A Comparative Analysis of Iconic Artworks
Three Graces, A. Canova
Comment:
The Three Graces sculpture is the work of Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Despite not having studied art because of his family’s low income, Canova reached great prestige and reputation in the art world after his move to Venice. “The Three Graces” is one of the most recognized works of the Italian sculptor. These figures embody and represent the female nude in a perfect manner that reveals Canova’s artistic skills. Besides the representation, “The Three Graces” goes further because the sculptor gets reflected in the composition’s mythological inner world of the Graces. In Greek mythology, the Graces were goddesses of beauty and fertility. There are three that are most considered in the mythological world and whose names are Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia. According to experts, the Graces were also associated with the underworld and the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Analysis
Antonio Canova’s “The Three Graces” is made of marble, a material which will be associated and identified throughout his career as a sculptor. “The Three Graces” is a marble sculpture with perfect finishing and polishing. Canova uses this material to embody the ideal beauty of the Graces in a simple but very neat way that follows the artistic taste of the time. The Three Graces are shown resting on one foot and holding each other smoothly. The color of the marble is exquisite and makes the sculptural form give off a light, lightness and elegance characteristic of Canova. Along these lines are inscribed two widespread creations: the portrait of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Borghese as Venus carved on a couch and “Theseus and the Minotaur”.
The Oath of the Horatii, J.L. David
Analysis
“The Oath of the Horatii” is a balanced and symmetrical painting, the axis of which is the parent, which divides the characters into two groups evenly distributed: to the left the Horatii, and to the right the women. It is typical of neoclassical painting to find clear compositions, here we can see that the figures have been ordered parallel to the picture plane, in correspondence with the architecture.
The figures are divided into two groups: men, on the left, symbolizing the heroic act of swearing to death, and women, to the right, symbolizing feeling. The composition is orderly, as in the Roman reliefs. Neoclassical painting is characterized by clear figures, where its contours are precise and there is a predominance of drawing. This dominance makes drawing more precise. These are the same forms used by the men of the Renaissance and the Classical World, ways in which figure and ground are not merged.
The light is cold, natural, in the service of drawing and shape, and it should highlight them. This is influenced by Caravaggio. The light comes from the left side of the table and gives a theatricality to the work, creating volumes of bodies, because it focuses on the most essential elements.
The color is cool and rational. Only red robes gives a warmer feeling and emotional. The colors are pure, not mixed. The creation of space is based on the classical perspective, putting a vanishing point in the hands of the father, towards the swords. We also found another vanishing point in the heads of the women. Most expressions are tense, because the muscles are tight, which is emphasized by the ritual of the oath with their swords. This contrasts with the passive attitude of grief of the sisters. To accentuate this tension puts the figure of dark cloak with the children. There is a great naturalism that is seen in the study of anatomy. The light of its impact on the bodies gives them a sense of volume. This naturally leads to David to consider the proportions.
Francisco Goya
Comment:
This work belongs to the second stage of three in which we divide the work of Goya:
- First stage (1760-1792): Painting is the stage of happy and jovial. This is reflected in the paintings he had done in cartoons for the tapestries from the Royal Factory. This stage is characterized by neo-classical composition: figures grouped by geometric patterns. Popular topics were represented.
- Second stage (1792-1808): This stage marks the first crisis of Goya. This is the stage of the portraits, which owns the work that we have seen, and the series “Los Caprichos”, where Goya satirizes human error common to all of society: greed, vanity, etc. This satire begins by taking the problems in general. All lead down a title. There are eighty plates. Goya At this time performs the greatest portraits of the aristocracy.
