Final Exam: Question1

First, my dream house is purely white. All the walls and furniture are white in color. I got this idea from several movies. They would also get many huge windows, so the room will look bigger. To make my house not that monotone, I would select some colorful and bold art works to get people’s attention. In the living room, the first picture I would like to put is “The Triumph of Divine” by Pietro da Cortona. It is a wall painting during 1633- 39. Baroque art is one of my favorite art styles because their arts are very fine, and their color is very sharp. Including the perspective technique he used, I believe this painting can increase the sense of space of my house. It is the starting point of my journey, and I hope it already attracted the attention of visitors.

The second art piece I would like to have is Clarinet and Violin by Pablo Picasso in 1913. It is an oil painting on canvas. In the painting, Picasso combined different perspective of clarinet and violin together into two dimensions. I really appreciate Picasso’s painting very much because the color and idea are very bold. I would like to hang it in my dinning room. It is not bad to have violin during the meal. Although I cannot hear any sound from the painting, the combination of food and music is kind of harmonious.

The third panting would be put in the bathroom. It is the oil paint, Ophelia by John Everett Millais. It is part of the original Henry Tate Gift in 1894 and remains one of the most popular Pre-Raphaelite works in the Tate's collection. John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti are the founding members of a group of artists called the Pre-Raphaelites 1848. Later, the English critic and art theorist in “Modern Painters”, John Ruskin, encouraged artists to 'go to Nature in all singleness of heart: rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing. It seems like purifying our mind and brain. Including the main color of it is green. I believe it can comfort me and help me to remove all the tiredness of the day during bathing.

The last art work I would select for my house would be the famous painting, Starry Night by Van Gogh. I will put it on the ceiling, so I can sleep when I am facing it. Every time when I was looking at it, I can feel the sorrow of him, and I would get trap into the stirring star light. It will remind me the story of Van Gogh and led me to think a lot of things. After a serious of brainstorming and meditation, I will also get sleepy and give me a nice dream.

The Follow Up

Last time, I already got trapped by these two sculpture, but I do not have chance to post see them carefully, so I am reposting them in this follow up. I really like them because they showed the passion of the artist. There are a lot of details, but the artist focused on them very carefully. He did not miss any parts of human body. Although there are too many details and formed a very muscular body for both man and woman, I really appreciate his attentive and excellent obversation. Here is another art piece I really like in the same gallery:




It is a photograph of a par tof woman body. I like it very much because the main character is a part of nude woman and showed a part of breast, but it does not have a sense of sex or dark feeling. When I looked at this photo, I only focused on the beauty of line. I was really calm and looking at the lighting and shading area. I was enjoying looking at her body and imagining the space of it. In the past, I have heard that the most attractive part of woman body is waist, and the photographer presented this idea very clearly in this picture.

The 1st Art Walk

During the Art Walk, the first gallery we attended was "New Traditionalists". It is a pretty big gallery, and it is the first gallery I visited in my life. I think it is pretty cool because the art works over there are not just a collection own by the owners of gallery, all the art works are really to sale but still allow people to appriciate before they are bought. I hope I can have a chance to drop a work over there. There are two purpose, 1. as a part- time job to earn extra money, 2. I would like to see how many people would appreciate my works. When someone come over to my art works and ask who drew them, I can step in front of them and said "I do" proudly. However, I can only happen in my dream because I can never compete will those professionals.

Here is one of my favorite ark work within those collection. It's name is "Birth of the New Consciousness." The artist used technique of collage to enriched the media and composition of this hugh painting. He sticked some real branches on the top of painted branches, so we can feel a sense of space on a two dimension art work. It is a very fine art work. The artist did a great job on sketching the line of muscle and various facial features. The color tone is blue, and this tone comfort audiences and presented the theme, the new consciousness, which should be processed in a calm situation. The artist used three big boards to paint this work. To reconnect them into a unique art piece, he used many lines and curly cut board to link them together. The strong light and dark contrast increased the space, it also pointed out the main idea of this painting. There are many signs which represented different meanings. On the left hand side, there are two people. A bunch of clips spreat out from girl's hands. For me, it showed a dark side of life. Including the serious looking of a man behind the girl. all of them formed a pressure for me. It gave out a message like, "we did many wrong things in our life, so we got many pressure and dark side emotion affected our mental. Fianlly, all of us would become the girl in the middle." A girl with a big hole on our body, and she got hurt in many place. We suffered many pain and can never escape from it. In addition, the thing on girl's head is a skull of goat. In some myths, it represents the incarnation of devil. It seems like all sinners became evil. To be rescued, we have to understand the truth of this world, which represented by a shining ball on the right hand side. The girl on the right hand side did not dress much, but she let audiences feel like primal, innocient, and she is finding out the truth of life. Therefore, this painting is a story. A story reflects a life cycle.

