Modern Art Analysis

"Maskenstilleben" (Masks Still Life)

By Emil Nolde

1) In this painting I see...


a. The painting has very little mixing and blending. It looks as if it was just smeared on the canvas and left alone. There may appear to be some places where the paint looks blended but that is probably only because the author used water colors.


b. The brush lines are very visable meaning the author was not intending to make the painting look real, but was instead expressing emotion.


c. The heads look like they belong to scary multicolored beasts and animals and they do not resemble reality whatsoever.


d. There are random splashes and streaks of yellow paint throughout the painting; as long as it somewhat resembled what the artist pictured then everything else didn't matter.


e. There is a hole in the yellow faces head, again showing that he only wanted to resemble his idea, not perfect it.


f. The heads are floating and do not have bodies; again the artist was not attempting to paint reality.





2) Lines- The artist uses a bunch of vertical lines which intensifies the painting. The artist tends to use fairly straight lines, curving them when creating the shape of the faces and the face's features. In this painting, there are mostly implied lines and very few actual lines. It is difficult to identify any implied lines because all of the eyes of the faces are looking different ways and just the faces in general are all pointing in different directions.





Color- The artist uses a lot of blues, yellows, and reds, which are all of the primary colors, along with some secondary colors like orange and green. He also throws in some black and white. The shades of these colors he uses clash which gives the painting a hectic and pessimistic feeling. The artist tends to use warmer colors to emphasize the more important things in the painting, like the faces, and cooler colors for less important things, like the background. One of the faces he paints is rather dull but he paints a white beard on it which allows it to stand out just as much, if not more, than the other faces.





Shapes- All of the heads in this painting are essentially oval-shaped even if they do appear a little deformed. Most, if not all, of the features on the faces have distinct shape. The shapes might not be perfect but this is intentional; the artist wanted to give the faces character so they wouldn't appear as boring.





Space- There is little depth to this painting. The viewer would not be able to "enter" this painting. There are, however, a few instances of overlapping but the painting still tends looks one-dimensional. The author did this because he was simply expressing himself and had no intentions of the painting looking real.





Lighting- I don't think that there is a logical light source for this scene. It doesn't seem to come from one specific place, although the faces do seem brighter than the background which is probably due to the use of colors in the masks. The lack of lighting really adds to this painting because it creates an eerie and cynical mood.





Composition- This painting is pretty unbalanced. The faces are just randomly placed on the painting. I think in order for the painting to look "right" it has to appear as "wrong." This is because the painting is not supposed to be perfect. It was painted a little odd so that it would give the viewers a cynical feeling. The colors and lines are not consistant either which also contributes to the mood that the composition creates.





In my opinion, the mood of this painting is cynical.





The author portrayed this mood by using various techniques. For one, he used clashing colors which sends a negative vibe right through the viewer and makes them almost feel the need to clench their teeth. Secondly, the faces he uses are not familiar. They do not look like any creature we have on earth and they all have terrifying looks upon their faces. Lastly, horizontal lines usually make paintings appear calm and peaceful, but this painting has very few of these. Instead, there are many vertical lines in this painting which makes the painting appear very fierce.

Renaissance Art

Artist: Sandro Botticelli
Title: The Birth of Venus
Date: 1482–1486

Julius Caeser Blog- Brutus

Brutus was by far the most noble character in the play "Julius Caesar." He was the only character who didn't kill Caesar out of jealousy. He was actually a friend to Caesar. Although he did murder somebody, his level of morality was still a lot higher than those of characters like Cassius or Casca. His reasoning for contributing to the murder of Caesar was out of fear that Caesar was becoming too powerful and because he thought it was the right thing to do, unlike all the other conspirators who just wanted Caesar's power. In act 2 scene 1 Brutus said, "Crown him that, and then I grant we put a sting in him that at his will he may do danger with." This quote displays how Brutus was scared that if Caesar became king he would cause a lot of damage, so he only killed him because he was trying to protect his country. The most obvious example of Brutus changing is how at the beginning of the play he was such a great friend of Caesar's and then later in the play he ended up killing Caesar which was obviously something a great friend wouldn't do. I find Brutus very interesting because his biggest flaw was how easily he was persuaded. I sometimes find myself being easily persuaded as well so I can kind of relate to him. I also find myself relating Brutus to a U.S. soldier. Our country has soldiers over in Iraq killing tons of innocent people everyday, not because the soldiers are jealous of the people, but because they think it's the right thing to do. They think it's for the good of our country. This is exactly what Brutus did. He killed Caesar because he thought it would protect his fellow Romans. Another tie between Brutus and an American soldier is that they are both considered to be very noble people. http://thefuntimesguide.com/2005/09/soldierpackages.php is a website that provides ideas of gift ideas for soldiers in Iraq. This displays our country's love for our soldiers and how highly we think of him, just like how Brutus was looked up to by his country.

The Allegory of the Cave

1. The "shadows" that Plato talked about were really just illusions that represent how the truth is often hidden. We are often "blinded" by these illusions which enable us from seeing the whole truth. Magazines, movie stars, and the news are just a few of the "shadows" we deal with in our everyday lives. All of them have been edited and exaggerated in order to change the perception of the people who encounter them. They are not complete truths, but we are often tricked into believing that are.

2. http://www.eharmony.com/ portrays a "shadow." On this website people can lie about their age, hair color, hometown, and anything else that they feel like. The people who look at it are often tricked into believing what they think is the truth, when in reality it's a lie.

3. "Shadows" impact society greatly in both good and bad ways. Sometimes they're inspiring and can give people a determined attitude. But a lot of the time they are degrading. For example, when a teenage girl looks at a magazine, she sees a bunch of perfect girls without any flaws whatsoever. What she does not see is that the girls in that magazine DO have flaws. They have just been eliminated in order to portray the "perfect" girl. The girl looking at the magazine will then compare herself to the girls in the magazine which will make her think that there is something wrong with her because she doesn't look like that. This will then lower her self-esteem which can lead to some pretty severe things, such as anerexia. When it comes down to it, "shadows" lie to us by messing with our sense of judgement and "blinding" us from the truth.