Thursday, January 22, 2009
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SITE FOR POSTING CLASS READING RESPONSES AS COMMENTS. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OTHER POSTS. History of Art, U.C. Berkeley. Instructor Sarah Hamill
FUR-LINED CUP, MERET OPPENHEIM, 1936
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- Minimalism: For Class 3/31
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- Modernism and Mass Culture: For Class 3/3
- Modern Objects and Things: For Class 2/10
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- Cezanne and after: For Class 2/3
- Impressionism and Science: For class 1/29
- Response #3
- Kathryn A. Tuma
- What is Analysis? For class 1/27
- Octave Tassaert’s ‘Ne fais pas la cruelle!’ (Don’t...
- Defining the Modern: for class January 22
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Kelly Sun
ReplyDeleteResponse Essay 2
Section 6
Reading the visual descriptions by Clark, Tuma, and Potts reminded me of that saying: “Art is in the eye of the beholder.” It was interesting to read these articles; for they all laid out the unique views of three different art critics. Each of the reviews clearly revealed what the author personally valued and appreciated in artwork. Naturally, if one valued the artist’s particularly skillful brush techniques, he would be sure to analyze and describe it to its greatest detail; the same goes for someone who is especially stirred by expressive use of color.
Clark’s analysis of “Woman with a Hat” pays close attention to Matisse’s careful and deliberate use of color. He disregards most viewers’ response to the painting; that it is comprised of unmeasured strokes and passion. Instead, he acknowledges painter-critic Maurice Denis’s critique that Matisse was in fact very cautious in the way he painted the portrait of his wife. Clark points out how Matisse intended for certain colors to relate to themes and other parts of the painting filled in with the same color. Clark’s style of art analysis is very descriptive and opinionated. He blatantly expresses his thoughts on the colors and forms Matisse utilizes. He reveals how he sees Madame Albertine’s ear as “an awkward blot” (60) and believes that “it is the face that matters” (61). He lays out his judgments and priorities. He states how he thinks the face is the focus of the painting and also discloses this through his extensive evaluation of Albertine’s face.
Similar to Clark, Tuma is also attracted to color but she also sets up the critique in a way that addresses the issue of what the painting appears to be and what it really is. I thought this was helpful because it helps the viewer understand that we must look closely and not be deceived by the way the painting looks from a quick glance. It is clear that Tuma highly values Cezanne’s language of painting because she lays it out in her article. She calls the reader to perceive the painting as something that has a formula, put together by a series of different kinds of strokes unique to Cezanne: the “dab, touch, comma, wedge, pellet, blot, lozenge, cell…” (72). Throughout the article she is careful to always mention Cezanne’s purposeful intention for the painting, such as how he breaks geometry in his painting by running colors into each other. I found Tuma’s analysis of Cezanne’s Le rocher rouge to be extremely clear and concise since she concentrated on Cezanne’s exquisite formula and philosophy towards art.
Potts’ article, The Sculptural Imagination, while also very detailed, focuses instead on the elements of paintings. Rather than explaining how the brushstrokes make the painting, Potts describes the subject. He brings the reader’s attention to the composition of the work and how the forms evoke emotion. In describing a painting of a cannibal man, he mentions the physical appearance of the man and how the curvature and shape of the human form is extraordinary. He is therefore more interested in the performance of the subject than the actual process by which this painting came about.
While all three critics are very descriptive in their analyses of different works of art, I found Tuma’s critique to be the best description. Tuma clearly lays out themes that are important to her and concisely explains the importance of Cezanne’s purpose and attention to color. She lays out in the very beginning how the viewer should not be tricked by the illusion that Cezanne creates through subtle brushstrokes. She tells the viewer to look closely and leads him through the process by which to analyze and appreciate the work.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt is essential to view modern art within a framework of context. Of the three articles assigned this week, T.J. Clark is the only author to provide sufficient outside information to his audience. Initially, I was unsure of his purpose in volunteering such information about Matisse’s portrait and I found it distracting. He provided information about his wife and subject, Amelie Parayre. He describes her hat making profession and the pivotal role it played in their lives. He also describes the anxieties and situational events of the painting’s first gallery display. Multiple perspectives are cited and considered. As a result, I feel much more connected to the portrait because I am viewing it through many perspectives. Conversely, I feel that Tuma and Potts neglect to contextualize their subjects and ultimately fail to deliver compelling descriptions. This is especially true of Tuma who spends much of his time addressing coloration, while neglecting the culmination effect towards living embodiment in the painting. For example, I believe Potts’ transcends objective description by suggesting a life force inside the sculptures. He states, “The variegated undulations of surface that come into view suggest an inner flexing power…evoking a tough yet flexible connectiveness akin to cartilage.”(77) On the contrary, I do believe Tuma is able to ignite his subjects through his incorporation of the “Colored sensations” as the ambiguous “atomic unit” of Cezannes paintings. It is also a very modern idea to suggest something that isn’t actually there. This was seen in the passing glances affect of the crowd in Manet’s Concert aux Tuileries. Ultimately, I have learned that powerful description comes from providing a context for a work as well as indicating a narrative or uncovering a hidden life-power in a piece.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t realize the role of the preliminary exert by Maurice Denis in T.J. Clark’s article, and as a result my acquaintance with the material occurred in a roundabout manner; I had to flip back and forth through the pages to sift through T.J.’s mysterious perspective. It is only at the end of the paper that he delivers his official statement of semi-agreement with Denis. By this point in time, however, the absurdity of Denis’s quote is no longer, and suddenly I was also able to acknowledge his thoughts as a legitimate perspective. It seems the arbitrary question is raised: how much intention or calculation did Matisse use in the painting? Denis claims that “everything cannot be intelligible. Give up the idea of rebuilding a new art by means of reason alone. Put your trust in sensibility, in instinct.” To rephrase this, Denis claims that Matisse created this painting in a mental or intellectual manner, as opposed to intuitive or feeling involved. My question now is not whether or not this may be, but why there is a negative connotation attached to his criticism. Clark’s article has shown that art is a field of controversy and judgment. My acquaintance with the cannons of different genres of art is small, so this may or may not be indicative of modernism. However, it started me thinking that in most genres or periods of art there is usually loose methodology for judging a work. Why there is such an urge for judging art, I don’t know. The very act betrays creativity (as Writing Analytically tells us). Regardless, it is clear that modern art is judged within an increasingly ambiguous rubric. If you tried to judge a piece of modern art under traditional or even normal conventions, I’m sure most works would never have received their praise. Additionally I have come to believe the cannon for modern art must have become increasingly critical due to the evolving nature of the genre. It seems there is a self-consciousness in the allocation of praise because a temporal directionality is suggested. Without anyone truly knowing the destination of the field, maybe there was a power struggle created in attempts to take the reigns.
