Blog #5

This painting is  called Street Scene (Hester Street). The artist is George Benjamin Luks and its was painted in 1905. The style of this painting is both representational and abstract.The artist clearly defines certain parts of the painting where you can clearly see the people and structures and he also adds a certain blurriness to other parts of the painting. You can clearly see the people in the front and the children gathered around in the street. You can also see the structure of the buildings and its windows in the background on the left side of the painting. These make the painting representational along with the way that you can see some of the peoples faces. The fact that you can see faces makes some of the figures realistic. The stylized part of the painting would be the people who's back are turned or the ones whose face you cannot see. In the background on the right hand side you can see some blurry characters and you can't really tell if those are people in the street or just some kind structure. Another part that you can kind of see but not really tell exactly what it is, is the blue flowers basket in the lower right hand part of the painting. You can tell that these are flowers but can't exactly tell what kind of flowers these are. These parts of the painting would what make it abstract. The artist probably chose this style of painting to make it look complex. He wanted it to be unique in its own way. It tells the viewers of the painting what exactly is happening in a majority of the painting but not exactly what everything is in the peoples surroundings.