Ophelia by John Everett Millais

My English class has recently begun studying Shakespeare’s Hamlet, so I thought it was an appropriate time to look into paintings depicting subject matter from the play. Many artists have painted the scene in which Ophelia, the love interest of Hamlet, drowns. I suspect part of the appeal of painting this scene lies in the mystery of it because Shakespeare only describes the death through the words of one character, Gertrude, and not through a visual representation on stage. One of the only facts known about Ophelia’s death and probable suicide (it is unknown whether Ophelia accidentally drowns or kills herself, though the assumption is that she does indeed kill herself) is that she dies in a pond in the spring. The artist John Everett Millais decided to focus on the pond in his depiction of her death. Millais was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an English coalition of painters dedicated to being truthful to nature. The Pre-Raphaelites (other founding members include William Hunt and Dante Rossetti) believed that a decline in art had occurred as a result of the Royal Academy’s grip on the art of the day. The Academy chose what style of art to teach, gave advice to artists regarding proper subject matter, and recognized only artists who conformed to the Academy’s definition of art. The Academy especially admired the artwork of Raphael, a Renaissance master. Unlike the Academy, The Pre-Raphaelites believed that in order to revive the art form of painting, painters must look to the masters who came before Raphael, thus the name Pre-Raphaelites. As a Pre-Raphaelite, Millais wanted to depict nature truthfully, so he spent up to eleven hours a day working on the surrounding pond before moving on to Ophelia. Millais paid careful attention to detail and included symbolism in his work. Background flowers include willows representing love, nettle representing pain, daises representing innocence, and pansies representing thought. Millais originally painted daffodils, but painted over them when he discovered that they do not grow in spring. Millais’ model for Ophelia had to endure hours soaking in a bathtub with only candles lit beneath the tub to warm her because Millais wanted to view the best representation of a female floating in water. He paid special attention to how the model’s hair appeared in the water. Millais’ Ophelia is the most popular version of the character. It often draws a crowd at the Tate Gallery in London where it hangs, and for good reason. The detail is incredible. The result of Millais’ hard work is a painting that will be cherished forever. 

Menkaure and his Queen

I saw this sculpture when I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts before I learned in a classroom about Egyptian art. As I was visiting the museum with my family, I did not spend as much time in the Egyptian room as I would have liked, but the piece I studied for the longest amount of time was this sculpture, Menkaure and his Queen. Contrary to popular belief, most ancient Egyptian rulers were not pharaohs. The term pharaoh was not used until the New Kingdom (beginning 1550 B.C.E), and Menkaure was an Old Kingdom (beginning 2686 B.C.E) king. Menkaure’s depiction in this sculpture suggests his position.  As in all ancient Egyptian art depicting royalty, Menkaure is portrayed with a rigid stance and his body faces the front. Other signs of Menkaure’s royalty include his headdress and his false beard which are both famous Egyptian symbols of power. Despite his rigid stance Menkaure is demonstrating motion because his left foot is stepping forward. Menkaure is also shown idealistically, with a young face and a toned body. At first glance, it might seem as though the Queen is nude, but she is, in fact, wearing clothing. The clothes are snug against her body purposefully revealing her curves underneath. The Queen is also a point of interest because the Queen displays affection towards Menkaure by wrapping her right arm around him and by touching him with her left arm.  The statue is carved from slate, which was an expensive material at the time. The statue was created for Menkaure’s tomb so that he could use it in the afterlife. One reason that ancient Egyptian art is interesting is because it is not supposed to be unique. For over three thousand years the style of Egyptian art rarely varied. Menkaure and his Queen is a perfect example of what Egyptians wanted in their art. The artist uses a typical canon of proportions to ensure that each part of the figures’ bodies is the correct length. The artist also makes sure that the rigid king and his queen are idealized figures which appear to display the authority they have over Egypt.   Despite being more than five thousand years removed from the creation of this sculpture, I felt an immediate connection to Menkaure and his Queen when I first saw it even though I had not yet learned the rules of Egyptian art, and I did not yet understand that this sculpture and others like it hold an important place in art history. That connection is the power of art. Such a connection is only enhanced with knowledge which is the power of art history.  