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ReplyDeleteWhile reading Kathryn Tuma’s article, I felt a key message she was trying to convey through Cezanne’s Le rocher rouge was how the presence of brush strokes profoundly affects the understanding of a painting.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when thinking of brush strokes, I feel like we largely assume that the same brush stroke is used throughout a painting. Whether it’s a classical painting, an impressionistic painting, or a cubistic painting, we assume that the artist only uses a specific method, a specific motion while painting the piece. This can be explained by one of two things: the eye seeing no difference between the strokes or really that the different brush strokes are in-differentiable.
Le rocher rouge is really one of the first paintings I’ve seen where one can not only clearly see the different brush strokes, but also see the difference between the brush strokes, whether it reaching upward to the sky, crashing downward to the ground, or moving at somewhere in between. Each color almost has a specific brush stroke assigned to it, allowing us to differentiate the colors and breaking the piece down in an elemental format. As Tuma states, “at times these colors look to rise, others to fall. Sometimes they move at a diagonal, listing in obliquity, in bias against the rectilinearity of the frame.” Hence, color also has a clear connection with direction. Certain colors will only be given an upward brush stroke, some will only be given a downward brushstroke, others will lie somewhere in between.
Furthermore, by giving the different colors different brush strokes, the painting reads in an extremely peculiar manner. While the brush strokes are easily identifiable when one takes the time to look for them, when someone looks at the painting as a whole it becomes a very different story. By simply moving your eye and looking at the piece, the different directions of the brush strokes come alive, giving a sense that the scene in front of us is alive. It’s as if the trees are blowing in the wind and the rock is standing concretely, blocking your view of the trees. By applying those different brush strokes to the different colors, the painting overall feels to read like a life scene, something you would see if you were walking down that path.
Not having much of a background in Art History or in analyzing paintings in general, I had great difficulty in obtaining a full grasp on what T.J. Clark is trying to argue and criticize about ‘Woman with a Hat’. Within his essay, Clark asks “What is the transposition of colours in modernism…intended to do” (13)? And he answered by stating, “My answer-Matisse’s answer-is that it opens onto black. It is a way of showing sensuality-sensuous experience-becoming something thought or manufactured, as opposed to felt” (13). After viewing the painting in color online, I think I agree with Clark. When taking a glance at the painting, my eyes are first drawn to the black parts of the hat for this great amount of black stands out amongst the wide variety of vibrant colors present. But when I took a closer and longer looked at the hat, I realized that the hat is also painted in countless colors as well; in fact, it is the one area in the painting that is most concentrated with many different colors. If you combine Clark’s notion that color is meant to represent sensuality in this painting, with the fact that the foundation of the entire hat is painted black, then you can argue that ‘Woman with a Hat’ does indeed show sensuality “becoming something thought or manufactured”. In this case, the color black represents that manufactured thing or thought; it is something that is concrete, something that does not arouse emotions in anyway. Because all the other colors that the hat is composed of seems to diffuse into darker and darker shades and also seem to be held up by the black part of the hat, it makes sense to argue that sensuality (represented by color) is turning into something manufactured (represented by black).
ReplyDeleteFrom the little I know, I think that Clark analyzed ‘Woman with a Hat’ well enough. Even though he goes into great detail about the coloring of the painting, he does at least acknowledge the woman’s face and pose. I also thought that because his analysis also included a comparison of the painting of Paul Cezanne’s ‘Woman in Blue’, it essentially helped in trying to figure out what is represented in Matisse’s work of art. Clark also includes other critics’ opinions concerning the painting, which aids a viewer and reader in obtaining differing perspectives; having such an array of opinions can help one in forming their own.
(I had read Clark’s essay two times in order to understand it better; and because of this, along with the diagnostic essay, I was unable to take the time to fully grasp and contemplate Tuma’s and Potts’s analyses, which is why the essays aren’t mentioned above.)
Danielle Beeve
ReplyDeleteHistory of Art R1B
Sect. 6
The element of the works that earned the most critique from both Clark and Tuma was the use of color in the paintings, and what certain colors and contrasts of colors might mean. Clark notes that “Colours, in a painting like Woman with a Hat, are forced apart from their normal identities so that some work of mourning, or cherishing…can be carried out” (54). He seems to be particularly concerned with the symbolism of the color Black, which Matisse had jokingly declared as the color he had based his wife’s hat and dress off of in his painting. Clark asks “What is the transposition of colours in modernism – intended to do? My answer – Matisse’s answer – is that it opens onto black. It is a way of showing sensuality – sensuous experience – becoming something thought or manufactured as opposed to felt” (63). Black then is the opposite of blazing colors, and used in modern art it can have a meaning in itself. Clark also believes that Matisse’s use of repeated recurrences of the same color has meaning: “The painting, that is to say, is sewn together by literal recurrences” (59). He points out that Matisse uses similar coloring for very different things in his painting, for instance he uses orange for both her necklet and also her belt, and that this has some sort of significance that Matisse wanted us to understand. I do not know how the use of orange for a necklet and a belt could be truly meaningful, and to me Clark is perhaps delving into the color scheme too deeply.
