Week 4 Mountain Scene

Albert Bierstadt, Mountain Scene, Size: 14 ¾ X 21 in, Year: 1880-1890, Museum: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

            The painting Mountain Scene by Albert Bierstadt is presenting a peaceful setting of a lake, that is dead calm, there are three birds flying low over top of the water, maybe trying to catch the cool air off of the lake and the beautiful mountain range of the background in the sky that is lit up with the sun hitting the main mountain range with snow on it. Albert uses an arrangement of cool colors or darker colors in the water, the trees along the edge of the lake reflecting onto the lake and the shading of the mountains closest to the viewer.  He uses the lighter tones to show the image of the main mountain range that the viewer is looking at with the snow on top of them and light blue sky surrounding them with an array of clouds to the edge of the mountains. Albert spatially puts us looking at this painting from the level of the lake looking into the mountain range with snow on it between the other sets of darker mountain ranges. He uses atmospheric perspective to draw our eyes from the lake and trees to the mountain range beyond them and then to the main mountain range with snow on top of them.

            Albert Bierstadt was very passionate about nature, beauty and wilderness that it presents to us.  He focused on those attributes through many of his paintings and how he painted. He was a man of the environment, making trips across the country just to paint several mountain ranges, lakes and river bottoms.  I think he wanted to show everybody the elegance, the passion, the beauty, the spectacular scenery that nature or the environment had to offer. It was a place to escape, to get away from the city or towns and explore the world through a different point of view, the view of majestic country.  

This was to our present knowledge, Bierstadts first contact with the vastness, awesome grandeur, and wild solitude of the mountains. It must have made a tremendous impression on a young man used to the flat sea coast.  

Title: Albert Bierstadt and the White Mountains

Author: Catherine H. Campbell

Source: Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3(1981), pp. 14-23.

Week 3 Threshing Crew

John Falter, Size: 30 X 40 inches, Date: 1980, Museum: MONA

The artwork Threshing Crew shows an artwork of a crew of people, neighbors and family members, helping one another in using horses and a threshing machine to cut the beautiful golden wheat fields and piling the wheat in huge piles and then hauled off by a wagon with horses which can be seen in the distance.  There are a couple of kids talking and watching the adults working, along with a couple of dogs laying around.  The artist uses an horizontal spacing which would show us how far the wheat fields beyond the artwork to the left and right and makes the threshing machine and workers stand out.  The coloring in the artwork uses light colors in the light blue sky to make the dark golden wheat and threshing machines, the farmers and wheat pile stand out. 

The meaning of this artwork shows us how hard people had to work, to make a living.  Threshing time meant, being able to survive, through money, food, clothing and shelter.  Farmers, neighbors and family members teamed up to help out with the threshing, it was a time  of year that stood out, not only because it meant making money or surviving, it was a time of farmers and family of accomplishing one goal, harvesting that brilliant bright golden wheat and this relates to the social issue of family.  Family is an important, valuable thing.  When harvest crews made up of many family members and neighbors, it in a way brings the families closer together because it’s the time of year when they know that harvest means clothing, food and a source of revenue, which gives them a feeling of urgency, a feeling of pride and joy.   

This artwork could influence many farmers in the way they look at farming and their attitudes towards farming.  Now days, farmers and ranchers are using combines which cuts the work in  half and it’s very hard to understand the feeling of accomplishment that families felt when accomplishing harvesting wheat with horses, wagons and a threshing machine which takes a dramatically amount more time to do than a combine can. So I think it can make farmers and ranchers today, think about how nice or great they have it because they don’t have to do what farmers had to back then. “ In that setting, the season produced a sense of urgency, of total involvement, finally of accomplishment, that was largely lost when the combine made harvesting a one-stage, one-man job-another routine, another chore”.

Title: The Golden Spell of Harvest

Author(s): Charles Vindex

Source: JSTOR: Montana: The magazine of western history, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn, 1976), pp.2-11.