- Third stage (1808-1828): This stage marks the second crisis of Goya, and extending until he dies (1828). It’s time you live the consequences of the Napoleonic invasion (the War of Independence). Goya goes to live with bitterness, the product of which displayed a series of engravings that he entitled “The Disasters of War”. The protagonist of these engravings is the people, which is degraded by the war. In these tables represents the cruelty, hunger, injustice, …, and the irrationality of war. Also reflects this same theme in two paintings he made in 1814: “The Execution of the May 2” and “The Shootings of May 3”. Two years later, when he was 70 years, and after the tragic stage of the war, develops a series of engravings etched (White and Black), reflecting scenes of bulls. By 1820 will live in a house on the banks of the Manzanares, and painted the famous paintings of “La Quinta del Sordo”, who are the black paint which had to highlight scenes of witchcraft, as is the Sabbath, the festival of San Isidro, the god Saturn devouring his children, … From the point of view of the historical approach, Goya lived from 1746 to 1828, stage corresponds to the reign of Carlos III and Carlos IV. Were years in which they tried to introduce the reforms through the Enlightenment. Goya saw Carlos III triumph with some of these attempts at reform, but his successor, Carlos IV, these reform efforts are held back because it arises from a clash between enlightened reformist minority and the conservative majority, which does not change the existing status. Precisely in this atmosphere of confusion and social conflict that would put the implementation of “Los Caprichos de Goya”.
The Shootings of May 3rd, Goya
REVIEWS:
The painting is done on canvas using the technique of oil. The composition is divided into two main parts: the first, left, is composed of a group of civilians, a dozen, in different poses, one covers the face, others already dead lie on the floor, praying another appears, one with open arms … The right part of the form a group of six soldiers pointing their guns at the group of civilians before them. On the side of the civilian group, the mountain is Principe Pio. And in the background, we see an architecture belonging to the city of Madrid and the black night where the action is, and covers the rest of the composition.
Goya used in this table mainly dark palette, dominated by the range of the black color of death par excellence, with significant mixing of colors associated with the range of the green. The other family are the color of ocher and brown. Not forgetting the white man’s shirt with open arms which is a big contrast to the rest of the palette, mostly dark. We might say of this composition is a “crescendo color ranging from white civil shirt until some black clothes of the soldiers.
Comment:
This is a painting by the Aragonese painter Francisco Goya y Lucientes, entitled “On May 3, 1808” or “Shootings of Moncloa”. It was painted in 1814. No one knows exactly for what purpose it was designed, but everything suggests it was intended to be located in any ephemeral architecture. It entered the Prado Museum in the early nineteenth century (and that’s where it is currently), but was not exposed until 1868, as quoted by a catalog of the time. The event reflected in the table occurred in 1808. Napoleon had invaded Spain and the royal family had to follow his orders. On May 2, 1808, one of the people of Madrid seeks to prevent the exit of Prince Francisco de Paula to France organized by the French. The situation got out and fired on French troops in Madrid, in what is known as the uprising of May 2. The outbreak of the War of Independence in May 1808 represents a serious internal conflict to Goya, and his liberal ideology will about the French style and Joseph I, while his patriotism is attracted to those who are fighting against the French. In the canvas you can see a patriotic vision of the events of May 3, 1808 in Madrid. It was painted years after the events, and do not know if you came to witness the events. What we do know is that attempts to draw Goya attention in the table reflecting a sense of photographic chronicler. With his brushes plasma how it could be the episode that sparked the war with all its violence and cruelty to express its opposition to these facts and give a lesson against the irrationality of human beings as befitted his enlightened spirit. The execution is quite violent, with fast and thick brushwork and large patches, as if the very violence of the action would have invaded the painter.
Eiffel Tower
Analysis:
It is 300 meters high. The tower stands on four huge feet, connected by arched structures that resemble the eyes of the iron bridges that were the specialty of Eiffel. In the arches of foot binding is a clear idea decorativism with braided ornamentation. The tower is being developed with a large vertical, and that from the first platform, the path results in a narrowing pyramid pronounced that accentuates the sense of verticality. It is an open structure that highlights the aesthetic function of the tower, because she is all that stands out in the sky, not just the silhouette and the interior volume, and conveys a sense of lightness that does not correspond to its actual weight.
The tower is a building with no other function than to make visible the elements of its own structure. It becomes a symbol of modernity that rises above the traditional symbols like the towers of Notre Dame or the Dome of the Invalides. It is a monument commemorating devoid of content: not celebrate any victory or past event, but the success of present and future. The role becomes less important and are purely constructive elements are prevalent: structures of interlocking iron pieces, the calculation of the expansion of the metal stress, etc.