Tuma also dives into the use of color in Cezanne’s Le rocher rouge with relish, “you see a dove-gray blue, then a salmon slipping into a hint of pinkish hue, itself covered by a pale green brushing against a washed-out ultramarine…” (71). This sentence does not do much of anything but list colors that can be found in the painting, and as such I do not see how this type of analysis is particularly helpful in understanding meaning. On the other hand, Tuma is also very interested in Cezanne’s desire to have a lack of geometry, mainly distinct lines, in his painting, and she explores this topic very insightfully. To Cezanne, there were no lines in nature but just the changing of one color to another, such as red rock to blue sky, to which Tuma remarks: “In Le rocher rouge, color, the matter of visibility, struggles with geometry’s rule, the abstraction of color’s phenomenal effect. Nature, here aligned with color, abstracts the abstraction, pulls the line both out of the rock and out from under it, and transforms it into an allegory of its own symbolic transparency” (75). Tuma believes that Cezanne, through his painting, is trying to demonstrate the importance of color while leaving by the wayside geometry’s restrictions, and while looking at Cezanne’s painting I would have to agree with this interpretation.
Potts is also very interested in visual details, but he is more concerned with angles and shape than that of color. He emphasizes the use of trying out different perspectives and how they can construe alternate meanings to the work when viewed at varying angles or distances. With sculptures, I think this is a very pertinent point, because while viewing from differing angles many meanings can be evoked.
Potts, Tuma, and Clark each approach their respective pieces of art in a unique manner, leading to three very different critiques of modern artworks. The only common denominator across the three critiques is the method in which they approach the art: all begin with a broad assessment of the paintings’ first impressions upon them. Beyond this, the critiques vary greatly.
ReplyDeleteFor Clark, context plays a pivotal role in his interpretation of Matisse’s Woman With a Hat. Clark pays close attention to color and minute detail much like Tuma. However, it is clear that his main concern is the context in which this painting was made. He first presents an anecdote describing the painting’s initial presentation and the reactions it provoked. This is followed with a thorough (perhaps too much so) description of Matisse’s ironic response of “black, obviously” and how it pertains to the artworks contrast to such “revolutionary” works such as Malevich’s Black Square. By presenting this context, Clark irrefutably depicts the painting in a clearer context. This in turn leads to a clearer understanding of the painting itself, as well as its intentions. With further context, and a repeated method of presenting information and then relating it back to Matisse’s piece, Clark creates a very convincing critique of Woman With a Hat. The only clear flaw in his critique is an overreliance on this contextual information: the article is far from concise with the information it presents.
Tuma approaches Cezanne’s Le Roucher Rouge in an entirely different manner. No concurrent artworks are presented for comparison, and a history of the painting’s context is minimal. Instead, Tuma chooses to observe every miniscule detail and interpret and describe them specifically. She effectively critiques this aspect, clarifying the existence each tiny piece of the painting and its resulting effect on the viewer. However, because so much emphasis is put on these details the broader context of the painting is lacking. Where Clark’s critique overreaches, Tuma’s falls short, leaving me wondering what other works of art could be critiqued in a similar manner. I also feel like her critique would be much more easily digested if similarities were presented between this and other artworks, allowing me to see her arguments more affectively. Overall, the critique still serves as an effective explication of an otherwise intimidating interpretation of art.
Potts also approaches the critique in a unique manner, perhaps more so than either of the others due to his sculptural background. He focuses much more on the general form and composition of the painting, rather than becoming engrossed in details such as color and brush-strokes. The implied movement and action of the painting takes precedent for Potts. He describes how the cannibal’s body position and language provide meaning, and does so very effectively. In critiquing these aspects of composition, Potts’s execution is immaculate: concise, clear, and very successful. However he fails to mention aspects of context mentioned by Clark, and does not bother to critique miniscule details like Tuma.
Each critique successfully evaluates the art in different ways, but in seeing all three critiques it is clear that each of them lacks at least some of what the others contain. As such, Tuma, Potts, and Clark all present effective but incomplete critiques of art.
Julia Herron
ReplyDelete1.25.09
Response Essay 2
Clark creates a sweeping but complete description of Matisse’s Woman with a Hat that includes quotes from Matisse’s contemporaries, like Maurice Denis and Proust. Clark uses a richly descriptive vocabulary to describe the painting as well as Matisse’s state of mind. He incorporates the history of the painting and avoids using simple or basic terms. He might “go too far” in his assignment of meaning to Matisse’s comment “Black, obviously”, but most of his assumptions are grounded in the painting or in the research he has done into Matisse’s past. The following quotes are exemplary of Clark’s descriptive style:
• “It is as if Woman with a hat began as an imagining of Cezanne’s Woman in Blue abruptly stirring from her armoured, downcast immobility and swiveling to meet the viewer’s gaze; so that the blue of Woman in Blue’s costume- which is really more negative, more deeply inhuman and inorganic even than Baudelaire’s black- leaps into coloured flame”
• “And I have not really focused on the eyes- on the abstract patchwork of the two irises, and the slight shift and tilt between one eye and the next. The face is an intense circuit of equivalents, with every touch elated and investigative”
Tuma uses very descriptive, evocative language, and chooses his words very carefully. He relates Cezanne to other geniuses like Homer, Virgil, and Euclid, and closely examines the geometry of the painting. Tuma doesn’t delve into discussing the modern movement as a whole, choosing do focus on describing the painting’s colors and composition.