"The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying: Typhoon Coming On)" by John Mallord William Turner

The painting, The Slave Ship was created by Turner late in his career as a protest against inhumanity. As a painter of the Romantic Movement, Turner decided to highlight a horrifying and tragic contemporary event when he painted The Slave Ship. Turner was inspired to paint The Slave Ship after reading the poem “Fallacies of Hope” and learning about an actual British slave ship, Zong, whose captain threw his sick and dying slaves overboard in order to receive insurance money. The captain’s insurance did not cover slaves lost to disease, but it did cover slaves “lost at sea”. The Zong tragedy occurred in 1781, but similar events were still occurring during the 1840’s when Turner painted The Slave Ship. Turner saw such events as horrific, and painted a scene to match his feelings. He wanted to make the public aware of a specific tragic episode, so that they would protest such massacres and help prevent them from ever happening again. The Slave Ship contains beautiful colors which intermingle creating a gorgeous aesthetic, but the undercurrent of horror reveals itself as soon as the viewer sees the arms and sharks in the lower right of the painting. John Ruskin, an art critic of the time, bought the painting and praised The Slave Ship for being “the true, the beautiful, and the intellectual”. I watched the movie Mr. Turner and it depicts Ruskin’s enthusiasm for The Slave Ship. In the film, Ruskin appears to be the only person who appreciates Turner’s later works, which is interesting because Turner’s later works are the ones that greatly influence future artists. In his later works, Turner focuses on the effects of light and the fact that light determines how we see things. Turner’s later works form a critical transition step from the paintings of old to modern art, because in his later works, Turner focuses more on exploring the effects of color and light and less on creating perfect forms.  This notion of an artwork depicting how light affects people’s vision was a precursor to the ideas and work of the impressionists, who fully exploited the effects of light in their paintings. The Slave Ship hangs in The Museum of Fine Art in Boston. The next time you visit Boston be sure to see this masterpiece in person. 

Quilting Mondrian

I've been very busy this summer so I have not posted for a while. Summer school captured my attention, but the coolest thing I did this summer was creating this quilt based on the painting “Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, and White: Nom II 1939” by Piet Mondrian. I conceived an idea during the school year to make a quilt based on a painting. Obviously I could not create a quilt based on just any painting because recording people and landscapes, for example, are way beyond my abilities as a quilter, so I had to be selective. I knew I had to choose a painter who created mostly angular designs, preferably simple designs. I remembered how Mondrian’s paintings have been used in clothing design so I determined that I would focus on choosing a Mondrian piece. 

“Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, and White: Nom II 1939” by Piet Mondrian

Eventually, I decided on “Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, and White: Nom II 1939”. I had to be sure of the paintings true proportions in order to ensure that my quilt would be proportional to the actual painting, so I calculated the dimensions of every rectangle and made the rectangles of my quilt proportional.

Front of my Quilt

Front Detail

Front Detail

Front Detail - I included a "PM 39" to represent how Mondrian signed his piece

 I had to carefully consider what to do with the back of the quilt. In the end I decided to create a mirror image on the back of the quilt because I wanted the rectangles from the front to match up with the same sized rectangles on the back. The only difference is that I wanted the back of the quilt to only have black and white. I used black in place of the white and other colors on the front of the quilt, and white in place of the black.  I liked this arrangement because the white and colored thread would be easily seen on the back, hinting at the pattern on the front. This created a new twist on the front that I really liked. 

Back of my Quilt

Back Detail

Back Detail

Back Detail - I signed it with my initials "SH 15" 

It took me approximately 80 hours to create this quilt in its entirety. This is the first large quilt I have ever created. Previously, I have created baby quilts, and even smaller pieces. I worked hard to make the quilt look as much like the Mondrian painting as I could, so I even sewed “PM 39” into my quilt to represent how Mondrian signed his name on his painting. I signed my initials on the back, “SH 15” in the same manner as Mondrian. The painting “Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, and White: Nom II 1939” is owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. I would love to see the painting in person someday.