Comment:
The construction of this architectural work was commissioned to Gustave Eiffel. It is a symbolic monument to represent the triumph of art in the modern world. It was built in Paris in the years 1887-1889 for the Universal Exhibition of that year 1889, which celebrated the centenary of the French Revolution. It belongs to the iron architecture and new materials. Its key feature is that it gives importance to the technical solutions for new construction problems (bridges, factories, etc.) based on the use of innovative materials, made available to developers for the industrial revolution. The Chicago School in the late nineteenth century, represents the consecration of new materials and new techniques, and began the modern movement in architecture. The use of iron as a key element in building structures started in the construction of bridges and railway stations. But they soon discover the great potential for any type of construction. They are engineers, trained in a utilitarian spirit, who introduced new materials, while still considered traditional architects creators of beauty, concerned only with form. The great triumph of architecture of iron and glass comes with the celebration of the Universal Exhibition, large samples created to exalt the achievements of industry, commerce and the arts. The first of these exhibitions was held in London in 1851 for which the architect Joseph Paxton designed the “Crystal Palace”. For the Universal Exhibition of Paris of 1889, two important buildings were created: “The Gallery of Machines”, by Conttancin and Dutert and “Eiffel Tower”.
Casa Milà
Analysis:
Building Type: A domestic architecture.
Type of material: It is made of stone and brick which are already used new materials such as iron, glass and painted ceramics. The stone carving shows a granular type which gives a consistency almost geological. The combination of stone blocks with vaguely organic forms and iron balconies, creating a very strong expressive power, which has seen some authors (Oriol Bohigas) a history of expressionist architecture. Gaudí used the stone sculpture has an intention just as will the expression with the iron. The distribution of floor space is made of entirely free and imaginative, organized irregularly shaped building around two courtyards become uneven authentic Gaudí interior facades. The yards are large and were originally decorated with frescoes. Has broken with the traditional concept of symmetry in the organization of the plant. This whimsical game in the organization of the plant is possible by the use of a construction very bold and advanced for its time: the replacement of load-bearing walls and iron structures can concentrate all the weight on some specific points and make the line curve in the design of the plant, giving a sense of motion, transmitted to all floors and the entire sum. The plant forms are defined curves, is a moving floor. Gaudi’s original draft introduced in the plant a ramp from the garage, allowing vehicles to go to upper floors. The large amount of space that had to take the ramp made him quit the project.
Comment:
A. Gaudí was born in Reus in a family of forgers of iron. Since childhood he learned the trade craft of ironwork. He trained as an architect in Barcelona, where he conducted most of his work. In it we highlight several stages:
- Stage French eclecticism: it belongs to the cascade of Ciutadella Park in Barcelona.
- Stage Moorish or Oriental: structures are discovered or Islamic Gothic type with a naturalistic decoration. There is use of oriental elements (tiles, blinds, colors that serve to form mysterious environments). Belong to this stage Manuel Vicens House in Barcelona and the Palau Guell (calle Conde del Assault).
- Gothic stage: it appears the cult of medieval architecture, especially the Gothic. In this phase include the Episcopal Palace of Astorga, the House of Boots in Leon and the Casa Calvet (Caspe street n º 52)
- Stage of maturity: the full implementation of modernism. Belong to this stage, the Park Güell, Casa Batlló and Casa Mila or Pedrera.
Date: Built between 1906-1910.
Location: Located on the Passeig de Gracia n º 92 and occupies part of one of the islands l’Eixample, in the street cantonada 6.
Style: Modernism in Catalonia was an art movement that began in Europe around 1890, peaked in the late nineteenth century, and concluded more or less by 1905 in Europe. By 1914 it began in Spain. Born in Brussels and spread rapidly through France (Art Nouveau), England (Modern Style), Germany (Jugendstil), by Austria (secession), Italy (The Liberty) and Spain (Modernism).
Guernica, Picasso
Analysis
The box is painted in black and white, with different tones of gray and blue to just be seen. It is possible that this choice of color is due to Picasso noticed the bombing by German planes in the Basque town of Guernica (1937) through the newspapers. Another explanation is that the painter from Malaga wanted to convey his sorrow, anguish and indignation representing this attack as a play. To make this work of huge dimensions (349 x 776 cm) traveled to cubism to give a more agonizing representation. The different figures in the table have large mouths open, eyes bulging and deformed bodies.