• “It is the audacious artifice of this shape, too- its insistent mechanistic geometricity in combination with its dissembling monochromy- that confers on the foliage, constantly on the verge of disaggregation, a counterfigural organic unity.”
Potts’ description is very concise and focuses more on a few key points than on describing every element of each sculpture. Potts defends the sculptures’ close-ups and the discrete nature of the different components. Potts also describes the sculptures’ structure and their meanings in detail, assigning characteristics and traits to the subjects that not every viewer might notice. He examines the disturbing cannibalistic nature of Sentinel I and the more sinister elements at play, like the unexpected and nonhuman forms. The following quote is an example of a good description from Potts:
• “Deprived of a lower leg, the son seems weirdly endowed, however, with two rigid left arms culminating, like an unrecognizable open tool, I knobby, fisted protrusions. His body is therefore menacingly pried open, like scissors, at both its extremities
Lauren Davis
ReplyDeleteResponse 2
From this weeks readings I came to understand that the critique of art can take many forms. Clark’s descriptions of “Madame Matisse’s Hat” focus primarily on colors he uses and the process by which he made something out of nothing. Specifically, Clark states “…again and again the face composes itself out of the clusters and surfaces, and becomes, pace Proust, all one thing”. He seems somewhat astonished by Matisse’s abilities, as this sentence follows paragraphs in which Clark mentions “awkward blots” and “abstract patchwork”. He depicts the reds, greens, oranges and yellows as being purposely out of place and somehow concludes that the purpose of using such a vast array of colors is in fact that they “open onto black”. Clark focuses on why the painting was made and what it is supposed to represent rather than developing his own opinion of the piece. He provides a decent amount of historical background to try and put the piece in context; however, not as much thorough examination regarding the painting itself.
Tuma, in my opinion, gave the best analytical critique of the three authors. Not only did she include the colors included in the piece “Le rocher rouge”, she also infers about the brushstrokes that are made and why they are used, the geometry of space that is created and why it is important, and meticulously describes what is being illustrated to the point that I could see the picture in my mind without once even looking at it. One of my favorite lines is when she states, “color, Cezanne seems to want to show, possesses properties like mass, attraction, gravitational pull”. I felt this description was applicable to all aspects of the painting and artwork in general- purpose, composition, and emotional appeal. Her method of analysis was both instructive and insightful.
The last of the critics, Potts, I could hardly follow. Maybe this mere fact alone portrays the quality of his analysis. He focuses on parts, structures, and the shape as a whole; however at the end of his account, I still could not imagine the sculpture he was trying to depict.
All three writers took different approaches at analytical description. Clearly this variance is the result of each critic noticing different aspects of an artistic piece.
Jenny Zhang
ReplyDeleteHA R1B Section 6
Reading Response #2:
After reading the descriptions and analysis of three different pieces of art by three different art critics, it is interesting to see that the form the art is presented in is especially important as to how one can study a piece. For example, when one reads through Clark and Tuma's analysis of Madame Matisse's Hat and Le roucher rouge, respectively, one can follow through the authors description of the colors painted over the canvas, the various forms of brush strokes used and the expressions and shapes of objects or parts of the subject. We see from their writing that each of the above features are used by the authors to convey meaning into the pieces. However, Potts' analysis of the sculptures is completely different because logically, sculptures do not have any colors or brush strokes; so instead Potts uses the form, shape, textures created or present in the materials, used in the art piece, to describe the sculpture. Among all three analysis, I found Potts' writing the most difficult to understand because there no object for me to observe as he was describing the piece, so I had to piece together a sculpture based on what he had written. However, that itself was difficult because Potts cannot address every element in the sculpture. Recalling back to chapter two in Writing Analytically, the authors remind us to produce a list of the three most interesting points to study in-depth instead of trying to fit everything we notice in a piece. Furthermore, there were many vocabularies to describe sculptures that I did not understand. For example, "variegated bends and tilts and curves and inclined facets..." (77). This shows one of the main limitations of describing art sculptures or pieces because they are three-dimensional and in order to understand the meaning in the art or the analysis of art critic, you need to have a full perspective of the sculpture because its shape and form are the main sources of detail. Furthermore, I noticed that describing two-dimensional art is more relatable because its features like color and lighting are things that people experience in their daily lives and triggers immediate impressions whereas a lot of modern structures are more abstract.
In all three passages, despite the differences in how they describe the works of art, concrete details are given, followed by the critic’s analysis of these details and the reason why they found the details important. For example, in one passage by Tuma, she talks about the lack of lines to outline the large, bright, reddish-orange boulder surrounding the right framing of the painting Le roucher rouge, and she analyzes this as Cezanne’s form of resisting the usage of “geometry…towards the clarification of boundaries” (75) because ultimately nature’s “objects are not distinguished by strict lines, instead, we perceive things around us based on their textures, colors, lightings, temperatures and other features. Hence, Tuma believes that art does not need to depict distinct lines as a way of idealizing our distinction of objects, subjects in nature. In Clark’s analysis of Madame Matisse’s Hat, the critic describes the hat being “splendid, but slightly crushing…abstract,” but he also inserts his own impressions of the hat, that “the painter does not seem interested in making its extravagance palpable.” (57). Overall, he explains his point about the hat, that is it a sign that “fashion is livelihood” in that sense because it is so big and is the first thing to draw our attention “…and maybe a bit of a burden” (57) because of the slouch of the hat and the gloomy color and expression seen on Madame Matisse’s face. Clark goes even further to say that maybe the painting speaks about Madame Matisse’s history, that her face is “the face of survival and anxiety” from the years of work she had put into her hats and the determination she had for supporting her family, in particular, her husband, who as a painter and had little income. All of the above are examples of how the writers were able to take simple concrete details from a piece of art and turn it into analysis, as a way of finding meaning in these works.
