious scene depicted with such realism and human-ness. Typically, biblical figures are presented as flawless, super-human, ethereal forms. It is easy to forget that these people actually existed in history. I like this Pre-Raphaelite piece because it allowed me to get a feel for what these real people may have been like. It made them more relatable, and brought them down to earth. I can actually get a sense of their personality and desires. I have never before seen such intense emotion on Mary’s face. Usually, her face looks blissful and free of any raw emotion. Here, she seems to desperately want love and affection from her son. In addition, John the Baptist on the right appears to look timid and maybe scared. Millais depicts the grandmother’s swollen hands, Joseph’s sunburned forearms, a drop of blood on Jesus’s worn feet. All of these elements go hand-in-hand with the Pre-Raphaelites goal of capturing the honesty of a photograph in a painting. I like that this piece provides a peak into a more complicated story; one that is probably more interesting than what has been told to us for centuries. Not-so-coincidentally, this is exactly what made society reject these works. Critics and people in general at the time considered this portrayal to be blasphemous and disrespectful to religious figures.

From a technical standpoint, Millais fills this piece with primary and complimentary colors. Mary and Joseph are wearing blue and red respectively, and the piece as a whole is filled with yellow. Additionally, all elements of the painting point to Jesus in the center. Each family member is looking at him and the boards of wood on either side slant inward, guiding the eye to him.

Although I find this particular work fascinating because it is more authentic than other artwork at the time, I do not generally find Pre-Raphaelite artwork interesting. I believe this is because, while it was extremely controversial and trail-blazing at the time, it no longer has this effect on modern audiences. I have seen many biblical and literary scenes in paintings, so these pieces did not come across as new and different like they did in the Victorian Era.

Additionally, I found it really interesting that members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood used certain tactics to obtain celebrity status. They purposely created controversial works because they knew it would get people talking. They also travelled and lived lives full of mystique because they knew that people had a certain image of the artist’s lifestyle. They were ahead of their time in capitalizing on their celebrity status.

On a surface level, Turner and Constable seem like very similar artists. They are both known for their landscapes and realism. They both strived to paint things as true to real life as possible. I personally am not a fan of either of their work because I find that it lacks personality and creative vision. It is difficult for me to see how these two artists were seen as visionaries since their work strikes me as plain. During this time period, art was highly regarded when it was accurate and beautiful, and from that standpoint, Turner and Constable delivered.

Constable was known for his idyllic scenes of English life, as well as his attention to detail in his depiction of nature. What stands out to me about The Leaping Horse is how realistic and meticulous his painting of the trees and shrubbery is. When I stand far away, it could almost pass for a photograph. While Constable was praised for this quality of his work, this characteristic may be precisely what turns me off to it. I find that this piece, and Constable’s work in general, lacks expression and intrigue.

This piece is a prime example of Turner’s tendency to incorporate new technology in his paintings, as a steamboat is placed in front of the sailboat. The most interesting aspect of his work, to me, is how he was sure to keep his depictions consistent with new scientific discoveries, such as the way the sun shines through the clouds. In general and in this specific piece, Turner was interested in using color to depict light. He uses a combination of pale yellows and rusty oranges around the sun, and the sun itself is basically white in color. He also paints rays of sun going into the ocean.

When looking at these two pieces together, the compositions look quite similar. In The Fighting Temeraire, the golden section is created by the horizon and the right-most shroud on the boat. In The Leaping Horse, the golden section is created the horizon-once again-and the tree on the left. In both paintings, there is a large structure that commands the viewer’s eye on the right of the canvas, surrounded by plain sky. I think that makes these two pieces particularly interesting to compare. Turner and Constable’s differences, emphasized in these two pieces, is that Constable seems to preserve an old view of England and does not seem too concerned with reflecting new technologies. Turner, on the other hand, takes it upon himself to capture not only new technology, but new scientific discoveries, in his portrayals of landscapes.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton