Question 1: How did Edvard Munch attempt to visualize intense emotion in his paintings? Discuss in relation to particular paintings.
Edvard Munch is a highly influential artist, pioneering many of the ideas that informed the German Expressionist movement. The crux of his work is in the reflection the death, grief and emotion of his own experiences. Drawing from his own tortured upbringing, with the death of his father, brother and sister, as well as his own mental and physical illnesses. There are several ways in which he visualises this emotion in his work. Through form, colour and technique Munch translates his obsession with psychological states into highly striking works that have resounded through generations of artists and audiences.
One notable stylistic feature of Munch’s works is the way in which he dissolves the forms into a representation of their essence rather than focusing on them individually. He aims to capture an emotion in a work rather than creating pictures of the ordinary. As he states in a diary entry in 1889 “No more interiors should be painted, no people reading and women knitting. They should be living people who breathe, feel, suffer and love. People shall understand the holy quality about them and bare their heads before them as if in church.” The figures interact with the scenes around them, the mood of the painting often resounding between the two. A classic example of this in one of his most notable works The Scream. The central figure merges with the sway of the background, the agonised expression on his face echoing in bands of colour through to the blood red sky. By reducing the figure to a clothed skull caught in a moment of emotional crisis, Munch translates a feeling of anguish to the...
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...Analysis Legomenon, Accessed May 11, 2012 http://legomenon.com/meaning-of-the-scream-1893-painting-by-edvard-munch.html
- Jaster, Roman. Essays > The Dance of Life Edvard Munch - The Dance of Life Site, Accessed May 2, 2014, http://www.edvard-munch.com/backg/essays/danceoflife_essay.htm
- Horsley, Carter B. Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul, The City Review, Accessed May 8, 2014, http://www.thecityreview.com/munch.html
- The Storm, 1893 by Edvard Munch, Edvard Munch: Paintings, Biography, and Quotes, Accessed May 8, 2014, http://www.edvardmunch.org/the-storm.jsp
- Madonna, 1894 by Edvard Munch, Edvard Munch: Paintings, Biography, and Quotes, Accessed May 8, 2014, http://www.edvardmunch.org/madonna.jsp
- Høifødt, Frank. Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Father of Expressionism Metropolitan News Company, Accessed May 10, 2014, http://www.mnc.net/norway/munch.htm
2 is otherworldly. Because the subject matter, emotion, is an entity that cannot be observed, its depiction results an equally confusing and incomprehensibility. Seen under the same light used to see the world, the image cannot be more ambiguous: it resembles nothing. But there is an artistic purpose to this madness. While Kandinsky seeks to capture music, Pollock aims to capture his changing emotional states. The incomprehensibility, however, adds another dimension to the painting. Faced with nothing familiar, the viewer is forced to question not the painting but the painter’s mind itself, leading to a deeper understanding of the depicted emotions. What could he have possibly been
Artists are masters of manipulation. They create unimaginably realistic works of art by using tools, be it a paintbrush or a chisel as vehicles for their imagination to convey certain emotions or thoughts. Olympia, by Manet and Bierstadt’s Sierra Nevada Mountains both are mid nineteenth century paintings that provide the viewer with different levels of domain over the subject.
John Gardner: Making Life Art as a Moral Process. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. 86-110. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed.
many other emotions that the artist is trying to display in his painting. Although we can try and
"Modern art." Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2011. Web. 02 Dec. 2011. .
The two paintings I have selected for the essay concerning representational, abstract, and non-representational art are “Judith and Holofernes” by Artemisia Gentileschi and “Dark Abstraction” by Georgia O’Keeffe.
...oughts and feeling would be mostly the heaviness, and darkness of the brush strokes. It is almost as though I could feel the emotion Van Gogh had when he was painting this work. This is in fact the one and only work at the Detroit Institute of Art that caught my eyes and actually made me interested to find out just why exactly the work made me feel the way I did. These brush strokes were what made Van Gogh so unique, and I now see why. They make you think and feel. No other work of art has ever successfully done any such thing to me. Van Gogh’s work represents, in many fashions, the quest for self-serenity, as seen by the figures all relaxing by a riverbank. What this work gave me was the knowledge to be able to understand artworks, and be able to perhaps decipher what the artist is implying, and that art is much more than simply a bunch of colors made into a scene.
Since its emergence over 30,000 years ago, one of visual art’s main purposes has been to act as an instrument of personal expression and catharsis. Through the mastery of paint, pencil, clay, and other mediums, artists can articulate and make sense of their current situation or past experiences, by portraying their complex, abstract emotions in a concrete form. The act of creation gives the artist a feeling of authority or control over these situations and emotions. Seen in the work of Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, Jean Michel-Basquiat, and others, artists’ cathartic use of visual art is universal, giving it symbolic value in literature. In Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
Art is a very important part of humanity’s history, and it can be found anywhere from the walls of caves to the halls of museums. The artists that created these works of art were influenced by a multitude of factors including personal issues, politics, and other art movements. Frida Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh, two wildly popular artists, have left behind artwork, that to this day, influences and fascinates people around the world. Their painting styles and personal lives are vastly different, but both artists managed to capture the emotions that they were feeling and used them to create artwork.
“Introduction to Modern Art.” metmuseum.org. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 18 June 2009. Web. 25 Sep. 2009.
From an early age, van Gogh was heavily influenced by art. Both his brother and uncle belonged to a Paris-based art dealership, providing exposure to the contemporary art of the time. Heavily influenced by master artist such as Millet and Rembrandt, van Gogh focused much of his early work on human figures, drawing on shadows and light rather than color to create dimension. At the same time that van Gogh was developing his skills as an artist, a series of unfortunate events plague his life. A failed love affair, his father’s death, and a short-lived period of study at the Antwerp Academy help set the stage for what would be a life of hardship and perceived failure. At the same time, van Gogh developed a longing to serve humanity and took an
Works of art provoke thought, questions, and emotions. Although all art is vastly different, the common thread its ability to create emotion. Whether those emotions are positive, negative, intense, or subtle. A very common theme between pieces can be sorrow. This is a feeling more intense than just sadness. Sorrow affects the whole body and can make a person just collapse. When looking into a piece with this theme the observer can get a quick glimpse into exactly how the artist was feeling. It’s a window into their soul. This theme has been present in paintings from the 1400s and even in the 1900s. Michelangelo’s Pieta and Van Gogh’s Old Man in Sorrow show this theme perfectly. Many would think to compare paintings hundreds of years apart,
David Becker painted a piece in 1998 titled Empty Every Night which depicts life and mortality of the human body. The elements of this image work together to provide a explanation of this piece to the audience. Becker uses specific techniques to show the chaos in human life. The meaning behind this image is not visible at first glance but requires some extra background knowledge. In this essay, I will frame a visual analysis for this piece and discuss how research effected my perception of David Becker and this work.
"History of Art:The Impressionism - Edgar Degas." History of Art:The Impressionism - Edgar Degas. http://www.all-art.org/history480-5.html (accessed April 23, 2014).
Art affects everyone differently, and with me there are very few artists that affect me at all. Vincent Van Gogh’s artwork makes me see another perspective, another world much different than my own. Van Gogh’s life was plagued by mental illness, the extent of which varied throughout his life and is visible is his work. I believe his artwork was greatly influenced by his early life and mental health, especially The Starry Night, Café Terrace at Night, and Sorrow.