Christine Chou
ReplyDeleteOf the two articles on painting, I felt that T.J Clark had more effective passages of description. Along with interpretations on Matisse’s use of color in “Woman with a Hat,” Clark also provides a fuller picture of the work by including biographical information on the artist’s life and his wife. Without this contextual information, a lot of the meaning would be lost – for instance, it would be important to know that Matisse’s wife was a hat maker, and as Clark states, thus “the hat is very far from being an innocent symbol.” Tuma, on the other hand, focuses very little on such outside information. Her descriptions are instead lists of colors, which I found to be irritating after a while, because they didn’t seem to serve much purpose besides naming various colors in a procession, like she does in her opening paragraph. I felt that this section didn’t contribute much to her overall analysis. It was mostly a string of “next to the mauve...” “next comes a grizzled hue...”
Clark brings in other artists, such as Cezanne and his “Woman in Blue,” as a means of comparison with Matisse’s work, but Tuma leaves “Le rocher rouge” rather insulated. With sparse details on Cezanne’s life, Tuma’s analysis delves more specifically into the use of brushwork and color and how this relates to Cezanne’s view on geometry in association with art and the world. I find it interesting that both these artists privileged color above all else – Matisse used it to comment on sensuousness and its artificiality in modern surroundings, and Cezanne used color to highlight the falsity of a clearly delineated, geometric world.
In Potts’ article, the description focuses largely on the object’s physical appearance, but he keeps in mind the way a viewer would interact with a sculpture. As three-dimensional objects, sculptures are more physically felt – through spatial relationships, lighting effects on surfaces, etc. Potts states, “Moving between distance and close views...produces another somewhat different effect.” This line draws a link with Tuma’s article, which mentions how the closer you get to Cezanne’s painting, the more the image seems to disintegrate and dissolve into a mess of brushstrokes instead of something solid - though a viewer’s shifting perspective is probably more applicable to sculpture – but the breakdown of the image in Cezanne’s work is touched upon in Tuma’s argument about the “foundering” geometry in the painting.
Overall, I think good description shouldn’t just be a literal transcription of something visual into something textual, because that wouldn’t provide anything new. It would just be like looking at the painting, only in word form. Instead, the critic should also create a context in which to situate the painting, whether that’s biographical or environmental (where was the work originally placed? assuming it wasn’t created at the outset to be placed in a museum). Also, I think an important contribution to an analysis of a work would be the inclusion of some words from the artists themselves, in order to take into consideration the artist’s original vision or intent. For example, to miss out on Cezanne’s declaration “there are no lines in nature” would detract from a viewer’s understanding of “Le rocher rouge” and Cezanne’s coloristic view of the world, which Tuma emphasizes as fundamental to this work.
Victor Gonzalez
ReplyDeleteSection 6
I was in my first college English class when I heard something that challenged everything I believed Art to be. My GSI said, “Art is artificial.” What I believed to be genius, she saw as man-made. Now, as I learn about the history and practice of art, I ask myself, is art actually artificial? Does analysis yield disenchantment with any given work of art? As I read through the articles of T.J. Clark, Tuma, and Potts, I kept these questions in mind. I noticed that although all three critics mentioned the core elements of art in practice—color choice, brushstrokes, intent—their style and the components of art that they focused on affected the way I saw the piece. For instance, after reading T.J. Clark’s analysis, I felt that Matisse’s Woman with a Hat was an historically interesting painting. But after reading Tuma and Potts’ analyses, I felt that the art was, to some degree, alive.
T.J. Clark’s analysis focuses on Henri Matisse’s interesting use of color in Woman with a Hat. He even ventures to say that it was a response to Cezanne’s Woman in Blue. For T.J. Clark, color marked the painting’s success. T.J. Clark comments that “Colours, in a painting like Woman with a Hat, are forced apart from their normal identities so that some work of mourning, or cherishing.” (54) This point is perhaps best illustrated by Matisse’s use of the same pink in the cheekbone and the glove embroidery. The two details are strikingly different even thought they are the same color. T.J. Clark argues that this is precisely what makes Matisse’s work so interesting.
Tuma presents Paul Cezanne’s Le rocher rouge as if it were alive. It is almost as if Tuma is giving us a tour of the painting. Tuma writes, “you are looking towards a stretch of path, but the ground subtending your viewpoint is not positioned on that path […]” (71). Tuma writes that the life of the painting is not drawn from color, but rather from the types of strokes that make up the painting. The strokes give the painting an intensity that color cannot.
Similarly, Potts creates life-like description in his analysis by taking us through every detail of the image and focusing on the importance of the brush strokes. Potts writes, “the young man’s lumpen torso is a mysterious accumulation of protuberances.” (78) Not only does Potts vividly describe the painting, he also creates a form of narrative. Potts does this by comparing the torso of the young man with a “mysterious accumulation of protuberances.” (78) To me, it almost seems as if it Art itself is a language. In this sense, art can use brush strokes, color, and other features to create metaphors.
In answer to my own question, I believe art is not necessarily artificial. The components involved in making art, including the artist’s intent, may seem artificial in that they are instruments that create art, but the final product is ultimately artistic genius. The different styles of analysis that. T.J. Clark, Tuma, and Potts use to describe are different attempts to decipher the language of art.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFelby Chen
ReplyDeleteHA R1B
Section 6
Everyone has their own way of critiquing and analyzing art. When it comes to T.J. Clark’s description of “Madame Matisse’s Hat”, Kathryn A. Tuma’s description of “Cezanne and Lucretius at the Red Rock”, and Alex Potts’ description of David Smith’s “Wagon II” and “Sentinel I”, one notices that each author definitely have different approaches to attacking the selected paintings and sculptures.
