Analysis of a work of Art
The artist who made the piece I chose is named David Paul Bradley who is a Minnesota Chippewa American. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, as well as University of Arizona and College of Santa Fe. The title of the work is “South Dakota” and this piece was painted in 1980. The medium used to make this piece was acrylic paints on a canvas.
The subject matter of this piece is very detailed. The first thing your eye is drawn to is the Native American man looking at the calendar on the wall and his dog that is near him. The man is very slim and narrow, not taking up too much room in the picture itself. He also is looking at the calendar on the wall in such a way that makes his head turn in
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South Dakota has always been a sacred and important place for Native Americans and I think that is crucial to the meaning of the painting. The man in the painting is looking to the calendar on the wall that has the date “Columbus Day" circled. To me this is the most important hint within the painting. This is a direct reference to the day that Europeans landed in the Americas, and celebrates that event. Obviously, that day has a very different meaning to the Native American people and their way of life. When this painting was made in 1980, Columbus Day was still celebrated in this state. Ten years later in 1990, the state chose to make it Native American Day instead to honor the struggle of Native Americans and their culture.
I really like how this artist used many different design elements to convey the meaning to the piece. The balance of this piece relies on the placement of the subject matter and main focal points within the piece. The painting first catches your eye with the man, the gun, and the dog. Then the longer you look at it, the more subordinate detail you see. The details are very strategically spread out so that you must keep looking at the painting to put all of the pieces together. I would say the balance is asymmetrical because both sides of the painting are not the same, but still weighted
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For example, one of his paintings is imitating currency and is labeled “Museum Currency” and is referencing the “Land O’ Lakes” Label with the Native American woman kneeling on the ground. Instead of the brands label, it says “Land O’ Fakes” as the label with the woman holding a mask of a face off to the side, and her face appears to be a Native American skeleton face. There is much more detail to that painting as well and really makes you think about the subject matter and the point he is trying to get across. I love how I look at an art piece of his and think I know what it is about right away, but then the longer you look at it the more hidden messages and clues you
These art works are concerning what occurred in October 1867 when Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa and the United States government signed a peace treaty (Sayre, Pg. 40). The syllable of the syllable. The treaty was signed at Medicine Lodge Creek on Arkansas River in Kansas (Sayre, Pg. 40). The syllable of the syllable. John Taylor’s art was created off of sketches that were completed shortly after the events (Sayre, Pg. 40).
...d Native Americas in a negative light, such as Carl Wimer’s Abduction of Daniel Boone’s Daughter, George Caleb Bingham’s Concealed Enemy, and Horatio Greenough’s The Rescue. These two paintings and statue in particular should be included because they depict the views of people in that era. The view of Native Americans was that of savagery. In the painting by Wimer the woman is depicted a fair skinned maiden, due to the white dress who is being brutishly taken away. The statue by Greenough, which depicts a man protecting his family from a savage Native American, was outside of the United States Capital for nearly a hundred years before it was taken down. These views of indigenous people during the 19th century have lasting impacts on our country. It is our job to tell the real story of what happened to the Native Americans as victims of our view of manifest destiny.
The subject does not accurately depict the human anatomy. In fact, while studying this figure, one may notice that geometric shapes make up many of the limbs. For example, the artist uses ovals to represent the palm of the hands, the shoulders and the knees. The man's chest is in the form of squares with rounded edges and with perfect little white circles as nipples. This...
Starting with visual elements I saw lines, implied depth, and texture. I see lines by him using lines created by an edge. Each line is curved not straight but it works with the piece. By using this he creates the piece to make it whole. He uses many curved lines within the painting I don’t know if there is a straight line in the whole thing. The next element I saw was implied depth. Using linear perspective you can see the mountains but they look smaller than the rest of the piece. They are the vanishing point in the back making it look as if you can walk down and they will get closer and closer to you. The last element that I saw was texture. They talk about Van Gogh’s painting, The Starry Night having texture through a two- dimensional surface, in which this painting has that similar feel. Van Gogh uses thick brush stokes on his paintings to show his feelings. There is actually a name for this called, Impasto,
After coming home I thought it would be a good idea to do some research. What was going on at the time Benton painted, June Morning? This would help to solve the mystery of what some of the symbolism was trying to say. Thomas Hart Benton was a regionalist who used art to depict the experiences of an everyday American.
The mixed reaction I have towards the painting is because, first off, I still wouldn’t know what is really behind it or what it’s trying to tell us without looking at it from a distance. When I looked at it from a computer desktop I could see a shoe, a mountai...
I recently took a trip to the Jocelyn Art Museum. There they had many great painting in the permanent art collection. One that caught my eye, which I had seen many times before, but never knew any thing about, was a painting called Stone City, Iowa , which was created by Grant Wood in 1930. This painting is oil on wood panel and is
My friends, after traveling through the Asian continent and Japan, I continued on to the Americas. The art in the Americas has three regions, North America, Central America, and South America. Each region has a very distinct aspect to their forms of art. All cultures have some kind of art. Being curious about art, I have collected samples from five different areas. The following works of art are very different from European art, but there are still some similarities. The similarities of the human spirit are evident in the following images.
The paintings Sioux Village near Fort Laramie by Albert Bierstadt, Dakota Indians by William Gilbert Gaul, and Medicine Man by Charles Marion Russell all represent the frontier life for Native Americans during the American Old West. All three paintings show life on the plains with the wide-open fields. Then Sioux Village near Fort Laramie and Dakota Indians show the N...
Spears, Shandra. "Re-Constructing the Colonizer: Self-representation by First Nations Artists ." ATLANTIS 29.2 (2005): 1 - 18 . Print.
Gardner, Helen, and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. N.p., 2014. Print.
The Missouri River stretches 2,341 miles across a vast variety of land. As this winding body of water cuts through the Midwest, it almost cuts the state of South Dakota into two very different worlds. Within South Dakota, East River people have a better quality of life than West River people.
Another example of how art represented in the Native North America exhibit is a painting by David Paul Bradley, a Chippewa artist, titled Greasy Grass Premonition #2. It depicts a scene from the Battle of Little Bighorn, but the tombstone explains that Native Americans know it as the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek. By providing that information for the audience, the MFA is allowing them a glimpse into the minds of Native Americans and their culture instead of presenting it as another example of Western bias.
The painting is very humanistic and portrays a very real and anatomically correct portrayal of the men in the painting.
Each drawing. Each painting. Each sculpture. It can give you a glimpse of what is going on in the artist’s head. Take the painting “El Autobus” by Frida Kahlo as an example. It has been said that the painting is in reference of the accident Frida Kahlo had where she got impaled by a metal handrail. The painting is of a bench with people sitting on it just before boarding the bus. This kind of artwork, where the artist puts a little bit of him/her self in it is something I strive for. I want to make art that reflects me, or that means something to me. I don’t want to make something just because, I want it to be where the viewer could possibly see the hard work, the passion, the emotion behind it. Things that most times get