Week 12 100 cans

100 Cans, Andy Warhol, Size: 6 ft X 4 ft 4 inches, Date: 1962, Museum: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.

            100 Cans is a painting of oil on canvas that is viewed or cultured as “pop art”. Andy Warhol produced objects, materials, or images such as Coca-Cola bottles, Brillo boxes, even people such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Elvis Presley. A famous painting of Andy’s is this painting dealing with 100 cans of Campbell’s soup. He used a repeating pattern and rhythm in the way the cans all line up evenly across from one another as well as up and down. There are lines vertically and horizontally which place the cans of soup in order. The bright red labels and yellow dots on the cans of soup make each and every one stick out with emphasis. Andy used a unique style of painting, with the use of photographic silkscreen with gave the images a different look along with actually painting the picture. Art work such as this had to deal a lot with the media and presenting company’s or manufacturers products.

            Andy Warhol enjoyed this type of art work and painting. Pop art was meant to be able to draw art closer to peoples life’s, and by the 1960’s, life was already converted from actual artwork to movies, books, images, famous people, so Andy’s art work helped with advertising and media.  

            “In their paintings of comic-strip of figures or soup cans, and in their repetitive images of movie stars, they recorded a frozen moment that did not have planted within it and implied movement forward or backward in time”

Title: American Painting: On space and time in the early 1960’s.

Author(s): Matthew Baigell

Source: Art Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4(1969), pp. 368-374+387+401.

Week 11 View of Collioure

View of Collioure. Andre Derain. Size: 26 X 32 and 3/8 in. Date: 1905. Museum: Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.

            The View of Collioure shows us a painting of Oil on canvas. A painting called a Fauve or “wild beast”. It’s a painting that is based upon a small port or village on the Mediterranean coast off of France. Derain places the viewer in a position that we can look down or in the distance from above, he shows us numerous hills and grass, a brick wall with trees and the port located behind it with the ocean and sky beyond that. Derain uses vibrant colors in orange and red to visualize the grasses and hills. He uses emphasis with the bright colors, as well as a feeling of visual texture in a way, that we can almost feel the texture of the painting. The painting is full of lines through the way he used the stroke of the painting to depict the grasses, trees and the port. He used red to point out the top of the houses. In the sky is colored light blue with some dark blue mixed in to maybe show clouds. The tops of the trees are green which are between the sky and ocean. The brick wall is colored in light brown or grayish colors. Derain’s use of complementary colors (red/green)(blue/orange) allows the viewer to feel the intensity, emotion and warmth that the painting portrays in the way of feeling the warmth from the sun as well as the ocean breeze or air. Derain uses short strokes of the paint brush and instead of mixing the paint, he sometimes used it straight from the tubes.

            Derain worked with numerous paintings of Van Gogh, in the way he painted his painting through short brush strokes. Van Gogh’s paintings dealt a lot with poverty and poor to which he related. I think that Derain also experienced a deal of this, so that’s why he related many paintings to Van Gogh’s. I think Derain wanted to show a place where the people could experience condolence or relief from reality and feel the beauty or majestic peace that nature gives.

            “Fauvism’s greatest in depth achievement was the painting of the landscape. The mood of the fauvist landscape, its real celebration of landscape, of the delights of a colorful vacationers world, an intensified impressionist painting.”

Title: A Preview of “The Wild Beasts’: Fauvism and its Affinities”

Author: MOMA (JSTOR)

Source: Museum of Modern Art, No.7 (Spring 1976), pp. 1-2.

Week 10 The Burning of Sanjo Palace

The Burning of Sanjo Palace. Heiji Monogatari Emaki, Kamakura period. Size: 16.25in X 22ft 9in. Date: 13^th Century. Museum: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

            The Burning of Sanjo Palace shows the viewer a hand scroll of war between the Minamoto and their rivals, the Taira. This war takes place in the 13^th century, around 1159. It all started when Taira warriors abducted the emperor in a nighttime attack. The viewer can see the warriors on horseback, armed with bow and arrow and dressed with an array of armor and dressings compiled of a tan, brown and black color. We can see dead warriors on the ground along with a few horses falling to the ground from maybe being shot and unable to stand. Court ladies and their young maids are trying frantically to make it to a well to get away from the fighting, but some don’t make it. To the right of the picture, we can see the grey colored smoke coming off the brightened array of orange flames from an explosion of some sort. The artist used emphasis of the bright flames to obtain our eyes on it and to show the heat and intensity of the burning. There is a principle of rhythm in the way the warriors, horses and the emperor are fleeing towards the left towards a gate in fright and fearfulness. The artist uses lines in the way he angles the wall towards the gate on the left and to show maybe a hallway that extends to the back of the picture.

            The Burning of Sanjo Palace is a hand scroll that depicts a war between two opposing forces trying to kill or catch the evil emperor. Many young girls, women, horses and warriors lost their lives, either in running and trying to escape the madness or in war, fighting for what they believed and it relates to the now day war of Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers are out there putting their lives on the line, each and every day, fighting for freedom and peace.

“Those who tried to escape were shot or slain. Many, in hope of saving their lives, threw themselves in a well. Court ladies of all ranks, with their young maids, shrieking in terror, dashed out to only fall and be trampled by horses and kicked by men. Countless lives were lost”

Title: The Burning of the Sanjo Palace (Heiji Monogatari): A Japanese Scroll Painting of the Thirteenth Century.

Author: Kojiro Tomita

Source: Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, Vol. 23, No. 139 (Oct. 1925), pp. 49-50 + 53-55.