Angie Fernandez
November 18, 2012
Oil
Painting
In this essay I will
analyze three different paintings, these are, Place de la Concorde by Piet
Mondrian, Bottle of Port and Glass by Pablo Picasso, and The Light of Coincidence
by Rene Magritte. Although these paintings have different styles they all demonstrate
how amazing and creative oil painting can be.
Place de la Concorde is
an abstract work painted by Piet Mondrian, the painting is characterize by an
irregular pattern of black outlines creating rectangular shapes, which some are
colored with a closed palette of primary colors blue, red, and yellow, but most
rectangles are just a white background.
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Place de la Concorde by Piet Mondrian.
Date: 1938 – 1943
Dimensions: 37x37 3/16 inches
Oil on Canvas
Location: Dallas Museum of Art
Personal Image.
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The
painting is supposed to represent a Square in Paris, in which place many
artists in 1930s decided to paint. But Mondrian chooses to make his painting
more “naturalistic” representing the true nature of objects, what he called
Neoplasticism. In the painting we can
see different vertical and horizontal lines, giving the viewer a sense of axis.
Its simplicity is what appeals the most about this painting. And that it is not
three-dimensional, but only has two-dimensional shapes.
When Piet Mondrian made this painting he
wanted to express his Neoplasticism ideas. And he accomplished this by using
the most simplistic ways of painting, geometric, restricted palette and lots of
open white spaces. These things give the viewer the opportunity to experiment
different ideas about the painting, when you look at this painting you get a
sense that it has its own frame, generated by its black lines, and
concentrating the whole picture in the center of the painting, which is just a
large white rectangle. But also Piet Mondrian made the painting in a way that
makes your eyes look around this big rectangle at the center, the strips around
it are supposed to be the intersections at the Square. And besides its
asymmetry, the painting offers a sense of order, making it attractive to look
at.
I believe Mondrian choose this style of
painting because he truly believed in his theories of Neoplasticism and wanted
to be heard. “Mondiran published Le Neo-plasticisme while in Paris, having
become convinced that his theories,…were almost unknown beyond his native
country.” This is why his theories were translated in other different languages
and then he traveled to the United States in nineteen seventies, and became a
member of American abstract artist. He brought with himself the Place de la
Concorde painting. I believe this artwork is about simplicity and
self-interpretation, the artist by painting abstract wants the audience to view
what their minds tell them to see. But Piet Mondrian also gave the painting a
name, which I think it’s because besides he wants the painting to be open to
ideas, he still wants to make his point. When I see at this painting, I can
really imagine how that square at Paris looked like.
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Bottle of Port and Glass by Pablo Picasso
Date:1919
Dimensions: 18x24 in.
Oil on Canvas
Location: Dallas Museum of Art
Personal Image.
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Bottle of Port and
Glass panted by Spanish Pablo Picasso, is a paint characterized by its cubism
and for being abstract. It was done in the year 1919 and has dimensions of eighteen
by twenty four inches. When you first look at the painting you can see a set of
geometric forms but you cannot really distinguish any meaningful object. Once
you take some time to look at it, you start to see the positive shape, the
bottle and the glass, the bottle is at the left where the word “Dporto” is, and
the glass is next to it at the right side; once you see these two shapes it
becomes hard to have a different focal point. If you look harder you can see
these two objects are sitting on a table and you can also perceive it
represents a three dimensional painting. If a person has enough imagination he
or she will easily see the outline of the table, and the overlapping of certain
objects like the bottle, around it. You can also see the usage of color
temperature in this painting; at the borders, you can appreciate a warm
temperature made of different hues and saturation of yellow-orange and browns.
Then towards the center you see a combination of blue-green representing a kind
of cold square. And finally the usages of black and white, especially to define
some objects like the bottle and the background of the glass. In this painting
there are also two extremely simplified objects, which are a pipe and a pouch
of tobacco Picasso made this two objects so simple that are very hard to
distinguish. They are located at the right side of the glass.
Pablo Picasso used
geometrical forms and asymmetry of cubism to developed this abstract painting.
Bottle of Port and Glass can be very difficult to “read”, and at first sight
can give a person the sense of chaos and confusion, overloaded with many
shapes. But Picasso did a great job at mixing different levels of reality,
because, a person can actually imagine things in this painting that are not
real, different shapes that are made of other shapes. And Picasso achieved this
by using different schemes of color and forms.
