The piece that i choose to write about was Max Ernst's "At the first clear word" i really  admire his ability to pick a good composition when you first look at this painting your eyes go to the hand imdiately then you follow the ball on the string all the way to the green (bug?) on the left side then you follow the top of the wall over to the plant and go back down to the hand. Colorwise its pretty cool today the fade of the blue sky is done seamlessly and the dark orange stands out great as well as the blues in the window and the mysterious hand. Another reason why i like this painiting is it honestly makes absolutely no sense to me i love how the hand is coming from nowhere and you should be able to see the rest of the persons body but you cant. and what is that green thing to the left? its too big to be a bug right? the painting makes me feel like something is about to happen but i have no idea what.

This piece really stood out to me out of all the ones that we've gone over recently, just because it has something really interesting to say and the way the artist went about saying it was really cool and attention grabbing. I've always felt that Native Americans got a terrible deal from the U.S. government, did you know that 93% of all treaties between the Native Americans and the government were broken? That really got on my nerves when i learned that. But this piece displays the feelings of a Native American who just suffered through that raw deal they were unfortunately handed. So many things in this piece really interest me for example the red ex  over the man is really cool, not only does it represent the uranium mines that the reservations were built on top of but it also kind of seems to represent the person dying or just that no people should live there. I hadn't noticed this before but there is a bumper sticker that says made in the USA above the man as well as a serial number which just kind of shows the lack of sympathy the US had for the people that originally inhabited this country. The news paper kind of ties it all together in my opinion, it reminds me that nobody in the news really covered the unfair treatment of the Native Americans even though it was such a big tragedy.

Garden of Earthly Delights

This was definitely my most favorite piece that we've studied this chapter, maybe even my favorite of all the art we've looked at this semester.  This painting is just so imaginative in comparison to some of the other paintings like portraits and other paintings were it's just perfectly rendered people, I really admire Bosch's originality. Another thing I particularly enjoy is how he chose to paint something that really doesn't focus all that much on a particular bible story like some artists but it is kind of religious. Especially the first panel which shows Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, this panel is interesting because there really isn't too much going on and it contrasts heavily with the other panels. It is very peaceful and is also the only panel that features God which i thought was intriguing. The other two panels are more philosophical panels, and these panels interested me more. Theres just so much bizzare things going and it all means something. I'll list some that i spoted and found very weird: an owl is the head of two human bodies, the people embracing under the buble hood (interesting contrast to the people completely enclosed in the bubble), a man or woman having flowers put in there uhmmm bum, and the  naked man upside down in the lake with a strawberry ontop of his crotch. I have no idea what any of this means but i know the general idea is that  earthly pleasures as seen in the center panel sow the seeds of the destruction seen in the right panel. This panel is equally as bizzare there's a lute/harp instrument crushing a man, people climbing a ladder into a deformed giants insides, a pig dressed as a nun as well as what appears to be a man defecating underneath the blue creature on a throne ( the blue creature also appears to be pooping out a man...).  The last panel has such strong juxtaposition. Going  from such a whimsical center with bright inviting colors to the dark right  is so sudden but interesting. I would really be interested in have a really large copy of this so i can notice even more or just read a square inch by square inch interpretation of this painting

I found this picture to be particularly intriguing, which surprised me because a lot of the art that Ive seen in the book from this time period  I don't find interesting at all. Mostly because it's always basically the same picture, usually the virgin Mary and Jesus or Jesus dying and the artists basically stick to a similar style. This painting stood out to me for a number of reasons, first off I'm pretty sure it's one of the very few religious paintings that is set in the Old Testament. Also the artists style was pretty cool, the way he captured Eve's depression and shame just by how he painted her face. The shadows i think add to that. He portrayed that with Adam well too.  Another thing i thought was interesting and I'm not sure if they say this is how it happened in the bible but the way they walk out of a portal-thing adds this surreal element to the picture. Something that really grabbed my attention  was how the angel and ultimately God is portrayed with a sword. He comes off as the vengeful God that's seen in the Old Testament, with a sword and in red. As apposed to the way God is portrayed in all the other paintings as this peaceful lamb or dove.

First

It's been my life long dream to make a blog. I wish i had known it was so easy...oh well I'm excited to start blogging!