The piece of art that I have chosen is Roxy Paine’s Conjoined created in 2007. This is a representational piece depicting a pair of trees taken from nature and joined by their branches. The trees themselves are cylindrical, smooth and shiny from all angles. They reflect light from all sides creating a mirror like appearance.
The branches initially flow upward but then gradually flow into the middle where they are conjoined. They are located in Madison Square Park where they seem to blend in with the rest of the trees but they definitely manage to stand out. Because they serve no function other than visual I consider this sculpture to be fine art.
Roxy Paine welds cylindrical stainless steel pipes and rods to form and shape these two trees. Although the branches and trunks are smooth he leaves the welding/joining marks on the trees, I think this might be a creative imperfection. The trees are very clean, they are not an exact copy of other trees in the park and they do not contain bark or leaves. The trees appear very minimalistic.
The stainless steel trees are very shiny bu...
One work that particularly caught my attention was a photograph called “Big James Sweats Bullets” from the series Sugar Children. The content or subject matter of the artwork is representational. The photograph depicts the hardworking children of sugar cane plantations in South America. This particularly photo is a portrait of a dark skinned boy, slightly overweight, standing and grinning. The photo is of neatly arranged granulated sugar across a piece of black paper which produces the image of the boy.
This work shows impeccably drawn beech and basswood trees. It was painted for a New York collector by the name of Abraham M. Cozzens who was then a member of the executive committee of the American Art-Union. The painting shows a new trend in the work of the Hudson River School. It depicts a scene showing a tranquil mood. Durand was influenced by the work of the English landscape painter John Constable, whose vertical formats and truth to nature he absorbed while visiting England in 1840.
Louise Bernice Halfe was born in 1953 in Two Hills, Alberta. Her Cree name is SkyDancer. She grew up a member of the Saddle Lake Reserve and at the age of 7 was sent to the Blue Quills Residential School in St. Paul, Alberta. . After leaving the school at the age of 16, she attended St. Paul’s Regional High School where she began to journal about her life experiences. (McNally Robinson)
My second piece that I choose was Vincent van Gogh’s, Olive Trees made of oil on canvas in 1889. I have always loved this piece so this was an easy piece to choose. When looking up the dimensions of the piece it was hard to find. There are fifteen different canvases of this series, so it told me all of them. To make a rough estimate I would say it is about 4 feet high and 3 feet width wise.
The texture of the canvas works very well with the subject matter portrayed in the painting. The grassy hill side and the leaves of the trees are especially complimented by the canvas. It makes the leaves feel like they are slightly moving, this combined with the lack of detail itself the leaves. This is contrasted nicely with the very detailed renderings of the trunks and branches of the trees, the conscious decision to put so much effort into the tree itself and then to use obvious brushwork in the leaves makes the trees much more firm and immovable in the landscape. The brushstrokes are very clean and precise on the trees in the background.
The Art Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1975), pp. 176-185. (College Art Association), accessed November 17, 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3049368.
In the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia and Southeast Alaska there are 6 styles of carved art. The most well commonly known art form is known as Totem poles also known as “story-telling poles.” Totem poles are tall poles carved from red cedar tree logs that represent the mythology and beliefs of tribes. The most well-known tribes who created totems along the coast are the Haida and Tlingit tribes. The carvings may include animals, plants, ancestor or mythological creatures.
The Japanese maple trees were subjects for much poetry and art in seventh century Japan. However, both world wars took their toll on the many different collections of these trees, and they were often used as firewood. By the end of the 1940s, many cultivars had disappeared. However, in the 1960s there was a return of interest and since then over 320 varieties of the Japanese maple have been developed from the native trees that were left.
The print of art is a Hiroshige, Plum Garden at Kameido, 1857, woodblock print. The print shows a calm and peaceful color of a regular day. The background consists of wash colors like reddish-pink that fades into white, and transfers once more in a green hue of the greenish ground. The image is showing a view of a several plum trees, with the stems, the flower, and the people on the other side of the fence. This work has a light pink background symbolizing the sunset and warm colors of the spring. The middle ground in the light white color shows the piece where there are people on the other side of the fence and appears to be walking around the garden or going throughout their daily business. The middle ground also has a view of several plum trees, which all of them seem to be inside of the fence. The focal point of the piece is the main plum tree with its branches swinging from the left at a sharp angle and moving to the right.
This work uses diagonal and zigzag lines on the limbs and branches of the trees. These are good line types to use since they resemble nature. Curved lines are
I’ve always liked the picture Prevalence of Ritual: Tidings by: Romare Bearden (pg.5). Honestly this particular art work I picked has somewhat of a love story. It has a hidden message in it. You have to look very closely to understand why he created something so special. This picture is based
3. Chapter 1, page 5, #3: “Moving through the soaked, coarse grass I began to examine each one closely, and finally identified the tree I was looking for by means of certain small scars rising along its trunk, and by a limb extending over the river, and another thinner limb growing near it.
In the first chapter of the novel, Morrison introduces tree symbolism by mentioning the scars on that Sethe bears on her back from being whipped. When Sethe tells Paul D. about her scars, she says, "I got a tree on my back...A chokecherry tree" (Morrison 18). Sethe was given these scars during an extremely traumatic and agonizing part of her life, when she was a slave at Sweet Home. Although these scars, which she received eighteen years ago, will forever be a reminded of the unpleasant memories ...
The art piece I chose was a pottery that I found very interesting, not only the art itself but the story behind it. This was a red-figure archaic type of pottery; the name of the pottery is called a Terracotta hydria, which is also known as a water jar. This specific pot was made in Greece and South Italy, around 340-330BC. It was also found at Canosa before the year 1878. According to the MET museum “This pot was created by a group of BM F 308, the specific artist is unknown. However, the potter and art was produced in Greek, South Italy, and Apulia.”
Both Susanna Moodie and Copway speak of nature and environment with admiration by showeing the positive sides of nature. In addition, they both describe nature and the environment as a rough and challenging element of life. Susanna Moodie speaks of the wilderness as pure and a phenomenon that does not interfere with human activities. On the other hand Copway encounters a spectacle in the description of nature as presented in the travel documented in the biography. However, both describe environment and wilderness in distinctive ways that affect their way of presentating Canadian nature.