Again, I believe Picasso invented these types of paintings to show a different
and more “purer” form of all things in the everyday life. And also, to give
people the opportunity to see what their mind shows them. In my belief, Picasso
painted the objects in this painting in a way humans are not used to see the
world, in cubes. Although it is hard to see, he actually did paint the actual
items.
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The Light of Coincidence by Rene Magritte
Date: 1933
Dimensions: 60x73 cm.
Oil on Canvas
Location: Dallas Museum of Art
Personal image
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The
light of coincidence by Rene Magritte is a symbolic painting with genre
surrealism; the painting was finish in year 1933 in Brussels, Belgium. Rene
Magritte painted it in oil on canvas. In the painting you can appreciate just
the torso of a woman, with no legs, arms, or head. What makes this painting
interesting is its surrealism, because Magritte painted this torso, on another
two dimensional painting. In other words, it’s a painting inside a painting.
You can also see a candle sitting on a table. It seems like this candle is the
only source of light in the whole painting; it produces the painting to have a
touch tenebrism look. Making the torso, the candle, and the table look lighter,
with a dark background. But the highlights of light are concentrated on the
torso of the woman. The surrealism in this painting is such that we can even
see some overlapping, between the table in which the candle is sitting on, and
the painting behind it. In this painting we can see how Magritte used a wide
scale of dark colors, including black, grey, and brown. But he also utilized
white, yellow, and red.
Rene Magritte used
surrealism to represent the beauty of the torso of Venus de Medici, who is the
Roman goddess of Love. He also chose to paint her so he could emphasize woman’s
beauty and perfection. This painting is very appealing especially because of
its three dimensional figure of the torso, which thanks to Magritte usage of
light and shadow, the torso looks with good sharpness. The artist made the
torso realistic and you can easily see the highlight, shadow, and core shadow
on the torso; and then you can see the cast shadow to the left of the torso,
which would be the darkest shadow.
Besides appreciating the different areas of light and shadow, you can
also see how Rene Magritte used the use of line to achieve this goal of
three-dimensional shape, I feel there are different vanishing points, one made
by the red table that is on the paining of the torso and other can be one that
is made of the corners of the actual painting of the goddess, and not the light
of coincidence.
Although many artist of
this time painted this beautiful goddess, I may think that Magritte should have
had another reason besides representing, love, woman, and beauty. He had a
rough past, with his mother committing suicide when he was just a child. I
think the artist may felt an especial attraction toward women in general, since
he did not have that female figure for most of this life. Magritte probably
felt relief, comfort, or maybe he felt he was representing his mother on his
paintings.
Work Cited
McCarter, William M. "Piet Mondrian's Place De La
Concorde." Piet
Mondrian's Place De La Concorde by William Matthew McCarter. University of
Texas at Arlington, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/pietmondrian.htm>.
Henkels, H. "ART TERMS." MoMA.org. Oxford University
Press, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10131>.
Champa, Kermit Swiler. "Mondrian, Piet." Encyclopedia
of Aesthetics. Ed. Michael Kelly. Oxford Art Online. Oxford
University Press. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t234/e0359>.
"Bottle
of Port and Glass." Dallas
Museum of Art. Dallas Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://dallasmuseumofart.org/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/2154/71/title-asc?t:state:flow=513767c4-dbab-4773-9f14-74446d0dc6be>.
Melissa McQuillan. "Picasso, Pablo." Grove
Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford
University Press.Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T067316>.
"Pablo Picasso." San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artists/867>.
"Pablo Picasso / Bottle of Port and Glass / 1919." Pablo Picasso / Bottle of Port and
Glass / 1919. The Amica Library, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.davidrumsey.com/amica/amico87860-42437.html>.
"The Light of Coincidence." Wiki Paintings. Visual Art
Encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/rene-magritte/the-light-of-coincidence-1933>.
Hopkins, Justine. "Magritte, Rene." Oxford Art Online. Oxford
University Press, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://ezp.tccd.edu:2148/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e1564?q=rene+magritte&search=quick&pos=2&_start=1#firsthit>.
"The Light of Coincidence." Dallas Museum of Art - Collections.
N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://dallasmuseumofart.org/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/2154/657/title-asc?t:state:flow=ff6f6d5d-79f4-4fad-ad6d-e5ac9397ed10>.
"Venus De' Medici (Getty Museum)." The J. Paul Getty Museum. J.
Paul Getty Trust, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=313766>.
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