T. J. Clark description of “Madame Matisse’s Hat” tends include many rhetorical questions and personal opinions. He also tends to refer to the opinions of others, which in some parts of the text, are quite helpful, and in other parts of the text, seem irrelevant (as on page 56 of the reader where he writes “Phew! Proust’s passage is irresistible, I feel, and very modern, precisely in its being unbelievable”). T. J. Clark also include Madame Matisse’s historical background, which is extremely useful when analyzing art, but I feel he talks about her historical background a little too much. While T. J. Clark does a relatively good job of analyzing “Madame Matisse’s Hat” by targeting the bits and parts of Madame Matisse’s clothing and her poses, as well as incorporating the use of color in the painting, he does not really touch upon the use of brush strokes in the painting. I have no problem with his deep interest and focus on Madame Matisse’s clothing and poses and the use of color in the painting, but Clark definitely references other’s opinions a little too much. He tends to describe what other critics think and describe the critics themselves a lot, when he could be using the space to focus on brush strokes or other aspects of the painting.
Kathryn A. Tuma’s description of “Cezanne and Lucretius at the Red Rock” is my favorite of the three. Not only does she incorporate the use of color, brushstrokes, and analyze the painting from different perspectives, but she does not deviate from the painting she is analyzing like T. J. Clark does. Kathryn A. Tuma could have improved her analysis by including how shadows affect one’s view of the painting, as well as included more personal thoughts, but overall, her analysis is by far the best of the three critics we have been assigned to read, especially since every aspect she covers (color, brushstrokes, perspectives) is not too long but long enough to have a great understanding of the painting. Her description of “Cezanne and Lucretius at the Red Rock” is a great example of a good description and analysis of art.
Alex Potts’ description of David Smith’s “Wagon II” and “Sentinel I” does not cover many aspects of the sculptures, but definitely goes into a good amount of detail about the shapes and positioning of the sculptures. Potts could have elaborated on the use of shadows, or the materials used to create the sculptures, in his description of David Smith’s “Wagon II” and “Sentinel I”. I think Potts’ description of the selected art is pretty good too, and probably the second best essay of the three critiques assigned for homework.
As I read the assigned reading with the question “what is analysis?” in mind, one thing that stuck with me was: “you must resign yourself to the fact that everything cannot be intelligible”, (52). This theory was further explained throughout Clark’s passages as he described the incapability of comprehension in relation to Cézanne’s portrait, “Woman in Blue”. Clark explained how people were unable to appreciate the piece of artwork and consequently ridiculed it due to lack of understanding. “Woman in Blue” was mocked and made fun of until an earlier painting was discovered and compared, (54). In this way, Clark described analysis as open-ended perception where one must place their trust in instinct. This portion of Clark’s article casts a slight feeling of liberation upon me as I as beginning to understand that artwork is not always easily understood and written about.
ReplyDeleteThe passage in Clark’s writing that offers the most effectiveness (in relation to direct description) is the first paragraph on page fifty-eight, in which he closely describes the posture Cézanne chose to present his wife in. Clark uses words such as: ‘sideways’, ‘oblique’, ‘turned’, ‘slightly’, ‘not quite’, ‘frontal’, ‘to our right’, and ‘bold’. He efficiently uses these words to describe the positioning of the focal image in the portrait. The one thing I would say that he leaves out is color; he does not mention color much in this passage. Clark ultimately builds his description into mental representation, in that if one’s eyes were to be closed as one listened to Clark’s description, one could imaging the positioning of the focal image in the piece.
Tuma, on the other hand, made much reference to color. The passage that offered the most effective description was the main paragraph on page seventy-one, in reference to Cézanne’s “The Red Rock” portrait. Words such as: ‘mixed’, ‘blend’, ‘brick brown’, black blue’, pinkish hue’, ‘shadow’, ‘washed out’, and etc, served as key terms in the description of the painting. Though the portrait appears black and white in my reader, the vast color description Tuma provided allowed me to envision the portrait as she did. In addition, Tuma used many metaphors that alluded to the artwork (i.e. “atomic unit”). I believe this is a good method in order to draw in the attention of viewers and readers whose background may not be solely in art.
Plotts’ method of description was heavily based on the description of shapes and angles. He used words like: ‘bends’, ‘tilts’, ‘curves’, and ‘inclines’ to describe the portrait. In describing, Plotts focused on the bigger picture, where as the other two focused on smaller, more detailed things (i.e. color blend and positioning).
Danielle Lee
ReplyDeleteI believe artwork is something that should be open to interpretation. It should compel the viewers to wonder what the story behind the painting is. If too much information is given away, however, the viewers are robbed of this opportunity to come up with their own ideas of why the artist made what he made. Tuma and Potts, while they both wrote vivid descriptions, allow for the viewers to make up their own stories while Clark provides several biographical facts about Madame Matisse.
Clark, I believe says too much about Madame Matisse and Matisse. The overload of personal information tells too much about the relationship. Clark provides personal information such as stating “since both spouses were emerging from a sequence of dismal years in which neither’s activity did much to pay the bills, the hat and the painting are put in an imagined (utopian) equilibrium” (57). The factual presentation that the marriage was coming out of “dismal” era, could open up the opportunity for a reader to take this into consideration rather than his/her own outlook on the painting.