Composition: Guernica is a painting that consists of eight figures that were different changes as they were painted. You could say that although Guernica Picasso look like a messy canvas, Picasso studied hard the position and shape of the various components. Before starting to paint the final work, he made various studies of what would be the Guernica we know today. The painting consists of a central pyramid crowned by the bulb, the candle held by a woman coming out of a window and head of the horse dying. This pyramid contains the body of the horse, half-naked woman on the right and the maimed body of the knight on the left. At the sides of the pyramid we can find a woman with arms raised and head of the woman who holds the candle to the right. On the left side we find the bull, erect and impassive to the situation, Spanish symbol, a woman who embraces the dead body of his son and a bird.
Comment:
Picasso made use of different sketches for the final Guernica. These sketches have their origin in the boxes of “Dream and Lie of Franco”, where two plates divided into nine bullets comic way that ridiculed and criticized the Franco regime. Guernica is said that the bullet would be the thirteenth of this sequence of boxes. In the various drafts of Guernica, is always appreciated the use of cubism style also followed and appreciated by the Surrealists, in which a figure is different images, a multiple image. During the interwar period, Picasso still uses Cubism both painting and collage and sculpture. The Civil War marked a new stage in his life and work. Picasso embraced the cause of the Republic and accepts the address of the Prado Museum.
Guernica belongs to the ripe age of Picasso and one of the most important works of art throughout the twentieth century. It was painted by the impact that the painter suffered after the bombing of this Basque city on April 26, 1937, a city populated largely rural at the time by women, children and elderly, since men were in the front. The profound shock that caused Picasso this fact results in Guernica, exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris Universal Exhibition of that year. In Guernica, you can find different symbols: a bull strong, erect and impassive symbolizes the Spanish people, who defended the Franco regime. At the same time, the horse that is in the center of the painting symbolize the femininity of Spain, and the bird is flying through the bull and the horses represent the desire for peace and freedom. The other characters represent the agony, despair and sadness, as reflected in deformed bodies, mouths open and eyes bulging.
Role: The Guernica was a cry against Franco’s ideology and politics and was introduced the same year the attack on Basque city. But because of the Franco regime, the painting had to be removed and fifty years later could not be returned.
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking, Dalí
Analysis:
Gala, wife and muse of Salvador Dali, sleeping on coat a rock in a seascape where quiet reigns. Under her naked body also float two drops of water and a grenade around a bee hovering. The hum of the bee Gala provokes a dream that materializes at the top by another grenade explosion that leaves a fish out of which, in turn, raises two angry tigers and a bayonet. Is this gun that a second later, Gala wake of peaceful rest. Although in 1944 Dalí lived in the U.S. and just painted, this work takes up his “paranoiac-critical method” which, following Freud’s theories, supported the multiple meanings of the images and made him one of the leading members of the Surrealist group. In this “hand painted dream photographs” – how often Dalí called his paintings – we can see a seascape of distant horizons and calm waters, perhaps Port Lligat, among whom, once again, the scene Stars Gala. Along with her naked body and slept, levitating on a flat rock, which in turn floats on the sea, Dalí place two drops of water suspended and a pomegranate, Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection. She flies on a bee, an insect that traditionally symbolizes the Virgin. The hum of the bee means Gala mind in a dream in which the grenade at the top brings out fired inside a huge fish, which, in turn, raises two tigers and threatening a bayonet, this will be a second later goad Gala in the arm. Above them, a long-legged elephant with flamenco, which appears in other compositions of that time, carries on his back an obelisk-like Bernini’s elephant in the Piazza Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, which symbolizes the power of the Pope.
The Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Analysis
The formal analysis: the picture is clearly divided into three zones arranged vertically. The central part is the more classic in appearance, but is perceived in these two figures and a partitioning of their bodies, despite this there are references to traditional painting of nudes with particular similarity to the “majas” by Goya even in his position as though they seem to stand are lying like its stance with his arms behind his head. In these two figures show an important principle of what would become of Cubist painting, the different point of view that are part of the same work. In the same way that the Egyptians used a frontal law in which the figures appeared with his face in profile and front torso, Picasso places these two figures as if they were from above, as this is much more recognizable seeing them from the same horizontal plane. In this range the colors are more classic, less severe (between white and blue), and the tone of the two girls is nicer in comparison with that of the other three. But unlike what may seem at first as they are in the center, the most important picture is not in these figures, as the broken lines that fill the canvas to bring us to look outside the box. If we look at the picture we must return to the canvas again and again as the work takes us beyond their limits.
