Purpose: The Artist’s Reason
It astounds me when I think about all of the unique pieces of art and sculptures that exist. Each piece vibrates with its creator’s passions and embraces its own meaning. Two such creations are Albert Bierstadt’s Yosemite Valley, California from 1863 and Maurits Cornelis (M.C.) Escher’s Concave/Convex from 1955. The former is classified as landscape art and the latter is classified as abstract art. Both paintings are distinct in their own way. However, the disparities between the two should not overshadow the one aspect each piece shares—a purpose.
Yosemite Valley, California is a canvas landscape painting. It depicts the physical world; specifically, it is a representation of nature. The painting emphasizes detail. It features many trees and bushes near a pond. One can clearly see the uneven bark on the branches of the trees which project outward from the base. Each branch holds a fixed number of leaves. However, as one moves upward from the base, there is a general augmentation in the number of leaves. On the bottom left corner, the painting portrays simple, bare land concealed with dirt. The pond reflects the vegetative growth which encompasses it. Realistically, the reflections in the water are not as clear as the part of the environment being reflected. Mighty mountains that seem to touch the blue sky stand tall in the background. Because they are farther off in the distance, they are not as detailed but one can certainly tell that they are there.
M.C. Escher’s painting is slightly more abstract. His work—a masterful but hypothetical innovation—does not awe the beholder with bright colors. Instead, it awes the beholder with black and white detail and lets him/her know th...
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Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
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It appears to me that pictures have been over-valued; held up by a blind admiration as ideal things, and almost as standards by which nature is to be judged rather than the reverse; and this false estimate has been sanctioned by the extravagant epithets that have been applied to painters, and "the divine," "the inspired," and so forth. Yet in reality, what are the most sublime productions of the pencil but selections of some of the forms of nature, and copies of a few of her evanescent effects, and this is the result, not of inspiration, but of long and patient study, under the instruction of much good sense…
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