Tuma writes with descriptive vocabulary and understandable interpretations of color and stroke usage. When he describes the painting he does so in detail, focusing on different areas of the painting at a time. For example, he writes “in the lower-left corner the under painting peeks out as an instance of the path’s orange, occluded then by a dark-purple mauve, echoing the painting’s interlacing of dimness and brightness” (61). This description not only allows for the reader to understand and imagine the image but it also incorporates a different artistic theme, lighting.
Potts description is harder to understand than Tuma’s. I believe that this is because it is harder to picture a three-dimensional sculpture rather than the previous descriptions of paintings. Potts does not provide an image for the reader to view and understand and instead requires for the construction of all the elements he writes off.
Overall, I believe that a good description should not give away too much personal information, should focus on different parts of an artwork, and should provide a viable presentation of the artwork.
Brendan Cronshaw
ReplyDeleteResponse Essay 2
1.26.09
The three visual descriptions provided by Clark, Tuma, and Potts, allow, or at least try to allow us, to understand and be able to make sense of the works that they are describing. What immediately occurred to me as I read them was that each critic has their own way of relaying their views and perceptions of the pieces they are viewing, even if they are describing the same thing, and that each tends to focus on slightly different things in each piece. Clark and Tuma both describe and detail paintings, Woman with a Hat and Le roucher rouge respectively, and include detailed descriptions of color and shape, while Potts succinctly describes David Smith’s Wagon II and Sentinel I, giving limited details about the two sculptures.
T.J. Clark’s description and analysis of Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Hat focuses greatly on the colors used by Matisse as well as what they represent and why he chose them. Also, which neither of the other two critics do, Clark delves sufficiently into the history of not only the work of art, but of the painter and the subject of the painting, Madame Matisse. It appears to me that Clark obviously feels that in order to understand the painting, it is necessary to understand the subject who is depicted in it. Clark also does a complete job of describing the colors used, the type of strokes which are used in relationship to the colors, as well as what certain shapes are, are not, and could possibly be. However, what is lacking in his description is a straightforward description of what the piece looks like as a whole; what he does instead is pick it apart and focus on each individual part separately. Clark clearly realizes that much, if not all of the painting is open to interpretation and thus gives examples of what certain shapes and strokes are such as “the exact shade of green chosen for the bar of shadow (if that is what it is) across Parayre’s brow” (59).
The description given by Kathryn Tuma does quite a good job at immediately establishing what is going on in the painting. She relays to the reader that “you are looking toward a stretch of path, but the ground subtending your viewpoint is not positioned on that path, although it appears to stretch to the edges” (71) and goes into even greater detail and depth when she begins to describe and list the colors Cézanne uses. Personally, her description is the simplest and easiest to understand and make sense of, and that is why I like it the most. Her use of basic, concrete ideas and words, and her straightforward approach of conveying not only the shape, color and size of all pieces of the painting, but also what the painting does, makes it extremely easy to follow.
Lastly is Alex Potts’s short description of two sculptures. I found this description to be the most lacking in detail and depth as it fails to enable me to build a mental picture of what the sculptures look like, or even make one feel. He does mention a few concrete descriptions of certain parts such as “the surface texturing of the metal rods can acquire a slight suppleness reminiscent of living members” (77). However what he does best is share with the reader what specific parts of the sculptures look like by comparing them to other things such as “cartilage” (77). He falls short of giving concrete descriptions of the sculptures as a whole and I feel like this impedes it from being a sufficient description and analysis of a piece of art; what good does it do to describe something if people cannot understand, or at the very least visualize, what you are talking about? I’m no art major or expert, but I cannot seem to make a connection with Potts description, it simply does not seem sufficient.
Landon Turner
ReplyDeleteWhat is Analysis?
The first essay, by T.J. Clark to me, seems to try to dispel some myths surrounding Henri Matisse's Woman with a Hat. He starts his essay by mentioning a critique by Maurice Denis. He seems to draw out of this critique that there is a dialectic overtone in the picture, and that several elements of the picture he later mentions add to this idea of opposing theories. He names the Matisse effect as the “jarring between likeness and transposition, or literalness and impossibility”. He gives a brief summary of the life of Matisse and his wife as well which provide some incite into the painting, which I believe in many respects was extraneous.
The picture itself is a series of brash brushstrokes forming a woman holding some sort of fan in her right hand. She is looking over her shoulder at the viewer, with large open eyes and skin colored lips. Her hat, which seems to be the focal point of the picture is extravagant, yet defined with almost crude brushstrokes that do not reveal great detail. Similarly, on the fan there is a design which remains elusive. Clark mentions that it could be drooping flowers drawn on the fan. The bottom of the picture seems to me to decompose into less ineligible figures.
Clark provides some inspiration for the painting I found interesting. He points out that Matisse uses the same colors in different parts of the painting. This would ordinarily mean little, but Matisse's color choices are all very vibrant, and to me seems to defy reality. The same colors for two different objects is just another example of the duality of the picture. He also mentions that the “face composes itself out of the clusters and surfaces, and becomes … all one thing”. He creates this face out of different brush strokes that make “clusters and surfaces”. The painting bleeds anxiety, which I believe shows through her gesture: her eyes and body language are almost awkward, yet elegant. The color choice gives off a sensuousness feel, “at the point of being or becoming all calculation and anxiety”. He has several different methods of producing opposing feelings.
Cezanne believed that drawing is just a configuration of what is seen. His drawing is a collection of dabs and small brush strokes making up a forest scene with a light orange path extending upward to the right. The path is obscured by the trees, and there lie several color impediments in the way. In the bottom left there is a green grey block. The top right of the picture obscures the view. An orange figure appears, which immediately drew my eye. I found it strange that as I look at this picture, the part that struck me the most, I still cannot make out. I guess it is a large rock shelf protruding, but lack of definite features, and a dark black outline, contrary to the outline-less trees and path make it hard to make that claim definitively.