Comment:
Pablo Ruiz Picasso, arguably the most influential artist of the twentieth century, was born in Malaga in 1881, the son of a art teacher. As a child, he showed an impressive talent as a painter and draftsman. From Barcelona (where he began painting) finally moved to Paris in 1904 where he contacted the Post-Impressionists and the Fauves, and periods where he developed the “blue” and “pink.” By the year 1907, and following “Demoiselles d’Avignon”, began his collaboration with Braque from which it appears (based on the teachings of Cézanne) Cubism between 1908 and 1914. At this time Picasso is in contact with all the artistic movements of the first part of the century, occupying an important place among the Surrealists, but returns to classicism in certain periods of his life. To always reside in France (after the war he would never return to Spain), China has claimed as French painter, but the themes used and statements always placed at the end of the tradition of great Spanish painters like Velazquez (with series on “Las Meninas”) and Goya. It is during these years that made “Guernica” one of the icons of twentieth century culture, stunning allegation against the war and the death of the innocent. In his old age, Picasso was even more relentless in his production during his youth, casting its shadow over all the art produced during the twentieth century, even after his death in Mougins in 1973.
La Raya Green, Matisse
Analysis:
The work depicts a portrait of Matisse’s wife, a tough and colorful portrait that perfectly defines the moment that the author identifies with his “Fauves” his favorite compositions, his fierce individuals. The woman, seriously and in a position to pose for a portrait, his eyes shifted slightly on the front of the table, offering a look of calm and tension at the same time. But most important of the composition is the set of lines and colors define the portrait, sharply defined lines that limit the ways of the face and clothing, and some mixed colors, drawn with apparent lack of order, and lack of common sense in the application. Stands out above all the famous green stripe that gives the title to the picture, and a sharply delimited on both sides of the face. And in order to define the most enlightened of the more obscure uses two colors like orange and pink, not correspond to a naturalistic depiction of a portrait. The composition of colors in the box was a special horror in the Salon d’Automne the Fauves in 1905, the range of bright colors applied not only to the bottom or the clothes but the face, making the painting even more provocative.
Comment:
The formation of Matisse is slow and alternating with trips to London and Italy. Production until 1899 focuses on the Impressionists, but from that date and until 1904, a period known as dark, is influenced by the Nabis and Cézanne and makes still lifes and landscapes of great structural strength and color planes, as shown in “Trays and Fruit” (1901) and “Bois de Boulogne” (1902). In 1904 he painted “House, Calm and Voluptuousness”, which follows the neo-impressionism, but has already announced Fauvism, which burst in the summer of 1905 at Collioure. This work was heavily criticized by Denis, which defines it as “schema theory.” In Collioure paints pictures that are still close pointillist methods, such as “Woman with Parasol”, to achieve absolute freedom and spontaneity in other works such as “View of Collioure”. A few months later at the Salon d’Automne, presents a work – which was acquired by the Stein brothers – “Woman with Hat”, which is significant in the evolution of color method that leads him to discover that the interaction of spot colors gives coherence to the work in 1906 painting “La joie de vivre” that can be considered a traditional work on the issue, but quite modern and free for your bill. In May of 1906 hits a two-week trip to Algeria, where he visits the oasis of Biskra. Interestingly there does not make any box, but on his return to France the work painted in Collioure “Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra)”, in which may be implemented to observe the influence of African sculpture and the use of poorly differentiated colors. The Naked, which dominates the line, can relate to some of his sculptures. Paris Matisse takes traditional pottery and other objects that are represented in Biskra times in his works. Africa and enthusiastic about their exoticism, and made several trips between 1911 and 1913 and in 1923 in Tangier, which completely changed the light and color in his work, as shown in the “Artist’s Studio” (1911), “Landscape Seen from a Window” (1912-1913) and others.
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