Overall, this gallery collected serveral style and types of art works like sculptures, photography,and paintings. Especially in New Traditionalism, I cannot find a very clear theme from those art works. If I really need to give it a name, I will call it "Mix & Match". We can see many arts from different cultures like, Indian, Euroupean, Modern, and Cuties. Although they do not have a very concentrated topic, but I got many inspiration from those creative and avant- garde art works. From this trip, I can be very sure that everyone is individual and can have more different kind of feeling by their personal experience. Although we are looking at the same art, which idea is obvious enough to guess, my friends and I can have a totally different idea.

It is very interesting but also fustrating. As an artist, I also like to present an idea or feeling to the public through my art works. From the example I listed above, I am not confident enough that I can present my message by art exactly the same as my original purpose. Is it because I did not put enough affort and energy into it? Or it is a question that has no solution. Human always thinks objectively, and it is the reason why we got various emotions and able to understand the artistic or abstractive ideas. It is really contradictive but very realistic. If we want to define an exact answer, we need to think subjectively. If we think objectively, we will have different idea depend on our emotion. Objective and Subjective are two things that can never mix together.

Trip to Getty Museum

On 5^th of February, we attended Getty Museum in LA with my friends. It was my second time went to a formal museum in the United State. I remember my last view trip of a museum already was three years ago for my drawing class. This Getty Museum is even bigger than the one I attended. When we arrived the outer- gate, the view already impressed me. The walls of entrance are built by green plants. Its tone is totally different from the surrounding. I really like the big contrast between the grey, rocky buildings and the fresh, green walls. After we found a parking spot, we still needed to wait for the tram which brought us up to the hill, the actual location of Getty Museum. On the way climbing up to the hill, visitors can see a beautiful sea view and the whole view of LA Downtown. Although it is small and not clear, it is still meaningful to me because I already moved down here for more that one quarters but have never been to LA Downtown once. I am still a newbie of Southern California. Shame on me!

Within a couple minutes, we arrived the front door of the museum. It is a very beautiful, white building. Here is a picture of map. I really like it because it showed all the details of this museum, and one of my hobbies is looking the small model of building.

Later, we entered our first gallery. The theme of that site was “Drawing by Rembrandt & His Pupils.” In there, they analyzed the drawing style and tools used by Rembrandt. They also compared the art works of Rembrandt and his students. All of their arts are drawings of a bible story or portrait. I cannot take picture in that area, so I do not have a chance to record those nice works. I even cannot drop down the main points of Rembrandt’s arts by camera, but I copied them down by my hand. There are four element style of Rembrandt’s drawing: sketchy and suggestive use of line, selective description of details, nuanced expression and gesture, and precise rendering of light. Mostly, Rembrandt did not “finish” the whole picture, and he would leave some areas blank or blurry. He only focused on the parts which can make the theme more outstanding and used the strong light and dark value contrast, selective details, and strong lines to perform them. His works let me remember Impressionism. Both of them also performed an unclear image. Impressionism artists wanted to record their first impression of their eye sight, so their art works are blurry to present their unclear memory as an “impression” but still outstood the theme on the painting. We can also feel the energy, mood, and soul of the artists thorough their painting. Rembrandt’s drawing also got similar feature, but I like his style more because he would focus a specific part on the pictures and let them clearer by using strong line and light and dark contrast. Although Rembrandt’s pupils tried to follow his art style, they cannot surmount their teacher; they cannot copy the Because of the museum policy, I did not have any picture for this part, so I bought two post cards for reference.

After I finished that exhibition, outside the gallery, there was a very big and colorful garden. It is formed by the red and green small trees rings. When I look farer, I can see the ocean and the reflection of sunlight. They formed a very amazing picture.

I really like this museum which built up on the hill because it got a very good sense of art. From the architectural structure of buildings to art selections, their designer and managers dedicated the museum energy and provided a very good environment for visitors who love art. Therefore, everyone inside it got influenced by the passion of various masters and got different inspiration of life.