For more information about Piet Mondrian look at my fifth post found here

“Unpainted Sculpture” by Charles Ray

Recently my family and I went to the Art Institute of Chicago and saw the exhibit, “Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997-2014”. Charles Ray is a contemporary artist and the exhibit concentrates on two different types of his artwork. One type focuses on people and ancient motifs such as classical nudes and ancient techniques like bas relief. The other type focuses on dissecting objects of phenomenon. Ray’s “Unpainted Sculpture” is of the second focus. In order to create this piece, Ray studied automobiles that had been in traumatic car crashes. Eventually, Ray found a Pontiac Grand Am and chose to recreate the car because he felt that he could feel the presence of the dead driver within it. After picking out the car, Ray disassembled the car piece by piece and created fiberglass molds out of each and every single piece. He then reassembled the car with the fiberglass pieces which proved to be a challenge because the fiberglass pieces were bigger than the sheet metal of the car. Despite the name “Unpainted Sculpture”, the work is actually covered in white paint. It was called “unpainted” because Ray would normally use multiple paint colors and since this work has a raw, bleak look and feeling to it, the use of the word “unpainted” provides a more realistic description of the piece. I personally think that this is an incredible work of art. It is very powerful. When viewing this piece it is impossible not to imagine the horror of the crash. The combination of the white paint job, the meticulous recreation of every minute detail and the empty interior creates a ghostly aesthetic. A decal on the back of the car reads “Jesus is Lord” which suggests the faith of the driver and provides a personal element making the car crash that much more real. One must walk around the entire piece in order to soak in every detail. The fact that Charles Ray actually disassembled the car and then meticulously recreated it imbues the sculpture with much more significance and presence than if he had just painted the original car. By taking the car apart and reassembling piece by piece, Ray, in effect, dissects the car and its story while simultaneously creating a story of his own. He essentially makes the damaged car whole again by recreating each damaged part. By going to the extreme of remaking the car pieces himself, Ray makes the car his own and creates an unforgettable piece of art.

"Bird in Space" by Constantin Brancusi

When I first saw this piece I thought it was a flame, then, I realized from the title that it is a bird. While "Bird in Space" does have a vague pointed beak at its top, and a slight indent at the bottom section to indicate some sort of feet, the piece does not actually look like a bird. Instead, "Bird in Space" represents the idea of flight, and, in my opinion, freedom. Motion is evident in the sculpture because it invites the eye to soar upward along the lines of the sculpture. The highly polished, reflective bronze of the bird, or, more accurately, the flight, creates movement on its surface because light constantly is bouncing off of it and moving as the viewer moves. The highly polished surfaces of "Bird in Space", while common in Brancusi's work, is rarely seen with other sculptors. Brancusi frequently employs a hierarchy of material in his work. He often begins with wood and works his way up to bronze. A hierarchy of material is evident in this piece as well. The bases of Brancusi's work, if included, are always part of the piece itself. Brancusi strove to create simple forms. Brancusi was a revolutionary sculptor. He made the transition from realism to abstraction in sculpture. Part of his transition process was using oblong shapes to represent organic forms. Simplicity allowed Brancusi to capture the essence of flight in "Bird in Space". He captures the essence of being a bird. I think of freedom when I see this piece, not only because birds traditionally represent freedom, but also because I originally thought it was a flame. Flames are free. Flames create fires that can become powerful and both destroy and renew life. When people try to contain a large fire, they often fail. The motion of the soaring figure in Brancusi's "Bird in Space" creates the illusion of a flame, or the illusion of flight. It truly inspires awe and has become a symbol of modern art.
P.S. This sculpture was so unusual for the time it was created (1928), that when it was brought to the United States for a show at the Modern Museum of Art in New York, customs agents believed it was a hunk of metal to be used for some sort of industrial purpose, and, therefore, tried to tax it (artwork is not taxable). Apparently, the customs officials theorized that it was some sort of propeller. Brancusi had to go to court to defend his artwork.

"The Death of Sardanapalus" by Eugène Delacroix

Delacroix was a Romanticist. Romanticism is essentially the opposite of Neoclassicism, which I discussed with "Automedon with the Horses of Achilles". While Neoclassicism was all about order and reason, Romanticism was all about emotion. These styles were popular at the same time, so characteristics of both can be found in many works. This piece by Delacroix tends to be more Romantic. One of the characteristics of Romanticism is a touch of the exotic, which essentially means there is something in the painting that is not European. This piece is about an Assyrian ruler, Sardanapalus, so the story of the painting itself is exotic. In the story, Sardanapalus faces a defeat in battle and, rather than go through with an embarrassing defeat, he orders all of his possessions to be burned, including even his slaves and himself. The painting depicts the moments that follow that order; the guards are killing the prostitutes and slaves, destroying Sardanapalus’ belongings while Sardanapalus lounges on his bed. Violence is also a reoccurring theme in Romantic work, and this piece has its fair share of it. Emotion is central to Romantic work. Delacroix expresses emotion through the servants screaming out in pain as well as the quick brushwork. Delacroix painted the piece with emotion, so the brushwork is evident. The audience can empathize with the women, feeling their panic. One reason for this is that one woman is splayed across the bed. Rich colors are a component of Romanticism as well. This piece has strong reds which allude to the blood that was spilled on this day. Overall, “The Death of Sardanapalus” is a masterpiece of Romantic painting. Romanticism led to impressionism because of its looser brushwork and emphasis on emotion. In this way, Romanticism helped stimulate the first artists to branch off from tradition. I love seeing the progression from early art to Modern art, and Romanticism is an important step on that journey.