I also found it interesting how Cezanne refers to paintings in the physical sciences. He relates brush stroke to an atomic unit. An invisible force in the background of the painting that holds it together. “It is never the case that the stroke 'is' an atomic unit. It is a particular kind of metaphor”. “'The canvas was nothing more for the Provencal master than a blackboard on which a geometer searches for the solution to a problem'” claimed R. P. Rievere and J. F. Schenerb. It sounds strange to say, but until I looked this picture up on the internet to see the actual brush strokes and the color choices, I had no idea what they meant. The strokes all have a commonality and display a square blockness that could be described as an “atomic unit” for the picture.
I wished that our reader could offer us colored pictures, but the way the authors described the paintings and sculptors with such vividness and detail helped me to imagine them. Although I believe in the importance of detail, I feel that some interpretations were too focused on small, fine items. For example, Clark seems to have talked about every single color, the direction of its stroke, and where it was located. I feel he talked much less about the picture as a whole and how those individual colors and strokes played a part of it. I am not saying that he should not speak in detail, but to put more focus on other aspects of the painting to leverage his evaluation of the painting. Tuma also notices on small details as well, but his argument is about the invisible atom that creates the visible, material world. This made those details relevant to the argument, where’s Clark seemed to be speaking his scattered and still-malleable thoughts out loud and asking the audience for their opinion too. Clark’s scattered thoughts also made it hard allocate his central point. His invitation to engage with the reader came on strong with attacks of questions. Potts excerpt was more concrete, stating what he knew and less of what he wondered. I respect both styles of writing – one sharing and engaging with the audience and the other more didactic.
ReplyDeleteThe authors presented other critics’ views and interpretation. Then, they went on to show how and to what extent they agreed or disagreed with those critics.
Clark does a good job in applying his interpretations to the creation’s time period. For readers like me who have no experience in modern art, historical insight allows us to understand his interpretations better (and probably form our own). Clark also applied his interpretations to the artist and his wife’s lives as individuals. For example, he explains how the hat represented not only the fashion trend of the society, but also Parayre’s relation to it. Clark explains how she is attached to this piece of article – yes, it is because she is talented in handiwork, but also it is her survival skill; she cannot support her family without it.
Tuma offers interpretation from Cezanne’s technical approach of creating a series of geometric shapes: commas, wedges, particles, dabs, and more. I particularly value his evaluation of the painting, and then quoting Cezanne to show that his evaluation was not fully correct. He convinced me that there were truly commas, wedges, and more. However, Cezanne says that he does not believe in geometry and its “lines” – that the paintings were simply the collision of colors to create the abstraction of “lines” in nature.
The reading from Alex Potts was significantly less lengthy than Clark and Tuma’s. In the excerpt we are shown, Potts does well to concisely describe and interpret the sculptures. I particularly was fond of how he compared the sculptures to each other. That way it is easier for me, an unexperienced eye, to see the important dissimilarities.
History of Art R1B Section 6
ReplyDeleteReading Response 2
Bing Lin
I feel that art analysis can be likened to a journey through the painting, with different ways that one could proceed with this journey. T.J. Clark, Kathryn Tuma, and Alex Potts, all approached the journey in different ways, some more effective, at least for me, than others.
Of the three articles, the one by T.J. Clark is the only article that provided background information for the painting, and for someone who do not recognize the painting or the artist, like me for example, having this context upon which to view a painting or understand the artist is useful. T.J. Clark, in describing Madame Matisse’s Hat, seems to utilize a style that jumps from one point another, connecting each with rhetorical questions and background information that is relevant to either the subject of the painting or the painter himself. Clark seems to like providing other critics’ points of views about the painting first to provide a contextual background for his own opinions and critiques of the painting. He provides Maurice Denis’s comments on Matisse, which relates the mental and the sensual aspects of the painting, using them as a jumping point to his own, concluding that Denis’s view of Woman with a Hat as “dialectical, noumenal and self-cancelling” as “profoundly right” (65). From this point, he jumps to explain his own interpretation of what Matisse is doing, stating that “colour would recapitulate sensuousness, but in the very process of negating itself and becoming a mental image” (65). Clark’s use of other’s points as a jump off point seems to suggest that he has thought about what others have said and concluded his own thoughts based on his own intuitive opinions as well as what other contemporaries have considered, thus allowing me to understand more of why Madam Matisse’s Hat would be such a discussed piece.
Unlike Clark’s analysis, which seems to be points after points after points, Tuma’s contained a lot more description, specifically description of color. While I appreciate Tuma’s extensive detailing of each color following another, allowing me to more able to visualize the colors in the painting in my head, the descriptions also overwhelmed me, swallowing me in the flood of colors that Tuma seems to see in the painting. Tuma also focuses quite a bit on the strokes of the painting, with the intensive explanation of each stroke causing me to not quite understand the point she was trying to make. Also, Tuma may be avoiding injection of her opinion during the description of the flow of colors, but in using so many adjectives and descriptive phrases for the colors and their movements, I see her attitude forming, an attitude that almost criticizes how the colors are placed. Thus, though Tuma may have been the most descriptive, spending many sentences on the color placement on the foliage, I feel that she loses the main point of the painting and causes me to lose sense of the piece.
As for the Potts’s analysis, like Tuma, not much background context is provided, so I am unable to comprehend certain artistic decisions and thus fail at understanding the subject that Potts presents. Also, Potts’s analysis is structured more like a story, where he describes what happens in the painting as if it was happening right now, as if the painting was alive. While this gives the painting a more animated feeling, it fails to allow me to imagine what the piece actually looks like and again, the lack of historical background of the society during that time or the lack of information on the artist fails to engage me in the drawing.