Week 2 Buffalo Hunt on the Platte

Buffalo Hunt on the Platte, Titian Ramsay Peale, Size: N/A, Year: 1873, Museum: MONA

The artwork Buffalo Hunt on the Platte is artwork that shows us Indians on horseback, during a buffalo hunt on the Platte River with beautiful trees and mountain ranges in the background and a village full of tepees as well as a bare dusty ground with a few old buffalo skulls. The artist uses a variety of dark colors, in the buffalo, grass, the shading under the mountain range and on some of the horses. The light colors are used in the reflection of the water, the light blue sky and clouds and the tepees. The artist used an overall light coloring scheme to get the full advantage of the picture itself, to be able to understand the meaning of the picture.

The purpose of the picture is to show and understand a “ritual” buffalo hunt that took place often with groups of Indians. Indians used buffalo as a way of life. They used everything from a buffalo, from the meat for food, the hide for tepees and clothing to keep them warm in the winter months, to the bones for weapons, tools, eating utensils, bowls, etc…The Indians lived by using the environment, by using their surroundings, vegetation, buffalo, water and their knowledge to survive in a sometimes harsh and rough environment.

When people think about Indians, most think of the bad ones, such as in Indians VS cowboys and how the Indians were mean and gruesome. Dances with wolves is a famous movie that shows some Indians were not only nice and helpful but would do anything for anyone, and when talking about environment and living off the land, white people would many times kill buffalo and leave them rot, as an Indian would kill buffalo for their everyday needs. So Indians were very successful at how they managed to live off the natural environment and survive. “Anticipating scores of artists who would pay indirect tribute to the plains Indian-Buffalo connection by showing the material culture that buffalo had made possible, Peale was also the first to depict the distinctive conical hide tepees of the Plains Indians”. The quote talks about how a buffalo’s materials made an Indian basically be able to survive and make their tepees out of the buffalo’s hide.

Title: ‘Flying Buffaloes’: Artists and the Buffalo hunt

Author (s): Brian W. Dippie

Source: JSTOR : Montana: The magazine of Western History, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 2-19.

Week 1 Sandhill crane

Hooping Crane (Sandhill Crane), John James Audubon, Size: N/A, Year: N/A, Museum: MONA

The artwork Hooping Crane (Sandhill Crane) depicts a very large artwork of a sandhill crane, standing on a hillside, overlooking a vast arrangement of lakes, ponds and in the background, a mountain range along with other cranes that are standing along the water or flying. The artist uses a blend of dark colors as well as light colors. The dark coloring he uses on portions of the cranes body, such as on the back, the red part around the eye, the legs and feet.  The light coloring he uses for the water, the light blue sky, the other cranes, some parts of the body such as part of the wing and neck and the mountain range in the background.  He also uses shading, such as around the edge of the hillside surrounding the crane, maybe to depict a shadow of the crane or to make the crane stick out better.

The meaning or purpose of this artwork is to show just how majestic these birds really are.  Their coloring, they way they look, their features, especially with the red eye patch and their lengthy legs and neck.  The artwork shows the migrations of sandhill cranes in a way because cranes will migrate through mountain ranges and will stop along lakes or ponds and rivers and they use a wide range of corridors every year on their migration north and south. This picture pertains to my social issue of economy because not only is sandhill crane hunting legal in certain states and provide revenue or money to those states through hunting licenses, gas, hotels, food, but also through tourism.  People travel far and wide to see sandhill cranes, such as right here in Kearney, NE, so it boosts our economy in a way through revenue and money as well.

This artwork  can help change or influence people’s perceptions because many people just think of them as a “bird” but they are really more than that, they are a highly regarded species of bird that many people see as majestic and beautiful. “His father was always careful to direct his attention to rare flowers and beautiful birds, pointing out the variegated plumage of the latter, and speaking to him of their instincts, their mode of life, migrations and desire to preserve the beautiful appearances thus presented to him”.

Title:  John James Audubon, The Naturalist

Author (s):  N/A    

Source: JSTOR: The Illustrated Magazine of Art, Vol. 3, No. 17 (1854), pp.305-307.